A street snack that has baffled botanists(atlasobscura.com) |
A street snack that has baffled botanists(atlasobscura.com) |
#41: Massive Flowers of Agave Shawii Ssp Goldmania
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueWGGnYlRCU&ab_channel=Crime...
>So anyway, here's that same habitat where I was filming scorpions last night, and here it is during the day time. [...]
>Let's take a look over here. This massive Agave. Which is basically just, uh, I don't know, 20 or 30 years worth of a plant manufacturing sugars. So that's about 30 years worth of sunlight put into a sugar form, which stays in the heart of that plant. They're, remember, most Agaves are monocarpic, so they flower once and then die, and it's because they take that massive amount of sugar, and put everything they got into these flowers up there, which produce tremendous amount of nectar, which are then pollinated by bees and bats. You can see the stamens up there.
>See the stamens have those anthers on 'em, those little banana shaped rads, with all the pollen. And then of course there's, for every flower, there's one central stigma, which is like the female part, it receives the pollen, so you have like six stamens and one stigma. And then when they're done, each one of those flowers turns into a tree lobed pod, which then has little tiny black flakey seeds in it. Each plant producing hundreds upon hundreds of seeds, only a few of which of course will form new plants.
>You can see there's quite a few others doin' their thing and bloomin' right now. You can also imagine fallin' on that will quite possibly kill you. This one, like I said, Agaves are monocarpic, but uh, they do send out, I don't know what the word of them would be, I just call 'em pups. But basically, just, ya know, little Mini-Me's that they send out on the sides, so that when the main plant flowers, the show is still not that completely over.
>See now this whole inflorescence is just alive with pollinators. It's buzzing. Imagine the amount of energy and carbohydrates needed to create a huge massive flowering stock like that. It's got to weight 150 pounds, easily. It's a 150 pound flower. Same with this one. And you can see it's already starting to shrivel 'cause its energy reserves start to diminish. If you just saw off all these leaves, you'd just have a massive, probably three or four hundred pound heart, composed almost entirely of carbohydrates.
#51: Annotated, Profanity-Laced Checklist of Desert Ultramafics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhWLtKy8kYY&ab_channel=Crime...
>Now a quick introduction to what's called analtramafic, ultramafic soils, are almost always associated with subduction zones. They're also known as serpentine soils. And, uh, they're often very barren of plant life, being to the fact that they're toxic to most plants. That is, they have minerals like nickel, magnesium, and and excess amounts of iron, while also lacking essential plant nutrients such as calcium and nitrogen. So many plants have a hard time growin' in them, but many other plants have adapted to them. That's not to say that they necessarily thrive in them, but they're able to tolerate the soil chemistry. [...]
>But look at this nice Agave Vizcainoensis. Another endemic to the region. Look at that thick cuticle it's got in it. You can almost see it. Look at those pores. Look at that nice thick cuticle. Oh, what a beautiful plant. I love this guy.
#74: Sassy Bastards of the Last Chance Range b/w Agave Utahensis Var Eborispina
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5yViQeLpPM&ab_channel=Crime...
>Now here is somethin' that's real nice. I think you probably will like it a lot. This is a species of Agave known only from the limestone soils in Southwestern Nevada, and a little bit into Eastern California, right here on the Nevada border. This is Agave Utahensis variety Eborispinus. And here's one about two weeks shy of flowering. You can see that flower spike just came up. Now that flower, of course, will open, it will get pollenated by a variety of different bees, and perhaps some bats as well, and then it will die. But you can see it's already got another offset comin' up that will survive, and then will probably flower a couple years later down the line.
>Now the reason this is called variety Eborispina is pretty obvious when you get up close and you look at these rosetta leaf blades, which, uh, I mean, is kinda just sayin' "Leave Me Alone!" You can see the tips of these leaf blades are about six inches long, probably, seven inches in some case. A very sharp, very hard, very easy to dissuade any potential herbivores or jack asses like myself from puttin' my hand right there at the base of this large flowering shoot, the peduncle. Now look at those spines. And again, this only grows on calcium carbonate soils, on the limestone. There's three different species in this genus: Nevadensis, Utahensis, and Eborispina. There might be one more. Utahensis is the name of the species. Might not be the name of the subspecies. It's either subspecies or variety. I don't know. Don't matter. Either way: What a fuck'n remarkable plant! [...]
>These things are nice too. These peduncles, these big peduncles, 'cause you can, uh, when it's done, they're woody, you can cut them off, and, uh, beat your friends with them, etcetera.
#154: Cat-calling Milkweds, Tracking Hippies, & Consoling Grandpas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KefiIdZR7Ck&ab_channel=Crime...
>Obsolete Racist Grandpa Trigger Warning
>Kinda glandular, too. A little bit, uh, little bit frilly, ehe? Look at those big-ass brachs. On the back of the flowers, too, huh? Like on this guy, you know? It's so nice. Doesn't that make you feel good? Doesn't that make you feel better? Maybe all those crazy white boys that are going shootin' up malls and shit, you know? Too bad they didn't know about botany, you know? Could have just calmed them right down, you know. Maybe they just should have just studied plant science a little better, some shit. You know? 'Cause it really, it's like the tissue paper that wipes the ass. You know, it gets rid of all the shit stain of modern society and civilization, huh? 'Cause you know, it's not a pretty world out there, folks, at least if you're looking at the human world. Kinda makes me wanna die. But then you just got look at that, uh, something like that monotropa, you feel a little bit better, huh? So you got much more music forest over here, and then here you got a royal like halis slope, then you got a, what seems to be an Agave Parryi. Certainly one of the Agaves. It is producing pups. So that when a, you know, the mother plant dies, you know, it's monocarpic so they die after flowering, it just sends out other pups.
https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/august-2019/joey-santor...
>Meet the “Misanthropic Chicago Italian” Who Charmed Twitter. The self-taught botanist sounds off on going viral, preserving the natural world, and the story behind that accent.
I was hoping it was a byproduct of recycling waste. Mystery creates buzz. The danger of a mystery food is part of why hot dogs and food cart food as a whole are popular.
How about this photo?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maerua_oblongifolia#/media/Fil...
In this Wikipedia article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maerua_oblongifolia
Maerua oblongifolia (syn. Maerua arenaria, Niebhuria arenaria) is a low woody bushy under-shrub sometimes scandent to 2–3 meters high, with a thick root stock and thick leaves, and strongly scented flowers, occurring in India, Pakistan, Africa and Saudi Arabia. In Telugu this plant is called by name Bhoochakra gadda (In Telangana) and Bhoochakra dumpa (In Andhra). In Tamil this plant is called by name Poomicchakkarai Kizhangu (பூமிச் சர்க்கரைக் கிழங்கு). This is a tuber that naturally grows in areas closer to fountains, especially in hills. Tribes and others collect the tubers, which are sold as a quick street food, in many Indian cities and towns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlwOrdciEX8
and this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7sn42heQ2w
Have you ever been to the Champavat region of Uttarakhand?
— Click bait sub editor
You may not have seen this before, but that doesn't mean it is "mysterious".
Do you find Coke or KFC "mysterious"? Those are snack foods with trade secret recipes. Your story is about something similar.
A simple google search will take you to this youtube video, posted in 2015. Read the comments to dispel the "mystery".
The second video shows a food market selling the snack and displaying a web page printout about Maerua oblongifolia. Also not evidence.
Clearly you did not read the article. The food vendors claim it is Maerua oblongifolia. The whole point is that it cannot possibly be, as Maerua does not have fleshy, edible roots or trunks, and DNA testing points to a different botanical family.
Wikipedia is not a credible source here.
> So why is there still doubt about the identity of this snack? “Which species of agave is it—Sisalana or Americana or any other?” Dr. Shimpale says. “We can’t conclude until the vendors show the plant to us. They keep this as a business secret to create curiosity around it.”
The vendors won't give them access to the source, so the academics can't practice their botany.
What do your experts make of this wikipedia article?
> I had a breakthrough a few months later when I came across a thesis paper by Dr. MS Rathore, who had propagated Maerua oblongifolia in the lab in 2011. He had seen the tree many times in the desert state of Rajasthan. “But I haven’t heard or seen anybody eating the root,” the scientist said over a call, sounding puzzled.
> “Its roots are sparse and inedible,” added Dr. NS Shekhawat, his thesis adviser and a retired professor of botany. “Growing in dry regions, where will it have so much water to develop big roots and be fat and juicy? [The snack] can’t be Maerua oblongifolia.”
Which seems to provide a little bit of a counterpoint.
This makes the product application of the root even less mysterious:
"It was seasoned with salt, chili powder, and lime; my husband’s had sugar and lime. It was crunchy, juicy, and refreshing, but had no taste of its own."
The whole thing is fascinating. It's a low-stakes mystery, but a mystery all the same.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphide in agave can be toxic. And the fact that it is only sold in paper thin strips. My guess is the vendors are aware that it is poison but in those parts of the world life is cheap and money is hard to come by. So they just ignore this and carry on selling it. Anyone asking might be there investigating the cause of some of their health issues.
It's not Agave. Agave roots are very fibery and dry, there's almost no moisture in them and you wouldn't be able to cut such thin slices like the article points out, agave roots are mashed up to start the Tequila process, here are some pics http://www.todomezcal.com/Elaboracion/molienda.html
Source: I've cut open both Agave and Jicama plants, I grew up in Mexico. You can find Jicama/(fruit) street vendors in most Mexican cities main streets or outside Mexico a mexican market is also a safe bet. They have rough peel, like a potato but rougher, and they're about 90% water.
Edit I feel like I should explain the snark. The comment I'm replying to is coming from a classic flaw in human reasoning. "This looks kinda like this other thing I'm familiar with. So clearly it must be some variety of that!" Then it's couched in some authoritative sounding words so folks nod sagely and say "yes, that must be it" and press the upvote button. The fact that the commenter is hypothesizing a heretofor-unknown giant variety of a major world food crop is, well, sometimes sarcasm is the appropriate response.
Meanwhile, the actual article tells us a lot more about the thing including a bunch of evidence for why folks think it's a variety of agave. Along with some mysteries, yes! But none saying "oh maybe this is actually jicama".
Also if you're going to go with "this reminds me of this other vegetable" it might be useful to have a bit more breadth of understanding of the world's food staples. There are more than quite a few stachy tubers, roots, and stems like this. Cassava, taro, about six different things all called "yam" in English, potato, turnip, radish. There are many, many cultivated plants like this. The distinguishing characteristic of this one is its huge size. Something that jicama doesn't have.
Wikipedia: "In Bengali, it is known as shankhalu (শাঁখ আলু), literally translating to "conch (shankha, শাঁখ) potato (alu, আলু)" for its shape, size, and colour. In Hindi, it is known as mishrikand (मिश्रीकंद). It is eaten during fast (उपवास) in Bihar (India) and is known as kesaur (केसौर). In Odia, it is known as (ଶଙ୍ଖ ସାରୁ) shankha saru."
Loló in San Francisco slices jicama that thin to use in place of a tortilla in tacos:
http://cyneats.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Screenshot-201...
The trunk looks about the same size as the photos of the food object.
The agave sisalana wiki article shows it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisal
When I look at the Jicama plant it doesn't even remotely look like an Agave. It certainly doesn't seem to me that DNA barcoding would yield an 89% match with Agave Sisalana.
Edit: Growing conditions can drastically impact the development of a plant, am I wrong?
It's surprising experts don't know what the thing is given it's so commonly available.
> had little difficulty speaking
Has exactly the opposite meaning of what you intend unless you turn it into:
> had a little difficulty speaking
Not too confusing in this particular comment, but I could see this causing problems down the line for you.
> However, it may not be so healthy. “Agave has lots of alkaloids. It can be poisonous if eaten in large quantities. Maybe that’s why they sell thin slices,” Dr. Yadav, now retired, warns.
Is this really what academia is like?
A character describes how they went to the library, read all the old books, wrote a paper and called it new research.
Dr Asimov may have seen the bleak future of academia, what with it being his other trade.
Mayhap we need more Dr Indiana Jones types with tenure?
They’re talking about a guy who wrote an encyclopedia, obviously he’s going to rely on sources and not personally go and visit every plant
An encyclopedia is a summary
How else could it have been readily available for decades without a clear source being well known?
This can also explain the confusing reports from multiple researchers, because academic "species" don't matter in places like this. The vendors simply sell what looks similar to what they used to sell.
Why do they keep saying "anybody can eat this"?
Seriously why would a website do that?
Is there a copy of the content I could read somewhere else that respect their readers?
For what it's worth it was a great and very entertaining article.
Obviously we're not in possession of all the facts here but it sounds like incompetent spying to me. Much more difficult operations are carried out every single day.
ao_cookies_ok:0
eu_origin:1
Yes I know the EU claims that GDPR covers the entire world, but the practical reality is that they do not have overseas strike forces going after small web publishers for cookie banners.
Failing all three conditions for acquiring consent, my conclusion is that the site is blatantly violating the GDPR.
The pictures in the article don't show that arrangement, it's more of a single fibrous block.
I've eaten plenty of fresh palm-tree heart, you either slice it thin it to eat raw or cook it in larger blocks, in say some curry.
Good find.
It was the only time I had seen this thing. There were dozens of vendors selling this lined up on the stairs to the temple.
It seems the snack has gone popular now. It's quite tasteless, felt like eating soft wood.
Never expected to find this on Hackernews!
Also pretty much everyone say it has no taste and only the lemon, salt and chili powder adds any taste but makes me wonder why it’s a profitable business if so.
As mentioned it could be Maerua oblongifolia Here is a scientific paper: https://www.ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT1892916.pdf
Saw on Weird Explorer YT
My first time in Thailand I ate a disgusting salty soup with a spoon. It turns out you’re supposed to dip vegetables in it. What I did was the equivalent of eating ketchup with a spoon, except it was many times more flavorful.
Now I love it: น้ำพริกกะปิ
People used to eat radium, inhale mercury, and play in piles of asbestos before we came to understand their long term health effects.
You might want to rethink this.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/22/subway-sandw...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/22/subway-sandw...
I wonder whether it's canned, and whether sterilizing it can make the DNA unreadable (broken down).
(E.g. Coke apparently does some fancy, hard-to-replicate-at-home kind of micronized emulsification to the flavoring oils that go into it, to get them into suspension in a water-based drink in a way that results in a smooth—but not viscous or lingering—mouth-feel. That process doesn't change what's in Coke; it just changes how it's in there.)
Also, in both of those cases, FDA inspectors know not only the what but also the how, as they check the manufacturing process to ensure that they're putting in what they (privately) claim to be putting in, no more and no less. And we can then trust the FDA to not let them put anything too "weird" in there, while they can also trust the FDA to not tell everyone what they know about the process.
On several continents. In differing time periods.
People eat "kebab" "gyro" or whatever the local term is for doner (suspiciously has a single n, shouldn't be pronounced the way it is) meat in a pitta regularly after large quantities of alcohol, whereas they eschew the things when sober.
UK style doner I'm a little more circumspect about but that's mainly because of processing rather than provence.
To complicate things, I have inspected agave (its length and girth) closely and I find it impossible to believe that it can hold within it such a fat and smooth thing. But I am no scientist.
I went to a village recently, which has agave growing left, right and centre. One woman suggested it could be Eetha Gadda, a palm, and my heart sank because its stump did look very fat. But then other villagers said it wasn't possible. They think it's most likely Agave and their ancestors probably ate in the past, during drought.
I plan to do a behind-the-scenes vlog for the article to explain what all I have tried and what all you may take further. For starters, a reader from the US says something similar from Agave is eaten in Mexico. A reader from Iraq says this may belong to a palm tree but the stump isn't as fat.
I hope you and botanists will tell me more.
Good luck.
Considering that a human's genetic similarity to a cat is 90% and even to a banana is about 60%, 89% doesn't sound like all that much.
I also would not discount the possibility that these are not raw exactly but prepared/treated somehow. Obviously the fact that they taste like water limits the possibilities, but maybe a stem is placed in water for awhile to make it way more engorged than it would ever become naturally. Or maybe it’s soaked or boiled after harvesting, and flushed with clean water to improve the texture and reduce toxic effects. Raw agave contains calcium raphides, a painful irritant (experienced by another commenter upthread, btw) so some kind of preparation might be necessary.
I always love a good nerdy mystery story. Good luck on your search :)
Small note of feedback since I couldn't find a way to comment on the Atlas Obscura site. Species names are conventionally written with the specific epithet entirely in lower case, like 'Genus species'. In the article, you have frequently capitalised the specific epithet. This is a small issue but made the article quite hard to read for a details-focused botanist such as myself.
Whereas the agave americana doesn't and seems to grows it's leaves right out from the ground.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisal
Edit: well I guess after looking further I shouldn't say agave americana doesn't have a trunk coming out of the ground. Probably all agaves could if they grow long enough. But it does look like this snack is the trunk of an agave.
It seems like we will get more answers after Covid when field research (eating parts of various agaves) can recommence.
It's really sad, China and India have among the best food in the world but they also have among the worst food safety record. Almost anything can be faked or adulterated for profit, from cooking oil that makes people go blind to instant baby formula that kills the infants.
This seems to be 'mysterious' because of the writing skill of the author. She successfully managed to create a buzz.
If finding the answer was the goal it could have been easily found out by offering 10X-50X (approx $150-$700 = Annual income perhaps) the money they offered mentioned in the article as a proposition to take over their business and as part of that asking them to show the source of the 'supply'.
While 'mysterious' is hard to quantify objectively, the thing is: it is not known for sure what it is yet widely available, sounds mysterious enough, right? Or is your point that it actualy is known, but the author doesn't happen to know?
it could have been easily found out by offering 10X-50X
What makes you so sure the author can easily come up with what you call an 'annual income perhaps', just to pursue some story?
I think the people in the article have made a good-faith attempt to research and find out more about the snack.
> In 2010, after a long anatomical study, they performed DNA barcoding on a slice of the snack and found it to match that of agave’s by 89 percent. There are several species of agave, but the lab test narrowed it down to Agave Sisalana, a plant sometimes used to make a tequila-like drink. They did a field visit soon after and plucked out a Sisalana only to find mesh-like, shallow roots. Next, they chopped off its leaves and there it was: the fat, white, watery trunk familiar to millions of Indians from food carts. They ate a slice from it, and it was tasteless and crunchy just like Ram Kand.
Meanwhile the article states that there is established scientific evidence that it is (probably the Sesalana species), in the form of an 89% DNA match, but more likely the trunk part of the plant rather than the root (as initially claimed by vendors).
Wild plants, on the other hand , has not been subject to the same selection process and could easily contain a dangerous amount of oxalate.
That night, I googled Bhoochakara Gadda. There wasn’t much. Wikipedia identified the scientific name of the plant as Maerua oblongifolia, but had no photos of it. Maerua oblongifolia is a low, woody, undershrub found in India, Pakistan, parts of Africa, and Saudi Arabia, whose tubers are sold as snacks and used as a stimulant in the ancient medicine system of Siddha, I read. Research papers showed its leaves and flowers but not the root. So I decided to dig in.
I had a breakthrough a few months later when I came across a thesis paper by Dr. MS Rathore, who had propagated Maerua oblongifolia in the lab in 2011. He had seen the tree many times in the desert state of Rajasthan. “But I haven’t heard or seen anybody eating the root,” the scientist said over a call, sounding puzzled.
“Its roots are sparse and inedible,” added Dr. NS Shekhawat, his thesis adviser and a retired professor of botany. “Growing in dry regions, where will it have so much water to develop big roots and be fat and juicy? [The snack] can’t be Maerua oblongifolia.”
With those 2 simple rules you have your needs covered. Corner cases add complicatiins, but unless you are in the bussiness you shouldn't need it.
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/foodservice-retail/subway...
Those things are like boats tho. Better to have a friend with one ;)
Except, apparently, for people who are offering
> a year's income
To informants
To be clear, I'm saying that genetic match supersedes any list of superficial attributes to determine identity. If it's established that X and Y are an 89% DNA match, even though X tastes and looks like Z, the fact that Y and Z belong in distant genetic branches should be enough to dismiss X as a possible Z.
89% doesn’t really seem like a case closed kind of stat.
Azodicarbonamide has been banned in quite a few countries. It's only listed as safe at 40 parts per million. It has possible carcinogenic products in the form of other carbazides. It doesn't have a large amount of research/testing on it. It is a known lung irritant and caused respiratory issues in factory workers who produce it.
You may be okay with random hydrocarbons being added to your food. But not everyone is as naive as you.
Notice, you changed the topic to a kook and then invoked ad hominem. Very bad intentions. Much lack of substance. Dishonest attempt to convince others through baseless assertions. So shameful.
https://www.eater.com/2016/8/8/12403338/subway-yoga-mat-chem...
But you do understand that the author is a journalist (1), and really just aiming to research for an article that presents some intriguing material, right? Not a roadside snacks competitor, with a large budget to spend on getting these sellers to exfiltrate supply chain intel.
(1) https://www.atlasobscura.com/users/mediabarkha?view=articles
> The similarity search showed 89% identity with the partial sequence of the plastid locus maturase of Agave sisalana
Also those species names aren't really even guaranteed to be accurate because biologists, botanists, geneticists, etc, can't even really agree on where to draw the line.
There's a whole genre of Brassica memes and it's fantastic.
https://mobile.twitter.com/faineg/status/1386522223901618177...
> I'm sure they replaced it with some other equally harmless dough conditioner
That could easily mean they replaced a toxic chemical with an equally toxic one.
That being said, the words used certainly imply the thought that the chemical is 'mostly harmless'.