The apios is a plant I've been fascinated by for years! Have tried to spot it hiking in different places, but no luck. I find it (apparently) 5000 percent more fascinating than the average person...
The apios is a plant I've been fascinated by for years! Have tried to spot it hiking in different places, but no luck. I find it (apparently) 5000 percent more fascinating than the average person why just "certain" plants are cultivated and sold widely in stores. Like all those decisions about what would grow and taste best were made 100s of years ago...
I find that pretty fascinating too. But when it comes to why certain plants got cultivated at scale over others, sadly, I don't think "tastes best" was the major factor for determining that. When...
I find that pretty fascinating too. But when it comes to why certain plants got cultivated at scale over others, sadly, I don't think "tastes best" was the major factor for determining that. When it comes to modern agriculture, it's typically hardiness, disease/pest resistance, growth time, yield, shelf-life, and how easy they are to transport that seemed to have counted the most. E.g. There are a ton of vegetable and fruit varieties that generally taste far better than the ones typically found on grocery supermarket shelves... but for various reasons (they bruise easily, are disease/pest prone, ripen too quickly, etc) they were ignored in favor of the other, often less tastier, varieties of the same species.
Yeah, it makes perfect sense that those decisions were made the way they were hundreds of years ago, and all the agricultural systems and selective breeding were done in reasonable ways, etc. etc....
Yeah, it makes perfect sense that those decisions were made the way they were hundreds of years ago, and all the agricultural systems and selective breeding were done in reasonable ways, etc. etc. I'm not stepping into the mental trap of "everything decision made in the past was misbegotten"... I just wonder if you strip away all the trappings (except knowledge and science) since that time if we would end up at like the same 20 or so crops that comprise 80 percent of our diet or if we would land on different ones (e.g. "let's grow groundnuts instead of potatoes").
Mulberries I think are pretty delicious and easy to find all over suburbia. Not sold in stores. Adam Ragusea did a video on Chicken of the Woods. Not everything is easy to cultivate in mass and...
Mulberries I think are pretty delicious and easy to find all over suburbia. Not sold in stores.
Adam Ragusea did a video on Chicken of the Woods. Not everything is easy to cultivate in mass and can be shelf stable enough to be sold in stores. The few strawberries I’ve grown myself are like straight candy compared to the tasteless rocks I’ve had at the grocery store. I don’t even buy grocery store strawberries unless they’re the actually sweet variety.
IMO, sadly almost all fruit is like this. You can occasionally find some good tasting things in a grocery store, but I’m not sure I’ve ever found a mass grown fruit that even comes close to a...
IMO, sadly almost all fruit is like this. You can occasionally find some good tasting things in a grocery store, but I’m not sure I’ve ever found a mass grown fruit that even comes close to a ripened on “the vine” (tree, bush, what have you)
At the end of the day, just as the number of domesticated animal species is low, so are domesticated plants. There are many things to consider with food production at a scale. Their geographical...
At the end of the day, just as the number of domesticated animal species is low, so are domesticated plants. There are many things to consider with food production at a scale. Their geographical availability in ancient times has also had a significant influence over which populations could go through the different stages of civilization.
The apios is a plant I've been fascinated by for years! Have tried to spot it hiking in different places, but no luck. I find it (apparently) 5000 percent more fascinating than the average person why just "certain" plants are cultivated and sold widely in stores. Like all those decisions about what would grow and taste best were made 100s of years ago...
I find that pretty fascinating too. But when it comes to why certain plants got cultivated at scale over others, sadly, I don't think "tastes best" was the major factor for determining that. When it comes to modern agriculture, it's typically hardiness, disease/pest resistance, growth time, yield, shelf-life, and how easy they are to transport that seemed to have counted the most. E.g. There are a ton of vegetable and fruit varieties that generally taste far better than the ones typically found on grocery supermarket shelves... but for various reasons (they bruise easily, are disease/pest prone, ripen too quickly, etc) they were ignored in favor of the other, often less tastier, varieties of the same species.
Yeah, it makes perfect sense that those decisions were made the way they were hundreds of years ago, and all the agricultural systems and selective breeding were done in reasonable ways, etc. etc. I'm not stepping into the mental trap of "everything decision made in the past was misbegotten"... I just wonder if you strip away all the trappings (except knowledge and science) since that time if we would end up at like the same 20 or so crops that comprise 80 percent of our diet or if we would land on different ones (e.g. "let's grow groundnuts instead of potatoes").
Mulberries I think are pretty delicious and easy to find all over suburbia. Not sold in stores.
Adam Ragusea did a video on Chicken of the Woods. Not everything is easy to cultivate in mass and can be shelf stable enough to be sold in stores. The few strawberries I’ve grown myself are like straight candy compared to the tasteless rocks I’ve had at the grocery store. I don’t even buy grocery store strawberries unless they’re the actually sweet variety.
IMO, sadly almost all fruit is like this. You can occasionally find some good tasting things in a grocery store, but I’m not sure I’ve ever found a mass grown fruit that even comes close to a ripened on “the vine” (tree, bush, what have you)
At the end of the day, just as the number of domesticated animal species is low, so are domesticated plants. There are many things to consider with food production at a scale. Their geographical availability in ancient times has also had a significant influence over which populations could go through the different stages of civilization.