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Home/Shedding Light on the Nightshade Family

Shedding Light on the Nightshade Family

Posted by: Shannon Muck / Posted on: / Category: Ladybug Letters, Ladybug Postcard
Red Jalapeños

I have never been to Jalapa. I don’t even know any Jalapeños, but I know their peppers. The Jalapeño pepper is one of the most widely adapted pepper varieties across continents and cultures. Smoked jalapeños, or “Chipotles,” are essential in Mexican cuisine. Red, mature Jalapeños are an essential ingredient in Sriracha. Jalapeños put the “pop!” in “poppers,” the food truck favorite that finds the green, bullet shaped peppers stuffed with cheese, then dipped in cornmeal batter and deep fried. Jalapeños are natural in fresh salsas, minced well into ceviche, and add a sting when sliced finely into Thai  coconut milk based soups. What’s not to love?

Plenty, apparently….
Before the 14th Century and Columbus’s collision with our continent, peppers were unknown outside the Americas. The potato wasn’t known to Europeans or Asians or Africans either, nor were tomatoes. All of these familiar crops belong to Solanacea, an economically important plant family whose members also include tomatillos, eggplants, tobacco, and petunias. Also, and most significantly, none of these plants are mentioned in the Bible even once. The Medieval Mindset that gripped Europe in the late 1400s had a finer appreciation for the moral force of botany than consumers necessarily do today; if eggplants, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes and petunias aren’t mentioned in the Bible, the believers reasoned, then maybe these crops hadn’t sprung from the Garden of Eden but, in contrast, were poisonous weeds and fiery fruits of Satan. Today, if you squint, you can almost see how this religious perspective makes sense……
Belladonna, the “Beautiful Woman,” or “Atropa belladonna to the scientist, is a cousin in the Solanacea family to the eggplants, peppers, tomatoes etc. Unlike its more commercial cousins, Atropa belladonna, also known as “Deadly Nightshade,”  is native to Europe, Africa, and Asia. The nightshade’s little, black berries look like “Goth Cherry tomatoes.” The lavender flowers of poisonous nightshade look like potato flowers. And significantly, the powerful alkaloids that the nightshade berries contain can provoke delirium and hallucinations when ingested in moderation. If you consume Belladonna “immoderately” then you die. Not everybody in old world Europe hung on to the Pope’s every word with fascination; there were witches, for example, whose spiritual path took them far from the catechism of the Patriarchy, and some of them chose to trip on Belladonna. This association gave all nightshade family lookalikes a sinister, diabolic reputation.
The “Indies,” where Columbus was trying to reach when he bumped into the Americas, was just across the biggest ocean on earth from the “New World.” Once the European explorers rounded Cape Horn the way was clear to reach Asia, and soon the Spaniards and Portuguese were hauling cargoes of gold and silver from their American outposts to ports in Asia like Manila and Macau. Without a religious reason to oppose the introductions from the Americas the Asians readily accepted the American “peppers” and tomatoes. Eventually, the Europeans overcame their suspicions and came to accept the nightshades. What would they do without them now?

—© 2021 Essay by Andy Griffin and photos of jalapeños by Andy Griffin

Photo of Belladona by Pixabay

 

 

~Special Note~

As the weather is getting warmer, the sun is rising earlier and the harvesting begins with the sunrise, we will be closing our East Bay/Peninsula shop by 6 PM on the Wednesday evenings before the Friday delivery. We close our San Francisco & Mystery Thursday shops on Wednesday mornings by 8 AM and our Santa Cruz/Los Gatos shop by 8 AM, on Monday mornings. Please get your orders in early so you don’t miss out on the harvest! Thank you all again for being such a part of our bountiful farm!

If you haven’t ordered a Mystery Box recently, now is a great time to get in on spring deliciousness! LadybugBuyingClub

 

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