Category: Medicinal plants

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Sardonic grin greets paper on sardonic grin

Damn you, agrobiodiversity. Every day something new. For example, did you know that a plant is behind the phrase “sardonic grin”? Well, apparently, the roots of the word “sardonic” go back to Homer, who adapted the ancient word for the Sardinians “because of the belief that the Punic people who settled Sardinia gave condemned men a potion that made them smile before dying”? That’s from an ANSA press release which goes on to describe some recent research which purports to nail down the active ingredient of the potion.

It turns out to be polyacetylenes from Oenanthe fistulosa, an umbel. They “cause facial muscles to contract and produce a grimace or rictus.” This species is not cultivated, I don’t think, but a congeneric is: O. javanica is used as a vegetable in parts of Asia. So O. fistulosa is a crop wild relative, sort of. Anyway, the ANSA release doesn’t give details of the paper, but I believe it might be a February article in Journal of Natural Products by a group of Italian and Polish researchers.

One of the authors, Mauro Ballero from the botany department of the Universita di Cagliari, which is in Sardinia, had this to say about the significance of the research, no doubt with a sardonic grin on his face:

The good news is that the molecule in this plant may be retooled by pharmaceutical companies to have the opposite effect.

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So much, much more than a weed

According to self-described “cultivator” David Randall in The Independent, it’s going to be a bumper year for dandelions in the UK.

Yet not everyone is clapping their hands with glee. According to reports in less ecologically sensitive newspapers, keen gardeners and lawn obsessives see dandelions as trouble, blemishes to their idea of contrived perfection, the removal of whose deep taproots can rick the sturdiest of backs. To them, dandelions are the enemy, insurgent forces of nature, forever pushing aside the “real” garden flowers, and taking over. They are thus condemned, in that most loaded of horticultural terms, as “weeds”.

This word, to those of us who have been gardening with dandelions for years, is not only wrong, but hurtful. Taraxacum officinale, as we cultivators call it, is a much undervalued addition to any plot. Not only do its golden rosettes brighten the dingiest corner, but you can use it to construct a salad, make an acceptable table wine, or even, when it runs to seed, tell the time. And you can’t say that about all those bloody purple alliums of which Chelsea’s show gardeners are so fond.

Quite right. Dandelions have a long history of use in medicine, yes, but also food. Although they do take some preparation. And of course there’s wine too. All this, plus an interesting taxonomy, and an endangered endemic relative. What more can you ask for? Weed indeed.

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For once the obviously bemused deputy governor was talking sense

The line that I’ve used as the title of this post comes from an article in the Lagos Daily Independent which describes the recent torching, by the said deputy governor, of a crop of “Indian hemp” in Osogbo, the capital of Osun State, Nigeria. While setting her fire she…

…lamented that valuable acres of land in the state were being used to cultivate indian hemp instead of staple food crops.

Indian hemp? As in Apocynum cannabinum? Why set fire to Apocynum cannabinum? Especially after getting it to grow in Nigeria! Well, needless to say, I had the wrong end of the stick.

Anyway, what struck me about the article, apart from the delicious line which graces this post as its title, and the confusion that can be caused by the use of common names, is the following:

The peasant farmer should take centre stage. Revitalized commodity boards should be aligned with improved seeds and guaranteed farm gate prices to increase production. The effect will be a great increase in the living standard of all those involved in agriculture. There will clearly be no space for fallow farm lands to be used for growing indian hemp. Since she seems to be peeved, someone should educate Erelu Obada on the fine point of Indira Gandhi’s green revolution. The people of Osun State will clearly be better off for it.

I just can’t imagine commodity boards (however revitalized), seeds (however improved) and farm gate prices (however guaranteed) ever convincing “enterprising miscreants,” in the words of the author, in Nigeria or any other country, to give up their bhang fields. Just like I can’t imagine Yemeni farmers ever giving up their qat fields, despite similar interventions. Legalize it!

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Nibbles: CCD, Organic breeding, Bioprospecting