Friday Fabulous Flowers - Olfactory edition

TPP walked into the glasshouse and immediately knew that the taro (Coleocasia esculenta) was in bloom. Generally most people don't notice the distinctive fragrance nor the actual "flower" which hides among the large leaves. This is an aroid, Jack-in-the-pulpit being the best known member of the family here abouts. So, what you really have here is a spike of flowers, an inflorescence known at the spadix,

surrounded by a modified leaf, a bract, known as a spathe. In the case of taro only half the spike is visible; the lower half is pretty tightly enclosed by the spathe. After flowering the upper part of the spike and the upper part of the spathe dry up and fall off. In this particular aroid, the flowers on the base of the spike are "female" and will produce fruits. The upper flowers are pollen producing "male" flowers. You can see the accumulation of pollen around the spike at the "waist" of the spathe. Sterile flowers separate the two and cover the top of the spike. The latter make a lot of fragrance, which is some aroids is a carrion odor. Taro isn't, but the fragrance is hard to describe, sort of a musky, heavy floral odor, not altogether pleasing but not revolting either. Several people noticed the odor today, but hadn't located the source, and it surprised them.  

How does blue taste?

Yesterday's laboratory covered starchy staples, not the most exciting topic, but more interesting than most students think at first.  Actually their interest level was pretty good.  Taro and cassava were new things for most of them; several expressed disbelief that they were purchased in a standard big grocery store where some of the shopped, but never noticed them before.  A surprising number had never encountered sweet potatoes as food before!  Unfortunately our glasshouse yam, while prolific, produces aerial tubers and like potatoes exposed to light, the chloroplasts in the cells beneath their corky skin develop and along with the greenish tissue comes toxic compounds with a bitter taste.  Real yams never show up in our markets although sweet potatoes are routinely so labeled.  The genetic diversity of potatoes in our markets is a relatively new thing, and most of them had never noticed blue potatoes before.  After examination of the items they were sliced thin and fried into "chips".  One young woman who was a bit reluctant to try new things asked, "How does the blue taste?"  "Amazing," a clever fellow replied, "best blue ever".  Blue has a flavor?  Oh well.  The examination of starch grains using polarized light microscopy was also something new for them and they got to add "birefringence" to their vocabulary.  On the whole this was quite successful because one of the primary purposes is to awaken students to things around them of which they were totally unaware.  And there are lots more awakenings to come!  (Image from Eat the Rainbow.)