The multiple disguises of a common food plant

As an iguana owner, back in the heady days just after Jurassic Park hit, and iguanas were big - or, more precisely, they were little - we had lots of conversations on how to keep them healthy and enable them to be big in the future. Iguanas eat tree leaves in the wild, particularly protein-rich leaves from trees related to peas. There's not much like that available in grocery stores in the US.

One thing we rapidly learned was that the majority of 'green leafy vegetables' in stores were actually the same plant. Brassica oleracea is the plant, and it's high in oxalates (that impair calcium absorption, a no-no in iguanas and some humans) and in goitrogens, compounds that interfere with the functioning of the thyroid.

(Picture from the Vox article.)

How did one plant come to dominate the produce section - and why can't we spot it immediately as a plant that shouldn't make up all of our (or our iguana's) diets? Because Brassica oleracea is a master of disguise. It's a science-fiction-style shapeshifter that lurks unseen in the produce section.

You may know it by such names as cabbage, kale, collard, spring greens, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, broccolini, and cauliflower. Mustard greens are of the closely related species Brassica juncea. Napa cabbage (won bok), and Chinese cabbages (bok choi, pak choi, pei tsai), rapini and turnips are Brassica rapa. Brassica napus includes the oilseeds (rape, canola) and Russian Kale. Rutabaga, mustard seeds, horseradish, mizuna, radish, cress, watercress, wasabi and daikon are all also closely related.

How does one weedy wild mustard plant turn into kohlrabi (with its swollen stem), a headed cabbage, a leafy cabbage and a giant flower like a cauliflower? Plant breeding over thousands of years. (Not to be confused with genetic modification, despite the latter being described in comment sections of articles on GMOs as mere plant breeding recently; don't be fooled by a Big Ag spin.)

There are a couple of recent reviews of Brassica oleracea and its rise to kitchen supremacy. One was in The botanist in the kitchen  and the other in Vox, here.  Both are quick reads.

Some of the compounds that the cruciferous vegetables produce in an effort to stop mammals eating them are actually useful to us. They slow down cell division, which gives the plants some anti-cancer properties.

They're an interesting Old World institution.

New ponds for old, rebuilding pond part 2

Go to part one.

Once the fountain was placed, we started the water. The little blue shark has been in the fountain bowl for years. We found it under the silt and put it back in again. We're hoping that the moss will come back to life once it's been rewetted for a bit.





We had to cut the plants back drastically. But basically, Jimmy likes it.



So that's a positive result.

New ponds for old, rebuilding a pond part 1

In about 2001, we dug a hole in a planter in the atrium, and put in a hard-shell pond liner. We filled it with water, put ferns around the outside, put a fountain in it, and presto, a lovely white-noisemaker for sleeping purposes and a refuge for our iguanas.



That one's of Jimmy, in about 2007.

The hard shell pond liner was guaranteed to last ten years, or fifteen years or something. And it was in a planter - not subject to earth movements, giant pointy stones or tree roots. Nevertheless, this year it began leaking. This was a big problem. The fountain was just about maneuverable when we were forty. Now it's too heavy. Draining the liner and inspecting it showed numerous tiny splits in the plastic, of unknown origin. We taped them over with pond repair sticky patches and refilled.

Bingo! For two months. Then it started leaking again. Miserable fish. Algae covered atrium. Roots growing in drain.

We called the manufacturers who said they still had that model and it would be $60, but since they no longer had any California dealership arrangements, it turned out shipping would be $400. We were too British and polite to mention the warranty thing.

So, we had to 'repair' the hard pond liner by overlaying it with a flexible pond  liner. Last week we bought a flexible pond liner that people use to drape over shaped ponds in the ground. Our assignment - to line our hard liner. First we had to disassemble the fountain and haul it out with a block and tackle. Luckily STB understands pulleys. I 'did it' in physics but never actually pulleyed anything.







Then we had to drape the flexible liner over the hard shell pond liner and fill it slowly, ensuring that the folds in the material went where we wanted them, rather than where the weight of the water put them.  The plants growing around the shell are very aggressive, so we had to tuck the flexible liner right underneath the lip of the hard liner.  I still think that the ferns will get under it, so I guess we'll have to clean it out occasionally.








Once it's all tucked in, we left it to condition for a week. And then the effort of craning the hardware back in occurred.








Click to go to part 2

Grumpelstiltskin

My little lizard, Grumpy, died today.

Grumpy was a rescue iguana who always seemed to have a note or two in her repertoire missing, hence our appellation of Grumpy. Possibly something in her early upbringing had led to her tendency to pour cold water on anything new. Whatever, she was a healthy and active iguana who graced our house from 1993. She lived with James Jewel Osterberg (Jimmy) and they kept each other happy. She was about nine pounds and five foot long.

At 17 she was an old iguana. Many don't live past 7 in captivity. But eventually the common old-age ig-killer of kidney failure kicked in late last year - we saw the colored urates and the pale tongue - and she started to go downhill.

She's survived by James Jewel Osterberg, who is currently wondering what happened, and I hope we can explain it to him, as iguanas are not good at understanding why today is different from yesterday.

Grumpy is on the right, below, and Jimmy is on the left.