posted: June 24, 2003 | by chelsie

Kola nuts are the dried cotyledons (seed leaves) from the seeds of Cola acuminata (Beauvois) Schott & Endlicher and other Cola species. The cotyledons have been used for centuries as a masticatory (chewed). Native to tropical Africa especially lowland coastal areas, the seeds were purchased by Arabs traders for use during long treks across the deserts of Arabia and North Africa. [Click here to read more...]

posted: June 17, 2003 | by chelsie

By 1872, the Dutch in Java realized the value of the Cinchona seeds they had purchased from Ledger, the quinine content of the bark was ten to twelve percent. Quinine extraction would be both feasible and profitable. Trees from Ledger's seeds were carefully tended. Every Dutch colonist in Java with land was encouraged to grow quinine. [Click here to read more...]

posted: June 10, 2003 | by chelsie

For one who has closely encountered the living plant, it is a singularly unforgettable experience. The plant is the greater stinging nettle (Urtica dioica Linnaeus). Stinging nettle is a perennial native to the Northern Hemisphere. Despite the stinging trichomes, the plants were used for millennia. [Click here to read more...]

posted: June 3, 2003 | by chelsie

In 1837, Justus Hasskarl, a Dutch botanist, arrived in Java to work with Johannes Teijsmann on the establishment of several botanic gardens. In 1852, Teijsmann received a single living specimen of Cinchona calisaya; he propagated the tree from cuttings and began planting. The process was painfully slow. [Click here to read more...]

posted: May 27, 2003 | by chelsie

Clements Robert Markham entered the English navy in 1844 at age fourteen; he retired from the service in 1852. The same year, he traveled to Peru and explored the forested slopes of the Andes. In 1855 or '56 and again in the 1860s, he went back to South America searching for Cinchona, the trees that were the source of quinine. South Americans knew la quina was a major source of revenue and attempted to keep the seeds out of the hands of foreigners. [Click here to read more...]

posted: May 20, 2003 | by chelsie

Jesuit's powder (quinine) made of the bark of the quinquina tree of South America, is a febrifuge (fever reducer). It was known and used in Europe since the 1630s to treat the quartaine ague, better known as malaria. There were problems with Jesuit's powder; physicians and apothecaries often received substituted or adulterated bark. Few in Europe, usually only the missionaries returning from Nuevo Granada, knew what the true bark should look like. [Click here to read more...]

posted: May 13, 2003 | by chelsie

Wild sunflowers (Helianthus annuus Linnaeus) are many branched plants; each branch ending in a small capitulum, the flower-shaped inflorescence consisting of sterile ray flowers (appearing like petals) and fertile disk flowers which produce the seeds. The capitulums of a wild sunflower have a central disk usually under an inch in diameter. The garden sunflower was fully domesticated by Native Americans centuries before European explorers arrived. As novelty plants in Europe, John Gerard (1597) mentioned one in his garden grew a 'flower' sixteen inches across. [Click here to read more...]

posted: May 6, 2003 | by chelsie

It is reported that the summers of the early 1920s were unusually wet in the northern U.S. and Canada. Cattle were getting sick; sometimes the cows died quietly in the fields, sometimes they died after even minor veterinary surgery. Once the bleeding started, it continued and even veterinarians were unable to help the stricken animals. [Click here to read more...]

posted: April 29, 2003 | by chelsie

So valuable is flax (Linum usitatissimum Linnaeus) to civilization that three hundred cultivars of that single species exist. Flax cultivars are divided into two main categories, fiber and oilseed. Flax is best known for its fiber and the cloth, linen. [Click here to read more...]

posted: April 22, 2003 | by chelsie

Flax fibers are one of the earliest plant fibers used by humans and may well be the first widely cultivated plant for the purpose of cloth production. Flax (Linum usitatissimum Linnaeus) is the source of linseed oil and the fiber woven into linen. The oily seed may have been what first attracted early humans, the oils and proteins were high energy food for hunter-gatherers. It is thought flax cultivation began in the Middle East and in China during the Neolithic (8000 to 5000 BCE), the time when humans were settling into agricultural villages. [Click here to read more...]

posted: April 15, 2003 | by chelsie

The dogwoods (genus Cornus Linnaeus) comprise about forty-five species of trees and shrubs native to North America, Europe, and Asia. The genus designation, Cornus, the common English name, cornel, and common French, cornouiller, come from Latin, cornu, meaning horn for the hardness of the wood. [Click here to read more...]

posted: April 8, 2003 | by chelsie

In 54 BCE, Gaius Julius Caesar attempted the second invasion of the Britani Isles. Three hundred thirty six years earlier, the Keltoi, as they were called in Greek, had sacked and burned Rome. The Keltoi "strangers" or Celts controlled most of Europe. Rome thought their best interests lay in conquering the tribes. [Click here to read more...]

posted: April (Fool's Day) 1, 2003 | by chelsie

The tarflower (Bejaria racemosa Ventenat) is native to the pine flatwoods and scrub habitats of the southeastern U.S. These odd shrubs are members of the Ericaceae, the family of azaleas and blueberries. There are fifteen known species scattered from Florida to Cuba, Mexico, and northern South America. [Click here to read more...]