About those wild mustards

With thanks to Ellin Barret who first piqued my curiosity for this post.

Because a friend posted this meme, I was off and running. So I decided to let my fingers do the walking through Wikipedia to resolve for once, and for all, the differences between the escaped feral “wild” mustards that ravage the California landscape in spring. And yes, we do have several rather diminutive native mustard species.

What I discovered is that there was not one species, but over 30 separate species of “wild” mustard plants or brassica. And very few “wild”mustards are actually wild, they are almost all feral. Our most favored mustard species, Eurasian Brassica oleracea, that the ancient Celts and Romans were so fond of, gives us those yummy cultivars (all from the same species, like a breed), including kale, cabbage, collard greens, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, etc.

Although some species of mustard plants were established crops in Hellenistic and Roman times, there are few archeological records. Wild forms of mustard and its relatives, the radish and turnip, found over Eurasia, suggests domestication took place in that region. However, Zohary and Hopf conclude: "Suggestions as to the origins of these plants are necessarily based on linguistic considerations." The Encyclopædia Britannica states that mustard was grown by the Indus Civilization of 2500–1700 BC. —Wiki

An Asian mustard species from the Hindu Kush, Brassica rapa, one of the first invasive field mustards to bloom in California, gives us bok choy, Napa cabbage (really Beijing cabbage!), rapini, turnips, canola oil, etc. More on native and invasive mustards here.

Highly invasive black mustard or Brassica nigra is the most common species found in California. The seeds were theoretically brought here by the Franciscan friars scattering mustard seeds as they walked from mission to mission—bits and seeds of B. nigra were found in adobe brick made in the 1700s. 

Also, according to the scriptures, tiny mustard seeds were held in high regard because though the seeds may be small, their potential for growth is enormous; to enter the kingdom of heaven begins with faith. Jesus was reputed to have said:

"For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:20-21)

Nearly all Brassica seem to have one thing in common, a four-petaled flower shaped like a cross, hence the name cruciferous vegetables. Even the diminutive jewelflower species of California, Nevada and the Southwest have four petals, but they are so tiny, they are nearly invisible. 

No matter how you feel about invasive species, I must admit that it is pretty stunning when entire hillsides are solid yellow with mustard in spring. It’s a great cover crop, conditions the soil (and kills pests.) But it is so invasive that it also smothers all native species—including our diminutive milk maids, and vigorous California poppies.

And yes, we do have many diminutive native California brassica species according to iNaturalist. My personal favorites are a magenta wallflower, or rockcress, milk maids, desert candles, and the crazy stripped-down endemic jewelflowers—some species so rarified they only grow in one small patch in the world. It seems that each mountain range has its own species of jeweleeed—and most are endangered species.

And closely related to black mustard, and B. rapa, the Brassica napus or brown mustard species, aka rapeseed, also gives us canola oil, Siberian kale, and rutabagas. Originally from India, it spread to Asia and farmers diversified it by developing cultivars. It's a really popular cover crop in Ukraine along with those heliotropic North American sunflowers. 

Yes, North American: Helianthus annuus—though they were first domesticated and cultivated by Native Americans 4500 years ago, they were commercialized in Russia and Ukraine. Sunflowers and mustard are important sources of vegetable oil. All that oil to fuel the world. We won’t discuss the atrocities suffered by mustard gas unleashed by the Germans at Ypres during World War I.

The ancient Romans not only invented fish sauce (of the Worcestershire persuasion), they also might have invented mustard as a condiment (the Egyptians also used mustard) by mixing ground mustard seeds with grape juice (called “must"), thus giving us the word mustard!

The word "rape" came from Latin for turnip, rāpa or rāpum, Greek word ῥάφη, rhaphe. The Romans were quite crazy for their cabbages. 

Radish means root in Latin. Apparently Egyptians were noshing on radishes before the Pyramids were built. Perhaps the workers were fueled on by radishes and salt. After all, the Romans paid their workers with salt, which means salted cruciferous greens, hence the word salary.

Meanwhile, the French are still buttering and salting their radishes. Forget about that sinus cleaner, Japanese wasabi. Medieval Germans were so crazy for radishes that they grew them bigger and better. Imagine massive 100-pound radishes ravishing the countryside. Radishes, not mustard, were the first cruciferous crops introduced to the Caribbean in the 1500s.

Brassica oleracea probably came from Crete. Or it was a stowaway on Jason’s Golden Fleece. The Greeks too were so mad for radishes (which probably came from China by way of Egypt), that they made little gold radish talismans to offer up to Apollo. Why the sun god needed radishes is anyone’s guess. You’d think horses or chariots or wine would’ve been a more practical gift. Ok, I’ll stop rooting around now on Wiki.

Note bene: I never know where writing ideas will come from. It always catches me by surprise! When I was a child, I was always making equivalencies, that is relationships between things—especially plants and animals. I guess some things never change. When I finally adulted (some could clain that I am still attempting to achieve adulthood), I discovered most of my correlations were spot on. 

At one point, I thought all that wild mustard was native, and it was only one species. When I joined a California naturalist group, I learned that there were more than one invasive mustard species, and that’s probably the thing that spurred me on because I cannot tell the difference between field mustard and black mustard, it’s all mustard to me.

Bringing in the sheaves

The flashing colon on the face of the digital clock, the way afternoon light illumines the frosted windows, the demanding cat wanting breakfast early, clearly not on daylight savings time. Explain that to the horses or the dogs if you have them. Time racing ahead at breakneck speed the older you get, the faster it goes..Time was once measured by water clocks, or nails embedded into burning candles that fell on the hour. Iron clattered onto the table or the stone floor, like tiny hooves, sleep disturbed by time. The monks were obsessed by time, for the world revolved around increments of time, because the universe would not hold, because God, hungry for dogma, needed constant assuaging and reassurance in the form of prayer from his followers. They were marking time for an inevitable future that may or may not come. The Medieval Book of Hours was a guidebook of feast days, measuring the seasons. On what tombstone, what prayer was etched in stone? The laws of oscillation, the guard rails of our lives keeping us in check. Time is cyclical, or perhaps it is a sickle, Ceres bringing in the sheaves.

1/17/24 Write On! with Nancy Woo

Measuring the sun

When I was a child, my grandmother measured the seasons by where the sun rose on our hill, the long ridge served as a fulcrum. In summer, it rose over the big rock to the north, and in winter over the tall pines along the fence line. In this way, we measured the seasons using the natural world, not man-made monuments. I was fascinated by the way sunlight raced along the tiles by the front door. Ours was an old house that kept to the old way, with the house aligned to the cardinal directions. So the morning sun shone through the front door, like a portal, or one of the gates of Stonehenge. We even had a big rock, a knob of limestone, or a chert reefer, perhaps blueschist sticking out like a menhir. She carried the old ways with her, the stones circles of her childhood landscape conflated with portals of time in the new world. I was an odd child, always measuring the world by criteria I didn’t quite understand. One morning, I got the idea to measure how the fast the rising sun over the ridge rose, so with my plastic ruler, I measured the speed between sunlight on tiles versus the advancing shadow. Each line on the ruler was a two-minute marker. I had half the equation but not the other half. In that moment, I realized how the shadows of a sundial worked, and suddenly I was connected to time in a timeless manner. Past and future fell away until there was only time present.

1/17/24 Write On! with Nancy Woo

Facebook AI bots blocked my cousin Michael Collins’ memorial service video of a medieval hymn

I won the dispute with the Facebook AI censor bots. Not only has the hymn, Salve Regina been copyright-free since at least the middle ages (the 12th century) it’s also within the public domain. by a very long shot. I told the litigious Warner Music Rights Management Group in no uncertain terms that it does not own rights to Catholic church music—especially from the middle ages. Eat it WB.

The Facebook censorship AI bots have now censored one of my cousin Michael Collins’ memorial service videos that I privately posted on Jan 9, 2022—because it had a medieval Gregorian Chant in it.

My mother’s cousin, Michael was a well-known tenor and Gregorian chanter (and  also a Latin teacher), and his friends were singing him off. Michael had some mighty fine pipes. His Nessun Dorma and Ave Maria could bring you to your knees, weeping with joy. But Facebook had to destroy that sublime moment with its heavy-handed Maxwell‘s hammer.

Not only is the use of the hymn, Salve Regina, considered fair use, and no money was involved, it’s been copyright-free since at least the middle ages. Warner Music Rights Management Group does not own Catholic liturgical church music—especially from the middle ages.

I also want to add that the videos were privately posted on my page, no audience, but I had them hidden so that only I could see them—except for one post—but that wasn’t the one in question. So, it seems that you can’t even privately post anything on your page that might break copyright—even if no one else can see it.

Michael’s Gregorian chant group sang liturgy from the mass, including Alleluia, Holy, holy holy, Angus Dei, which are merely a chorus to the mass, and the hymns Panis Angelicus, and Salve Regina. 

Salve Regina was the offending hymn.

“The work was composed during the Middle Ages and originally appeared in Latin, the prevalent language of Western Christianity until modern times. Though traditionally ascribed to the eleventh-century German monk Hermann of Reichenau, it is regarded as anonymous by most musicologists.” in other words, it is copyright free. 

The video in question lasted one minute and 19 seconds. I trimmed it down to one minute and .02 seconds but it’s still over the one-minute limit that triggered the Warner Music Rights Management Group bot on copyright infringement laws. We shall see. Facebook, Game On!

This is the second time that I’ve posted a personal memorial notice of a death in my family—and have been dinged for it by Facebook AI bots. Does Facebook have something against our sharing of actual personal memorial events? 

The last epic Facebook fail was when my mother’s cousin Liam Walsh died. I literally got thrown in the slammer for six days for mentioning to a cousin, a sweet childhood deed of his. Facebook claimed that it violated  “community standards.” There was nothing pornographic, and certainly nothing untoward about it. And there was no way to dispute it. I felt violated. At least with this latest absurdity I was able to file a dispute.

I won’t mention Facebook’s censoring and removal of my botany comment on the uses of native California fan palm seeds, or the naked black and white photo of Einstein’s desk, which Facebook deemed as “depicting explicit sexual content, or pornographic.” A fecking messy desk!

What a way to begin the new year, with Facebook trolling every comment I’ve ever made during the past few years. Talk about Big Brother. Thy name is Facebook. And to think we invited you in.But we have no rights because it’s a private entity.

Just out of curiosity, do you know of anyone else who’s being harassed like this by Facebook for nearly everything they post? it’s hard not to become paranoid in the face of this ongoing absurdity. And no, my account has not been hacked, I check that early and often. It’s Facebook, folks. Epic fail.

• Yet another epic Facebook AI bot fail Liam Walsh

BETWEEN AIR AND MATTER

When words barely scratch the surface, 

like a swimmer, frog-kicking across the pond, 

when dark things call us into the shallows, 

like watercress, pondscum, or duckweed, 

not the mauve flowers of the water hyacinth 

depleting oxygen from the waterways 

until fish drown in their own element.

The quick movement before a splash, 

a frog jumps, coming up for air, gasping, 

straddling a world between air and matter.

1/10/24

DURING THE FIRST DAYS OF THE YEAR

I am in love with the way light falls 

on the transom of frosted glass, 

late afternoon, illuminating the room, 

the transient sun reminding us 

it hasn’t forgotten that spring 

will again return like so many others, 

too many to count. 

I count the days where winter’s sentence 

will give way to longer days 

and soon we will find the time 

to complain about other things. 

That is our nature, always looking ahead,

anticipating the next move 

like a game of chess where the battle 

of nights and days are played out, 

an old scenario. 

To wait like the cat for first light, 

to curl up like that in the sun, 

to absorb the warmth, 

to be fully in present tense, 

not worrying about the next move, 

for the game is constantly being played out 

over and over for the illusion of our benefit. 

That urge to impose order is divine, 

a random universe is our lot. 

Does the cat on the windowsill 

worry about such things? 

I endeavor to be more present, 

not to fall into the veil of the future, 

because it is always running 

out ahead of us like an escaped horse 

fleeing the barn, not wanting to get caught 

up in plans that we have no control over.

1/10/24 Write On! with Susie Terence

Yet another epic Facebook fail, this time for dirty botany

OMFG, FACEBOOK, REALLY? since when does the description of the seeds of a California native fan palm, Washingtonia filifera in a botany group go against community standards, violate cyberspace, or is considered malicious content? 

“It looks like you tried to gather sensitive information, or shared malicious software.” 

There is literally no way to appeal these ridiculous Facebook decisions. Also, this comment was from a year ago, February. Does the AI sensor bot have nothing better to do? What a way to begin the new year, with Facebook trolling every comment I’ve ever made during the past two years. Talk about Big Brother. Thy name is Facebook. Palm face plant.

I wrote: “The California fan palm does not produce dates, but does fruit elliptical black "berries" about 1/2 inch in diameter. These berries have a very large, brown seed surrounded by a thin, sweet pulp, which native Americans ate fresh or dried. They also ground the seeds into flour. Hooded orioles and coyotes feast on the seeds as well, aiding the palms' proliferation…” 

So, does this sound like pornography to you?