where did all those wild vegies go?

[Michelle]

Hey I was reading a post on my cooking group and one user always posts a factoid about food this time it was about a chili pepper plant and it's ancesstory . so my question is how come you don't just see vegetables growing all over the place wild like som crazy out of control tomatoes or somthing like that once I saw some whild sunflowers in the woods and I saw a pumpkin once but not too much else I see whild fruit all the time like crab apples or sour cherry but no bunches of Have we imbread cultivated food plants that they just don't grow wild where did all the wild plants go that we cultivated modern vegetables from? Just a queery Michelle "Love is the water in the garden of life "

[Frogleg]

Go find a copy of 'The Botany of Desire' -- your library probably has more than one, as it was a recent best-seller. The wild plants didn't go away -- it's just that you probably wouldn't recognize (or want to eat) the ancestors of wheat or sweetcorn. Cultivated plants are just that -- not only selected and bred for the most desirable characteristics, but given the best conditions to grow. Plowing, weeding, and irrigation make life a lot easier for a 'domestic' tomato. :-)

[zhanataya]

I've said it before, my apologies to the other folks. But who died and made Webster God anyway? wreck.gardens is an international group that happens to be presented in english. The reason for the written word is to convey thought, information and questions. If the letters are put together in a manner to accomplish that, then in my book it is spelled correctly.

Now if you were an American fifth grader with perfect eyesight and hearing I'd have a different response.

zhan-with Zhan's Creative Dictionary at her elbow.

[Roy]

Chile is the correct spelling for hot pepper.

Chili is an anglicized corruption to refer to a stew (that happens to contain a lot of chile).

Roy - Carpe Noctem

[Roy]

For extra credit, you can figure out how the country of Chile got its name, and the correct pronunciation.

Go to the head of the class if you can figure out Lima beans.

Roy - Carpe Noctem

[Cereus-validus]

My bad, chile beanie.

You go and tell those baby back rib people that they named their restaurants wrong!!

Those corrupt Anglos running the country have been a bad influence on everybody.

Are Jalapenos and Habaneros now considered weapons of mass destruction?

[Cereus-validus]

I don't think Webster has been the same since his friend Michael Jackson got arrested again.

[Roy]

Chile Petin (also Pekin) - the wild one. Mockingbirds love them. They will repeatedly swoop down and eat one after another. Later, they will sit on their perch with wings outspread and tongue sticking out - enchilados.

Roy - Carpe Noctem

[Michelle]

[Michelle]

[B & J]

Gee, Zhan, why would you come to the defense of a poor speller? Teasing aside, you did make some good points. I used to pound spelling and writing into the heads of junior high kids, saying the way we wrote and spelled defined other people's perception of us when we were unable to communicate face to face.

I'm no longer able to defend that old saw because most jobs require few writing skills, although grammar is still important when communicating. In many situations the value of the idea is more important than the spelling.

BTW, is "Zhan's Creative Dictionary" the spelling check?

John

[Steve Wolfe]

Nope! Birds can't feel the "hotness" of the peppers. It's a rather nifty evolutionary advantage:

When the pepper is consumed by an animal, the seeds will (hopefully) pass through the animals' digestive tract relatively unharmed, then fall out in a nice pile of... well, "seed-starting fertilizer". Then that seed will have a pretty good chance of growing into a new plant.

Here's where it gets good: If the animal that consumed the pepper was a mammal, it's not going to travel very far before that seed falls out. That means that when the seed sprouts, the emergent plant, or it's progeny down the line, is now local competition for the original plant. Since a lot of peppers are found in pretty harsh environments, having the plant's offspring competing with it can deplete resources (such as water) enough to jeapardize

*all* of them. Not a good idea!

Well, enter capsaicin, the chemical that makes peppers spicy. It just so happens that birds don't have chemoreceptors for capsaicin, meaning they aren't affected by the spiciness. If a *bird* eats the pepper, chances are that when that seed falls to the ground in a pile of fertilizer, it's going to be significantly farther away from the original plant than if a mammal had eaten it. That means that the plant gets the best of both worlds: It gets to spread its seed (literally and figuratively), but doesn't have to deal with the local competition from its own progeny. A pretty nifty trick!

- steve

[Steve Wolfe]

As another person pointed out, the Spanish word is "chile", NOT "chili". Note that "chile" does not have an accent on it anywhere. That's true whether you're talking about a chile pepper or the country Chile. That means that:

(a) If you were to write "chíle", you'd be wrong for putting an accent where it's not needed. The first "i" already has emphasis in this word, and putting an accent on it would be redundant.

(b) If you were to write "chilí" (note the accent on the second "I"), you'd be wrong on two accounts- first, spelling the word incorrectly in the first place, and second, emphasizing the wrong syllable in the word.

In order to use the correct Spanish pronunciation of "CHEE-lay", it takes a bit of tongue-work that we, as speakers of English, aren't used to doing. Because of that, many persons say "CHI-lee", so persons who try to spell phonetically tend to write "chile". Yet another of the nearly infinite examples where trying to use phonetics to spell an English word will just bit you in the butt!

Note, also, that there is no such thing as a "habañero" pepper, but rather a "habanero" pepper. A classic exageration of "over-culturization".

steve

[Roy]

An alternative hypothesis is that origin of the name of the bean and/or the city is related to the word for lemons or limes.

Roy - Carpe Noctem

[Roy]

" Another course extended down through Central America into Peru, where the large-seeded, large-podded types were developed in the warm coastal areas. The name "lima bean" obviously came from Lima, Peru, one point at which the species was found by early European explorers."

"Lima beans originated in Peru and have been grown there since 6000 B.C. The name lima bean comes from the capital city of Peru, Lima."

EDITOR's NOTE: The earliest historical evidence is that the bean originated in Guatamala, and became common in Peru. See first reference.

"Meaning of Place Name: Lima Lima: Probably from Lomnech, "a barren spot." Taylor says it is a corruption of Rimac, the Indian name of the plain on which the city stands."

"Its name is a corruption of the Quechua Indian name Rímac, meaning ?Talker.?"

Roy - Carpe Noctem