DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE EATING?

3 core angiosperms

Alpha taxonomy is the discipline concerned with finding, describing and naming species of living or fossil organisms.   Now let me tell you that I have some question about the amount or the depth of discipline that it takes to apply some of these words to the names of stuff that we go around eating.   Look at the list up there just over your eyebrows and you'll see what I mean.  Can you imagine what an angiosperm is?  Is that one with Angina?  Does it have a hard time breathing?  Doesn't that combination make you shake your head wondering where the pictures that you are imagining in your quivering coconut come from?   If any of you have ever seen one of these wonderful fruit on the  tree, you'll appreciate the magnoliopsida nomenclature.  They do have the stem sticking out of strange places.    What else can you expect from an angiosperm, for goodness sake?  Not only a plain, old angiosperm, but a Punic one at that!  You want to tell me what the Phoenicians are doing in this whole thing?  Not only that, but a Grainy Phoenician at that.  Do you suppose that this is what Goliath looked like?  Or maybe it was his favorite fruit.  No wonder they call this thing a sort of primrose.  Imagine the path it walks on being an angiosperm.  A three core one at that!  Whatever that means.  I haven't ever eaten one of these things that had one core, never mind three.  Where do these people get these names?   They call this discipline?  

But hey, I got another one for you.  The other day when she was in San Diego, in the Asian market not too far from our dwelling, the Voice from the Kitchen picked up a box of her favorite tea.  Along the way, she tucked another kind of tea into her cart and came home happy that she has scored a new delicacy,in a sweetly pink, cherry-blossomed box for a reasonable price.   As she always does, she reads the ingredient labels of these things.  But not always as she takes them off the shelf.  Like in this instance.  She waited until she got home.  Then, I, on the other side of the wall hear this low wail, leading into a half weep/laugh kind of tone and she says, "What is this kind of tea any way?  Look at that, is it true that there's semen in here?"  I burst out laughing.  Right away, my Latin kicks in.  She doesn't have any Latin to kick in, nor out, for that matter.  So, of course,  I say, "Of course, a lot of teas have it in them.  Let me look to see what kind of semen is in there."  Digression alert:  Had our sons been around they would have imitated the two silly comedians and said, "Shurr, ya put cher seemen in ther..."  They weren't there, so I just very politely pointed out to my modest mate that the word is Latin for "seed" and that if she would have read it a little faster she would have seen that is said, "semen cassiae."  Can you hear the sigh of relief from where you are?  I still can.  I was waiting for her to say something about never knowing what to expect from the Chinese, but it was not forthcoming.  She's too reserved for that kind of stuff.  

Therefore, boys and girls, fair warning to everyone, be careful what you take home from your garden and from the Asian store.