Apple doughnuts!!

Fried dough dusted in sugar and cinnamon is a wonderful confection, especially if you ignore the unhealthy quibbles about fat and sugar. So what can be better than fried dough with tart apple bits included? The answer is nothing! One of the great things about having a supply of great cooking apples (Northern spys) is that you can make apple doughnuts. Totally terrific!

Mangroves - very important forests

A news article from Treehugger reminded TPP that mangroves are a very special type of forest, and like forests everywhere, deforestation threatens them.  The "Republic of Change" is raising money to restore mangroves in the area of Madagascar, a place where deforestation of all sorts has been brutal and taken a toll on biological diversity. There are several reasons why this is a good idea. First, mangrove forests are very carbon rich, that is they are big biological reservoirs for carbon which they get from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Second, mangroves grow at the interface between ocean and land where they act as buffers against storms and tsunamis. Third, they are the nurseries and primary producers that drive coastal fisheries throughout the tropics and subtropics. Yet, most people just see a tangle of stems, roots, and mud, something standing in the way of human coastal development. TPP has heard coastal development enthusiasts call mangroves "scrub", "waste areas" and "junk vegetation". In what can only be regarded as extremely wrong headed thinking, mangroves in some areas have and are being destroyed to farm shrimp while quite ignoring the role mangroves have in supporting coastal fisheries, a classic robbing ecologically rich peter to pay paul poorly.  To learn more about mangroves here's an old internet photo essay about mangroves that may be hard to get to without this link (and even then the link to the last 2 photos has been broken. Thanks IT!). This is one type of forest that even relatively few botanists have wandered through. Some of the photos show a mangrove restoration project southwest of Bangkok along the coast where mangrove destruction has taken place for shrimp farming. The mangrove image is courtesy of Ji-Elle, Wikimedia Creative Commons.

The badly behaved gardener

Here's someone that just might be the gardening guru you are looking for: the badly behaved gardener Kim Stoddart. She sounds like someone who's philosophy of gardening is somewhat close to TPP's who is a bit of a bad-boy gardener himself, it's just that he really likes gardening and is thus perhaps a bit more engaged in the process. As for flaunting gardening rules, go for it. But as a botanist you start from a different perspective in that you know what and how plants do things, sometimes. At any rate, Kim is a breath of fresh air in gardening circles, but a book?  No!  You sit around with a cocktail!

Chemical free consumer products

This article published in Nature Chemistry will be a big boon to people who are scared of chemicals you might find in the various products they purchase. It's a comprehensive, very thorough list of chemical free consumer products. Here's the link to the article. Next perhaps they'll publish a list of all the foods that are not organic. HT to Pharyngula.

So long, thanks for all the fish

It's a quite warm and beautiful Wednesday here in early October, a day way to nice to spend inside, so TPP is actually taking advantage of being retired and doing house & garden stuff. But then what a bummer to learn that the world will end today, or so some apocalyptic religious group says. Now this is really too bad because all the really good wine was consumed while waiting for last week's apocalypse during the blood moon eclipse. Who knew apocalypses could come so close together, but supposedly it has something to do with the time it takes since the blood moon to make a list of who's naughty and who's nice. There must be money in this somewhere, for someone, but if so it's because there are some seriously gullible people out there. One thing is certain, all such predictions have been wrong, so far, so TPP is still planning on tomorrow.
Here's some planning ahead advice. If you use it, buy your canned pumpkin for holiday cooking ASAP. This year's crop of pumpkin/squash was not so good. The thing about this is that 90% of the pumpkin grown in the USA for canning grows within about a 35 mile radius of Peoria. This isn't a product the Phactors use, so no worries.
The weather forecast is not promising very much rain for quite awhile. This is good for the farmers and the soybean and maize harvest is progressing very well here in our region, but this always happens after TPP plants some replacement shrubs or has other fairly new trees and shrubs to baby as the season heads into winter. Remember, the aridity of winter is often more damaging than the cold, so you have to keep things well watered, and this means quite a bit of hose dragging to reach everything (part of today's activities). Again an apocalypse would negate this advice.
But first TPP needs some more coffee.

Botany Within Your Reach - 1. Corks

This is the inaugural edition of a new periodic feature, Botany Within Your Reach (BWYR) (TM). The idea is to encourage exploration, curiosity, and learning about some of the many rather ordinary things that surround us, things us botanists recognize and understand, but which others may just take for granted. To help people keep track, each BWYR will be numbered. Comments and questions are welcomed and encouraged. 

Botany Within Your Reach – 1. Corks

Why is it that wine bottles have such long, narrow necks?  Don’t questions like that keep you awake at night? You’ve got lots of bottles holding all sorts of things and none of the rest have such long narrow necks.  The answer is botanical involving the traditional method of keeping wine in the bottle and air (oxygen) out using corks.

Extract a cork from a wine bottle. If you are an actual child, it may be best to ask your parents to help.  Perhaps they have some previously extracted wine bottle corks lying around. These days a lot of wine bottles are stoppered with plastic or even screw top lids, and one of the reasons is that good corks are in limited supply because of where corks come from, and in part because of cork has influenced what is now the traditional shape of wine bottles.

Observe a wine bottle cork closely.  If you have more than one in what ways are they similar?  Are they all constructed the same way?  The most obvious aspects of a cork are some dark streaks on two sides and pores on the other two sides, which are two views of exactly the same thing. Why do you think they run side to side and not end to end?  Clue: side to side works; end to end doesn’t. These are not wine bottle corks; these taper, but they show essentially the same features.

You also can observe layers of tissue on the ends of the cork. Are all the layers the same width? Cork comes from the bark of the cork oak, Quecus suber, and of course trees like this can be aged by counting growth rings in their wood. If cork grows in a similar way, how many years’ growth does your cork represent?  How much does this vary among corks if you have several? Shown are two corks. Which one was growing cork the fastest? 

 In woody plants, the epidermis is replaced by cork.  Cork is a secondary plant tissue produced by a lateral meristem, the cork cambium.  Cork’s primary function is protection of the vascular tissue within.  Corks cells are small, tightly packed, and while dead at maturity, the cell walls are impregnated with a waxy substance called suberin.  Bark is a very general term for all the accumulated corky tissues, along with non-functional phloem, and functional phloem are referred to as bark.  Eventually the oldest bark is sloughed off the tree, but some trees including cork oak, the bark can become quite thick. In many trees, the cork cambium produces cork in discrete patches whose size and shape is characteristic for that tree because it produces distinctive bark patterns.  The image shows a very old cork oak where the bark has not been harvested and has accumulated for many years. An image of the crown of the tree is shown above. The tree was growing in the Orto Botanico di Firenze also known as the Giardino dei Semplici. Such thick bark can protect the tree trunk from fire, and it means the cork oak was originally native to open, savanna-like habitats that were subject to fire every now and again. 

Although all woody plants produce cork cells, commercial cork is from the very light, highly suberized cork cells of the cork oak.   Rather than sloughing off, the cork accumulates on cork oak making a very thick bark. There are a few other species with similar cork, like the Amur Cork Tree, but none are of economic importance.

So back to the original question; the shape of wine bottles. The streaks and pores are channels called lenticels. They function to provide gas exchange for the living vascular tissue beneath the bark. This means the lenticels run from the inside to the outside of the bark. You can now draw an arrow on the end of the cork parallel to the lenticels showing you the orientation of the cork in the bark. One side with pores is on the outside of the cork and the other side is the inside. This means that the maximum diameter of a cork is determined by the thickness of the bark. As you observed already, it takes several years of growth to produce bark thick enough to make wine bottle corks. So cork can only be harvested by stripping it off the tree every 10 years or so.  Even then after a decade of growth the thickness of the bark limits the diameter of the cork, so the necks of wine bottles were made long and narrow so that a long cork will fit tightly.  One image shows how a cork is cut from bark that has been trimmed to an even thickness.The outline of a typical wine bottle cork has been drawn on a piece of untrimmed bark with a scale on the left. In both images the inside of the bark is at the top

You could make a much broader diameter cork if it was cut from the cork the other direction, but the cork would be much shorter and the lenticels would run top to bottom. You can find short, broad corks like this for broad-mouthed jars, but they are not air tight.

Cork is also good as padding and an insulator, so it is often used on the bottom of heavy items and as pads for hot items. Here’s an image of a piece such a pad.  The expected cork organization is not there because it is composed of bits and pieces of cork cemented together to make a sheet. The pieces are leftovers from wine cork production.

This champagne bottle cork (below) shows some similar ingenuity. Champagne is carbonated wine and the bottle corks are mushroom shaped so that the top overlaps the top of the bottle neck where it is wired down to keep the cork in the bottle neck. The gas pressure within the bottle can push the cork out once the cork is loosened, carefully, and out pops the cork. The top is composed of cork pieces, but such construction is not air tight. Two (or three) thin layers of real cork and glued to the bottom, but as you can readily observe the lenticels are running the wrong way! (Bottom of the cork shown below) This means the layers can be cut from a thin layer of bark, but they won’t be air tight either. However, if 2 layers are are put one upon the other and rotated relative to each other, the lenticels won’t line up from one layer to the other thus making a functional cork out of bark that would otherwise be inadequate. Alternatively, they use plastic stoppers.

New technology for iZombies

iZombies are those people totally unaware of the world around them because their nose is pressed against an iPhone screen, sort of the opposite of a head's up display. It's quite clear that this iZombie epidemic is getting worse, so naturally somebody goes and invents some new technology that enables them! People stopped looking at their wrists some time ago when gazing at an iPhone became considered more convenient than glancing at a watch to tell the time, but now wrist gazing will be taking the place of phone gazing if they start using this water-proof bracelet display by Cicret. Just an aside here. The company is Paris-based, so is it pronounced "se-cray" or "si-crete"? Oh, does TPP remember correctly that secret is the same word in both languages? Still best get ready for some iZombies to begin bumping into people in locker room showers, public pools, and beaches. When will we see the first one?

Sweet teeth are growing up

A thought occurred to TPP this AM after seeing an ad for a new flavored gin from the little distillery visited yesterday. Why are these sweet, flavored things so popular? The answer is both pragmatic and reflective of market reality, although not all that pleasing on a personal level. While the buying power of my baby-boomer generation still has an impact (was not Mick Jagger host of SNL last night, and hilarious to boot?) on marketing, sweet flavored things are all over the place, but of no interest to people of my generation. TPP first noticed it in his coffee shoppe. Order a latte and the young thing operating the touch screen asks, "Do you want any flavoring in that?" No, I rather like the taste of coffee. And at that nice boutique distillery, along with some fine whiskeys there were several flavored whiskeys (chili pepper seems to be a flavor of immediate choice), but there are cherry-flavored, and cinnamon-flavored ones, and others TPP has barely noticed. Why a new little brewery in Snohomish WA had a beer flavored with roasted green chilis, and all that can be said is at least it wasn't sweet. The simplistic answer to all of this is that the sweet teeth of millennials has come of age, so the corollary is that TPP is becoming as old as dirt. The problem with all these flavored whiskeys (coffee, etc.) is that the thing that turns up missing is the flavor of whiskey drown in a sea of cloyingly-sweet flavor. TPP also noted this with young-adult nieces and nephews who while visiting at his Tuscan villa found the taste of negroni cocktails too bitter.  One asked if it would be OK to add sugar? They have grown up, but their palate hasn't. The makers of whiskey, the purveyors of coffee, and other flavored liquors don't necessarily like their products this way, but they are catering to a new market, young adults with kiddie sweet teeth, or is it tooths when used this way? Will their palates eventually grow up too? In some cases, yes. The nieces and nephews seemed to enjoy decent wine (especially when they weren't paying). If these flavor adulterated items begin to push out the real thing, then it will get ugly. Hmm, TPP left one store the other day when they failed to have a single anejo rum that was not spice flavored! That comes from shopping too close to a college campus.

Apple quest 2015

A local failure of our favorite variety of apple (Northern spys) provided some motivation to drive 3.5 hr to SW Michigan to the Tree-Mendus Fruit Farm. They grow a couple of hundred varieties of apples, and you can taste many of them so you will certainly get to try something you've never had before. Now this is not exactly a selfish action as a number of our friends are counting on us to import enough apples for everybody. Last year the Phactors made the same trip and it was cold, wet, and completely miserable, and the apples were not their best so picking wasn't easy. "Apple pickin' weather" according to a senior member of the Mendus family. This year was a nice fall day and dry! And the apples were in much better shape and the trees were loaded so picking was easy. If any of our N. Spy friends are reading this, you will get apples, a few. A brief discussion with the apple patriarch turned to the Holiday apple, a variety TPP was unfamiliar with. This is a fabulous apple! The flesh is pure white and very crispy, but bursting with juice. The taste is a complex sweet tart combo. Excellent. According to the description this is a hybrid between a Jonathon and a Macoun developed in Ohio. Travel suggestion: the route to this orchard will take you close to Three Oaks which is worth a visit. First and foremost is Drier's Meat Market. The sawdust on the floor will be fresh. Try a ring of bologna or liverwurst; you will not be disappointed. Further down the street is an old corset factory that now houses a theater, a restaurant, and the Journeyman Distillery. The quite peppery rye whiskey is special. The white whiskey is (think fancy moonshine) is surprisingly fruity, and strong!  Everything is 100 proof. For an October afternoon, the joint was jumping. So think apples, sausage, and whiskey, all in a one day trip! Success!

Bye, bye styrofoam! Hello, mealworm brownies!

Some things decompose readily; some things decompose slowly; some thing essentially decompose so slowly that they essentially don't decompose; a very few things are forever. Waxes decompose very slowly, which is why cuticles of fossil leaves persist so well for millions of years. Sporopollenin is the stuff that land plant spore and pollen walls are made of and it doesn't decompose at all. No organism has an enzyme that breaks these molecules down. Wonder if they've tried feeding pollen to meal worms? TPP asks this because humans have invented a few nasty things that do not decompose either, so they hang around and accumulate. Styrofoam and other polystyrenes being some of the more common ones. But say what? Mealworms can eat styrofoam and subsist on it? That's just amazing! A colleague of mine used to keep a colony going and hand out the mealworms (beetle larvae really) to visiting school kids as a snack because they are edible. The real funny part came when he'd turn to their teacher and say, "Your teacher will show you how to try new foods." Ha! They were worse than the kids.  So now you can raise mealworms on styrofoam, one of the nastiest kinds of plastic pollutants, and then use the mealworms as a stir-fry ingredient, or chicken or fish food, or energy bars, or something. Where is my Man Eating Bugs cookbook?  This is such a handy discovery.