STRANGE RELATIVES

TOMATO

BELL PEPPER

NIGHTSHADE FRUITS

NIGHTSHADE, AKA EUROPEAN BITTERSWEET, FLOWERS

POTATO TUBER

POTATO FLOWERS

TOBACCO LEAVES

TOBACCO FLOWERS

EGGPLANT (Google photo)

EGGPLANT FLOWER (Google photo)

Thursday, 8:00 AM.  56 degrees F at the ferry dock, 52 on the back porch.  Wind WNW, mostly calm with occasional light to moderate gusts.  The sky is partly cloudy with high, wispy white clouds, the humidity 77%.  The barometer is steady, now at 30.06".  Highs today in the mid-60's with the chance of rain.  Cooler and clearing for the weekend, with more cool and rainy weather predicted for next week.  Hope it dries out enough to mow the lawn.
   Yesterday's blog was about tomatoes, in the Nightshade Family, the Solanaceae. Although there are many poisonous plants in that family, it also accounts for many others of our most common vegetables, among them potatoes (Solanum tuberosum), bell peppers (Capsicum annuum) , hot peppers, and eggplant (Solanum melangena).  
   It should be no surprise that the Nightshade Family, which has many poisonous species, also has  narcotic species, one of which is tobacco (Nicotiana tabaccum), grown of course for its leaves.  The white man is often assailed for giving many diseases to the Indians; who certainly gave as good as the got when they introduced Europeans to tobacco, that great killer.
   Every school child used to be taught (I doubt still are) about the Irish Potato Famine, which killed a million Irish between 1845 and 1852, and caused another 2 million to emigrate, mostly to the United States.  Species in the Nightshade family are easily and devastatingly infected with the fungus Phutopthera, and a significant portion of the population of Ireland had become dependent upon one variety of potato, the Irish lumper.  The potato disease crossed from the Americas to Europe and wiped out successive years of Irish potato harvest,  and in Europe as well.  The effects of the famine were exaggerated in Ireland by British trade protectionism that made imported foodstuffs prohibitively expensive for the starving poor.
   Dependence on a single food source and  the absence of free trade has stared to death millions of people across the globe many times over throughout history.
   If the science of ecology teaches anything at all to us dunderhead humans it should be that diversity is essential to species survival, and that monocultures, whether environmental, economic or political, tend toward disaster.
   The common denominator of all these plants in the Nightshade Family is of course their flowers, a few of which are pictured above.  It is still amazing to me how diverse a family can be in so many respects, but still have such a commonality.  Strange relatives indeed.