RANDOM BITS OF "DID YOU KNOW"
The Special Facts, the Advanced Info, the Oddball Truths, the Other Bits and Bobs, and Those Notes That Simply Didn’t Fit into Any Articles Planned. Essentially, Those Things “You Didn’t Know”
Just as anyone who does a lot of meta-research, I frequently bump into plenty of information that just doesn’t fit, by my choice, into anything I want to write about down the road. Some of it, though, I can’t “throw away.” It sticks in my head or I quickly scribble it cryptically into the small notepad that sits on the right side of my desk. Some of it is remembrances of First-Year-Hort-Classes-Past. Some of it is just disparate scrawling that will never be a full article or any part of a congruent article. Some of it’s a “maybe.” So it all sits, usually for a long time.
Last night, I bumped into somebody’s web page titled “Did You Know?” (or was it “Things You Don’t Know?,” which would have grabbed me harder than the former). There was my ah-HA moment. I gathered up my own notes (talk about a mess!) and puttied in the gaps. And ta-da, the fun and funny things “YOU didn’t know” evolved. With no further ado and in no particular order …
· Banana plants are not “trees.” They are large herbaceous perennials that are distantly related to ginger. They never form woody stems as trees do (“woody” is part of the definition of a tree). The thick pseudostem (what we call “trunk” here) begins as a small shoot from an underground rhizome. It grows upward as a single stalk with a tight spiral of leaf sheaths wrapped around it. The sheaths open into fully-blown leaves near the top. Each pseudostem will die down after bearing fruit. The banana-specific horticultural term for the clump formed by the rhizome, including all fruit-bearing stems as well as the suckers, is mat; the botanical term for the same is genet.
· The fear of plants is called botanophobia.
· Lacanophobia is the fear of vegetables.
· The fear of trees is called dendrophobia.
· And yes, there is a fear of grass, including lawns, and it’s called agrostophobia.
· Orchids became Asparagus. Kinda. Within the Plant Kingdom, there are the Flowering Plants and within those, there are several Orders. One key Order is the one called Asparagales. From the Asparagales, the first to pop up evolutionarily, are the orchids (Orchidaceae), which first showed up on earth 75 to 100 million years ago. Until the 2000s, scientists had believed orchids were the new kids on the block but the science of DNA sequencing now shows that orchids are just an old asparagus (not literally, of course). The asparagus family (Asparagaceae), on the other hand, came about only 3 to 4 million years ago. Oh, just to be accurate, orchids popped up and then went their own direction. Asparagus then came about via some ten major steps in a very different direction (but still Asparagales).
· In a sense then, vanilla beans (from which we get natural vanilla flavoring, of course) are more closely related to corn than a “bean.” Vanilla beans are within the fruit of an orchid, specifically Vanilla planifolia. Being an orchid it is a monocot, the next level above Asparagales. Beans (such as green beans, mung beans, even coffee beans), on the other hand, are eudicots (formerly dicots), the level totally opposite monocot.
· Orchids are stunningly beautiful, sure, but many orchids are also wonderfully fragrant. Consider these easy to semi-easy kinds to refresh your home, conservatory, or greenhouse:
Brassavola nodosa (smells like lily-of-the-valley)
Brassavola Little Stars (smells sweet)
Cattleya, Laeliocattleya, and Brassolaeliocattleya (floral, sweet, citrus)
Cochleanthes amazonica (spicy, candy)
Cymbidium 'Golden Elf' (lemony)
Dendrobium anosmum (raspberry, strawberry, rhubarb)
Dendrobium nobile (floral)
Encyclia cordigera (honey, vanilla, rose-like floral)
Encyclia radiata (coconut)
Lycaste aromatica (cinnamon)
Maxillaria tenuifolia (coconut)
Miltoniopsis (rose)
Oncidium Sharry Baby (chocolate and vanilla)
Oncidium Twinkle (vanilla)
Oncidium Hawaiian Sunset (floral)
Oncidium cheirophorum (sweet, citrus)
Oncidium ornithorhynchum (vanilla)
Phalaenopsis Caribbean Sunset (rose)
Phalaenopsis Orchid World 'Roman Holiday' (spicy)
Phalaenopsis schilleriana (floral)
Phalaenopsis violacea and some of its hybrids (floral and/or cinnamon)
Rhynchostylis (floral)
Vanda coerulescens (grape bubble gum)
Zygopetalum (hyacinth)
[Crap!, I’m thinking now that maybe all of that was another orchid article.]
· Frankincense and myrrh are resins, the dried sap from trees. Frankincense comes from trees in the genus Boswellia, an odd group of trees that grow in the dry, almost desert regions of the Middle East. Myrrh come from trees and shrubs in the genus Commiphora, which grows in similar areas. A single 1,000 year-old seed from an archaeological site in the Judaean Desert has been tentatively identified as another species of Commiphora and as the biblical plant mentioned in the Bible as the source of a medicinal extract called tsori (balm of Gilead).
· The word “tulip” first appeared in western Europe in or around 1554 as tulipa or tulipant from the French. Before that, it was tulipe and its obsolete form tulipan. Modern Latin makes it tulipa (from which we get the botanical genus of Tulipa). Tulipa comes from the Ottoman Turkish word tülbend, meaning "muslin" or "gauze.” That may have come from the Persian delband (دلبند), meaning "turban." Because a tulip looks like a head wrap or because it looks like the material of which turbans are made?
· Botanical sex changes. The flowers of various species of Jack-in-the-pulpits or Cobra Lilies (Arisaema), can change their sex. It’s called paradioecious. When the plant is young, all the flowers are pollen-producing males. When the tuber matures, the flowering stalk will produce both male and female flowers. When growing conditions become stressful, the plant reverts back to producing only male flowers; this can occur from year to year. Cobra lilies are not alone; Striped maples (Acer species), which are dioecious (male flowers on one tree and female flowers on another, separate tree), can switch their sex from male to female. A few gingers (of the genus Alpinia) switch their "working gender" in unison, from female to male or vice versa, around lunchtime. Talk about a nooner! Four-Wing Saltbush (Atriplex canescens) plants have been observed to change gender after experiencing stressful conditions such as cold or drought.
· Who’s really the oldest:
— There’s a patch of one of the Antarctic Mosses on Signy Island that is estimated at 1,500 years old
— The White Mountains of California are home to a Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) named ‘Methuselah’ that is 4,800+ years old. Pinus longaeva means “long-lived pine.” This is the longest-lived non-colonial species.
— Inside info: there MIGHT be another Bristlecone that is older; one reported but unconfirmed, is estimated at over 5,062 years of age (as of 2010)! The reporter has since died, the site was kept secret by him, and his evidence, the core, has vanished.
— Sweden is home to two colonies of Norway Spruce (Picea abies): ‘Old Tjikko’ and ‘Old Rasmus’. Both are over 9,500 years old!
— A colony of Mojave Yucca (Yucca schidigera), endemic to California, is estimated to be 12,000 years old.
— A colony of Palmer’s Oak (Quercus palmeri) called the ‘Jurupa Oak’ has been alive for 13,000 years!
— ‘Pando’, a Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) colony in Utah, is about 80,000 years old.
— A seagrass (Posidonia oceanica, known more commonly as Neptune grass) colony in the Balearic Islands, Spain has been growing for 100,000 years.
· Who’s really the fastest:
— Giant Kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) can grow up to 2 feet per day.
— Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis) has been observed to grow at a rate of 45 inches per day. One report (credible?) says it grows up to 4 feet (48 inches) in a 24-hour period (maybe a slight exaggeration of the first).
— A clone of Rootless Duckweed (Wolffia microscopica) has a measured doubling time of just under 30 hours. Doing some quick, crude math: a 1-foot-circle of a patch would be 2 feet across in 30 hours. That same patch would be 4 feet across in 60 hours. 8-foot across in 120 hours. Then 16 feet across in 240 hours; this last jump represents a growth rate of 8 feet in just a day and a smidgen. [A related species, Wolffia globosa, is the world’s smallest plant.]
— Then there’s bacteria, which grow and reproduce at a typical doubling rate of every 4 to 20 minutes, under optimal conditions.
— The fastest plant to grow from seed is the radish. The seeds germinate in as little as 2 or 3 days and tiny, edible “roots,” the radish, can be eaten in just 30 days (or less!).
· Bamboo is the world's tallest grass, and has been recorded as growing as tall as 130 feet.
· One scientific study reports that an apple is 25 percent air, hence why it floats in water (so that you can bob for them). Another study reports that an apple generally contains between 84 and 86 percent water. So, what’s actually left to eat??
· That’s a nut and that other nut is not a nut. Botanically speaking, a nut is a fruit consisting of a hard or tough nutshell protecting a kernel which is usually edible. In general usage and in a culinary sense, many dry seeds are called nuts, but in that botanical context, "nut" implies that the shell does not open to release the seed (“indehiscent”) at maturity.
· True nuts include beechnuts (Fagus), chestnuts (Castanea), acorns (Quercus), hazel/filbert (Corylus).
· What people commonly call "nuts," such as almonds, cashews, pistachios, and peanuts, are not always botanically classified as nuts. Almonds are drupes (fleshy fruits with a hard seed inside; other examples of drupes are peaches, plums, and cherries). Coconuts and pistachios are drupes, as well. Peanuts are legumes, which mean they have a pod that readily opens up at maturity (dehiscent). Pine “nuts?” They’re just seeds with vestigial wings.
· Walnuts (Juglans), pecans, and hickories (the last two being Carya) have fruits that are difficult to classify. They are considered to be nuts under some definitions but are also referred to as drupaceous nuts.
· The cashew is a strange bird. It’s the single seed (a drupe) within the thinnest coating of actual fruit flesh. This true “fruit” is attached, on the outside, to the very end of a cashew apple (a false fruit), which is simply a swollen pedicel (before being swollen, this was the skinny stem that had the flower at its end).
· A daisy is not A flower. Daisies, and the like, belong to a family botanically known as the Asteraceae (formerly Compositae) and known by gardeners as the aster, daisy, sunflower, or composite family. Members of this family have flowers described as “composite,” essentially being a composite (combination) of multiple flowers.
The “head” that we call a daisy is termed a “capitulum.” The “petals” of the daisy, those which radiate out from the head, are in fact individual ray flowers or ray florets, and the “sun disk” is made up of smaller, individual flowers called disc flowers or disc florets. The head with all its flowers sits upon a receptacle or pad; just play the game of “he/she loves me, he/she loves me not,” and you’ll see.
In some species, notably the sunflower, the entire head pivots during the course of the day to track the sun (as do modern solar panels). This extra ability allows it to amplify its pollinator charisma.
· Speaking of receptacle, a fig is what happens when you wrap that receptable up like a dumpling and leave the tiniest hole at the end opposite the stem. All the super tiny flowers are now inside that fig-shaped dumpling (called a “synconium”).
· The original “daisy” is Bellis perennis, what we in America call the English Daisy. It’s a common wildflower in all of Europe, especially in the UK. The word daiseie is from Old English dægesege, a fusion of dæges and eage or “day's eye.” Named for the habit of the petals opening each dawn and closing each dusk. A variation, dais eye, was used in the 15th century as another way to describe the sun.
· More sunflower stuff: A sunflower, by the way, contains 1,000 to 2,000 individual flowers, each of which are capable of producing a sunflower seed. And that attracts the songbirds. Archaeologists have recovered remains of sunflower seeds dating back to the year 800 CE. The tallest Sunflower ever recorded was in Germany in 2016, measuring 30 feet and 1 inch!
· Amateur naturalists who regularly “botanize” (scour natural areas to identify flowers) frequently run into yellow daisy-ish flowers, of which there are too many species, that are not immediately identifiable. Such unidentifiable plants are called DYC’s, an anagram for “damn yellow composites.”
· Today’s common Easter lily (Lilium longiflorum) originates in a small part of Japan. The lily that is indigenous to the Bible lands of the eastern Mediterranean, though, is Lilium candidum, which has been cultivated since antiquity, and is quite possibly the earliest flower domesticated for its flowers alone. It’s commonly called the Madonna Lily. The “lilies of the field,” those which grew under Christ’s crucifixion, were in all likelihood, Lilium candidum.
· Hollyhocks = outhouses. Gardeners still grow hollyhocks, probably more than ever. But not for the reason that was once commonplace. People once planted hollyhocks to hide outhouses while at the same time showing guests where they were. “I need to visit the hollyhocks” was a polite euphemism for letting others know where you were headed.
· One teaspoon of soil contains more living organisms than there are people in the world. Some of them are bad and some of them are good (I mean the organisms of the soil but I guess it applies to the people of the world, too). There’s a few we don’t know enough about yet. And many more we don’t yet know at all. Be kind to your soil. Really kind.
© Copyright, Joe Seals, 2025