Intro:
Hello everyone and welcome to Six Pack of Facts, a weekly way of expanding your brain six refreshing facts at a time. My name is Alex and this week, I hope you’re prepared for your mouth to water because we’re digging into two foods — one sweet, the other tart, both delicious. It’s time for strawberries and rhubarb.
Topic One: Strawberries
One:
Written references to strawberries date back to the Roman poets of the first century, but not because of how delicious they were. Instead, the Romans used strawberries for decorative and medicinal purposes. They were thought to cure everything from fever and sore throats to depression.
Strawberries were eaten, but not in large quantities thanks to their then tough flesh and lackluster flavor. That slowly changed over time thanks to crossbreeding of different types of strawberries. In the 1300s, the French started transplanting the wood strawberry into gardens and by the 1500s, the musky strawberry was being given the same treatment across Europe.
In the 1600s, European explores returned from America with the Virginia strawberry (indigenous peoples had been eating North American strawberries for a long time already). This type was hardier and allowed a greater number of varieties to be developed; three fairly quickly turned into nearly 30.
In 1714, a French spy brought the Chilean strawberry back to Europe and, after some crossbreeding experimentation, the modern strawberry species was born — Fragaria Ananassa
Two:
Since the development of the modern strawberry, more than 100 species have been bred. Whatever species you’re looking to plant in your garden, however, you’ll want to pay close attention to which of the three main types of strawberry plants you choose.
First, we have the most popular of the three — June-bearing. June-bearing strawberries produce a single batch of delicious, juicy berries during a three-week period in June. Later in the summer, when the nights become longer and the temperature cools, the plants bud. It’s not until spring that they perk up again, flowering before producing the berries in June and starting the cycle again.
Next, we have everbearing strawberries. Instead of one batch of berries in June, everbearing plants produce berries throughout the summer, typically in two main groups — early summer and late summer. But with more berries comes a generally less-favorable crop; everbearing strawberries are usually smaller than their June-bearing siblings.
Finally, we have day-neutral strawberries. The easiest way to explain day-neutral strawberries is by calling them a better version of everbearing plants (sorry, everbearing strawberries). Day-neutral strawberries aren’t affected by different amounts of sunlight, helping them flourish throughout the entire summer as long as the temperature stays between 35 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit. They produce the same smaller berries as everbearing plants but do so more consistently. Instead of two main batches, day-neutral strawberries flower and fruit all summer long, providing a regular crop of fresh berries. Also similar to everbearing plants, day-neutral strawberries produce fewer runners, making the growth easier to manage.
Three:
Despite having the word right in their name, strawberries aren’t technically berries. From a botanical perspective, a berry needs to have a handful of features.
First, a berry must have three separate layers: the exocarp (the outer skin), the mesocarp (the fleshy middle), and the endocarp (the inner section that holds the seeds). Berries also need to have more than one seed (sorry cherries) and must develop from a flower that only has one ovary.
Strawberries strike out on a couple of those elements.
While they definitely have more than one seed, they’re located on the skin of the fruit — actually the only fruit to have these feature. That’s a no-go on the endocarp necessity. Each of those tiny seeds forms in small yellow ovals on the strawberry’s surface, called achenes, and each of those achenes comes from an individual ovary.
So, no, botanically speaking strawberries are not berries. But bananas are.
Science. It’s weird like that sometimes.
Sources:
The University of Vermont — History of the Strawberry
SF Gate — The Difference Between Everbearing and Day-Neutral Strawberries
LiveScience — Why Are Bananas Berries, but Strawberries Aren't?
Segue:
From sweet strawberries that aren’t really berries to a tart fruit that’s actually a vegetable (confused yet?), pucker up, it’s time from rhubarb.
Topic Two:
One:
Even though rhubarb conjures up thoughts of hot summer days, the plant is actually most suited to less-than-summery environments. Most botanists think the origin of rhubarb traces back to chilly Mongolia. Today, the plant grows in Canada, Alaska, Michigan, Maine, and even Siberia.
Much like strawberries, rhubarb (which is actually a vegetable, part of the buckwheat family) was used as medicine before anything culinary . The Chinese, Greeks, and Romans all used dried Rhubarb root as laxatives. Later, when rhubarb was imported to Europe from Asia via the Silk Road, it fetched an even higher price than cinnamon, saffron, and opium.
It took hundreds of years for interest in eating rhubarb to spark. In the early 1800s, a British plant breeder named Joseph Myatt found out rhubarb actually tasted pretty great… when diced, stewed, and mixed with tons of sugar. From then on, rhubarb was turned into all kinds of things such as tarts, cakes, custards, jams, jellies, and even wine.
As far as rhubarb’s introduction to America, the responsibility most likely lies with our old pal Benjamin Franklin who shipped some samples to an American botanist named John Bartram in 1771.
Two:
Rhubarb has a dark side. Lurking behind all of the tart deliciousness lies the leaves of a cold-blooded killer.
Ok, not really. But rhubarb does have the potential to be deadly. Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid which, when ingested, binds to calcium ions and pulls them out of circulation. In major doses, it can take away enough calcium to be fatal. In lesser doses, it forms insoluble oxalate that can end up in the kidneys as kidney stones.
But it’s not something you really need to worry about. On average, rhubarb leaves contain about 0.5 grams of oxalic acid per 100 grams of leaves. So, you’d have to chow down on around 10 pounds of leaves to get a fatal dose.
As for where the stories of rhubarb being a killer came from, it could stem back to World War 1. Rhubarb leaves were recommended as an alternative food on the home front and, apparently, someone scarfed down a few too many. Ever since, rhubarb hasn’t been able to shake the killer reputation.
Three:
Henry D. Clark was known as the “Rhubarb King” in Skagway, Alaska. Originally from Wisconsin, Clark made his way to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush and, after witnessing people struggling with scurvy during his travels, planted a rhubarb farm in Skagway.
This was a good choice for two reasons. One, rhubarb thrives in Alaska’s cold climate. Two, Skagway summer days have an impressive 19 hours of sunlight. These two factors helped Clark’s plants grow to behemoth sizes, routinely sprouting to more than several feet in length with huge, fan-like leaves.
Unfortunately, the rein of Rhubarb King Clark was brought to an abrupt end during World War II when the military commandeered Clark’s land for fuel storage. But the good folks of Skagway wouldn’t let the rhubarb riches go that easily. The citizens gathered plants from Clark’s farm and planted them around the town, where they can still be found growing today.
Sources:
Atlas Obscura — How Alaska Became Home to Humongous Rhubarb
National Geographic — Does Rhubarb Deserve Its Killer Reputation?
Outro:
And there you have it! The sweet, semi-confusing strawberry and tart and semi-poisonous rhubarb. Thanks for listening. Be sure to click subscribe so you don’t miss an episode and head over to Instagram to follow the show @sixpackoffacts. Until next week, as always, stay thirsty.
Episode Description: