Silvarerum — The forest of things. The Wolf of the Vegetable World. Your broccoli's 1,458th cousin, once-removed. Creative Commons Kulac. So let’s say you’re a wild leafy vegetable, innocently minding your own business on limestone seacliffs on the coasts of southern and western Europe. Suddenly, some prehistoric human takes it into their head that you are worth installing in their newfangled “garden”.
Fast forward several thousand years, and the results of that domestication almost put Westminster to shame. That plant was Brassica olearaca — wild cabbage — and it has become the stuff of vegetable legend. For the progeny of that ancestral plant, when subjected to many thousands of years of natural mutations and careful selection of the result by humans, has evolved into a cohort of vegetables that either strike fear or delight in the hearts of man. BroccoliCauliflowerKaleCollard GreensChinese BroccoliCabbageKohlrabiBrussels Sproutsand last post’s mystery vegetable, Romanesco.
Tagged as: brassicaceae, flowering plants, plants. Knight Science Journalism Tracker.
Earth sciences. Pre-history sciences. The Lay Scientist | Rational Thinking. Animal sciences. Chemical sciences. Life sciences. Neuroscience. Medical science. A Blog Around the Clock. Weird things. 5 Pretentionist Statements. I'm posting this in honor of Stegosaurus Week at Dinosaur Tracking. Here's Day One, here's Day Two. Rob Pierce, my partner in culture-crime, recently sent me an email that touched on a number of creative issues that have been occupying my mind recently. I suggested that he post it on his blog and I respond; he agreed. And I spent the next few days scratching my head, trying to figure out how to make the unified statement that seemed to be lurking in the underbrush.
That statement has yet to emerge, so I'm going to give you a point-by-point response. Note that these are responses. Anyway. 1. Without purpose and function, there can be no strength. 2. Movies and music both give direct sensory input as their primary expression, and movies subsume music. Prose is my preferred form, because it maximizes evocation and minimizes time binding. That said, it's all good. 3. 4. For me, music is specifically social. But here's where our experiences diverge. 5. Whee! A Scientific Fairy Tale. Bad Science.