Tag: plants

Linum usitatissimum

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Flax, also known as common flax or linseed, has been cultivated as a food and fiber crop in temperate climates for over 9,000 years.

Linen is made from this plant’s fibrous stems, and the seed’s oil is known as linseed oil. Humans first domesticated flax in the Fertile Crescent region. Use of the crop steadily spread, reaching as far as Switzerland and Germany, China and India, where it was cultivated at least 5,000 years ago. It was grown extensively in ancient Egypt, where the temple walls had paintings of flowering flax, and mummies were embalmed using linen.

The seeds and their oil are highly nutritious, and the oil also has industrial uses. It is often blended with combinations of other oils, resins or solvents as a drying oil finish or varnish in wood finishing, as a pigment binder in oil paints, as a plasticizer and hardener in putty, and in the manufacture of linoleum.

A most useful plant indeed. And pretty!

Ocimum basilicum

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I find describing flavours to be very difficult. What does basil taste like? Hmm, tastes like basil.

I notice that the hydroponically grown plants from the supermarket have a milder flavour than my homegrown basil. I expect the direct sunshine and intermittent watering brings out the spice.

Marah macrocarpa

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Wild cucumber is the first annual growth to appear with the winter rains, and it’s still going strong now, five months later, with fresh vines, flowers, and maturing fruit all festooning whatever they can scramble over. I cut a fruit open to see how the seeds are going; they are still very soft. When the fruit ripens, it will explode and spray the large, hard seeds out in all directions.

Marah macrocarpa has an unusual germination method. The initial shoot emerges from the seed and grows downward into the earth. This shoot then splits, one part swelling to form a tuber, while the second part grows back to the surface and becomes the vine. The large, hard tuberous root can reach several meters in length and weigh in excess of 100 kilograms, leading to one of the plant’s common names, manroot.

Ricinus communis

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Castor oil plants are having a field day around here this year — they’re crowding the roadsides and spreading in vacant lots. The plant is invasive, as well as highly toxic, and I’m not happy to see its proliferation in the Santa Monica Mountains.

However, castor oil itself has many medicinal and industrial uses. I remember it from childhood (stories, not direct experience) as a nasty laxative/purgative. Castor oil was used as an instrument of coercion under the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and by the Spanish Civil Guard in Francoist Spain. Dissidents and regime opponents were forced to ingest the oil in large amounts, triggering severe diarrhea and dehydration, which could ultimately cause death.

On the less sinister side, modern uses of natural, blended, or chemically altered castor oil products include:

• A non-freezing, pressure-resistant lubricant
• A raw material for some varieties of biodiesel
• A component of many cosmetics
• An anti-viral, -bacterial or -fungal ingredient in many ointments
• A modifier that improves the flow characteristics of cocoa butter in the manufacture of chocolate bars
• A repellent for moles and voles in lawns

Castor seeds have been found in Egyptian tombs dating back to 4000 BC; the slow-burning oil was mostly used to fuel lamps. Herodotus and other Greek travellers noted the use of castor seed oil for lighting, body ointments, and improving hair growth and texture. Cleopatra is reputed to have used it to brighten the whites of her eyes.

So there you have it. An extremely useful (and quite pretty) plant — just not one I want growing around here.

stolon

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Annette noticed that these two cliff-aster-y looking plants were joined by a runner, the way strawberry or spider plants propagate. (A bit of googling led me to the botanical name for this joining structure: it’s called a stolon). I’ve seen a lot of cliff asters and other related Asteraceae but have never observed this growth habit. I don’t have a positive ID on the plant, but I’ll certainly be looking for other examples while I’m out on the trails.

Heteromeles arbutifolia

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Toyons are fruiting abundantly all over our mountains (and in our yard), providing food for many birds and mammals. The tree depends on animals for seed dispersal, and our first winter rains are forecast this week. The seeds that are eaten and “planted” earliest in the wet season will have the longest time to establish themselves before the long hot dry season arrives. Eat up and poop, critters!

Only two pages left in the Perpetual Journal before I flip back to the beginning and start adding to the spreads. I’m pleased that I’ve managed to keep up the practice for (nearly) a full year, and am excited to see the pages fill out in the coming years.