Curated playlist
Ornamental trees
- PeachThe peach is named for Persia, yet every thread of its origin leads back to China.
- PapayaPapaya's white sap can tenderize meat, but it also stops jelly from setting. The enzyme papain is the reason.
- BeechBeech trees gave English its word for book. Old Runic tablets were carved from beech wood.
- CedrusTwo cedar groves in northern Anatolia were planted over 3,200 years ago. They supplied timber to the Hittite capital.
- CoconutEvery coconut on a remote Pacific island arrived because a person brought it. Ocean currents alone could not do it.
- CitrusAlmost all the citrus we eat descends from just three ancestral species. They are mandarin, pomelo and citron.
- Date palmThe date palm, Phoenix dactylifera, has grown seven trees named Methuselah, Hannah, Adam, Judith, Boaz, Jonah and Uriel. Each one sprouted from a seed about 2000 years old that had been stored by accident. The seeds came from a cultivar…
- Ficus religiosaFicus religiosa, the sacred fig, is revered by four major religions at once. All four began in the Indian subcontinent.
- OliveThe olive, a subtropical evergreen tree that botanists call Olea europaea, once led the writer Georges Duhamel to remark that the "Mediterranean ends where the olive tree no longer grows." That is a large claim for a short, squat tree…
- Juglans regiaWitches were said to gather at a walnut tree in Benevento, Italy. A judge wrote about them in 1526.