Turnip-mustard-cabbage triangle
Turnips, black mustard, and cabbage together form a triangle of multi-chromosome hybrids: it’s where we get Indian mustard, Ethiopian mustard, and canola.
The shadow of the volcano
What do the bicycle, Marmite, Mormonism, and Frankenstein have in common? A volcano in Indonesia.
Biblical and Shakespeare gardens
Some gardens grow only the plants mentioned in either the Bible or the works of Shakespeare.
Sparrow smashing
In 1958 Mao Zedong declared war on sparrows. Although he won that battle, China lost the war.
Coffee crisis
Vietnam is the second-largest producer of coffee in the world because of a crisis in 1970s East Germany.
Thwarting the biopirates
India prevented people patenting their foods, traditional medicines, and yoga poses by recording them all in an online database: 34 million pages’ worth.
Out of many, pesto
The United States motto, e pluribus unum, appears in several classical sources. In one of them, it’s part of a recipe for pesto.
Banned in the United States
Blackcurrants, Kinder Surprises, and haggis have all been illegal in the United States at some point.
Guarana and bullet ants
What do bullet ants and guarana have in common? The Sateré-Mawé people of Brazil.
Vomit chocolate
Mass-produced American chocolate has a distinct flavour that non-Americans describe as tasting a bit like vomit. It’s Milton Snavely Hershey’s fault.
Locust extinction
In 1875, trillions (yes, trillions) of Rocky Mountain locusts swarmed over the western United States. Thirty years later, they were extinct.
A thousand flavours
The Heladería Coromoto ice cream parlour in Merida, Venezuela offers nearly a thousand different flavours of ice cream, including avocado, garlic, onion, sweetcorn, and crab.
Right of acorns
In the Domesday Book of 1086 the economic value of forests is not measured in the amount of wood they could provide, but in the amount of pigs they could feed.
Pickled tea
In Myanmar you can drink tea or you can eat it.
Citric panic
Beginning in 1976 a pseudoscientific pamphlet spread like wildfire across Europe, stating that many common food additives caused cancer – including cellulose and citric acid.
Ancient heart
The heart symbol may have originated with an ancient Roman form of birth control, a plant that is probably now extinct.