Exotic Excursions 3/28/03

Group 1

Found impossible to write all plant products; overwhelmed; every aisle was filled with plant products (Asian market); would revise estimate of number of kinds upwards.
What could you do?  What ideas?  [treasure hunt;]  rattle from Ecuador…made from seeds; [pistachio shells may great rattles]

Group 2

Noticed…typical American market has 15 or 20 brands of the same thing; here there was a variety of different things; made me realize all that I didn’t know; sensory overload; 

[7th graders…a week…cultural/interviews/planting]

Group 3

Elementary…if you can give them some kind of focus; [teaches in Hawaii];  Lotus root is cheaper here than in HI; chop it and cook it in soup; nice for printing; chrysanthemum flowers (dried) – lower body temp; plant parts/body parts; they brought stems, leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds;  a number of kinds of taro; [they grow like crazy in San Diego; raw taro can cut your tongue]  preserved plums for sore throats; salty and sweet ;

Group 4

Purple potato…went with weird stuff…wanted to see if the color would pull out; prickly pear, aloe leaf, lemon grass;  posters: chilis, seasonal mixed greens, tropical exotic fruits; wrote down where to get them; 
	Celestial Arts
	P.O. Box 7327
	Berkeley CA 94707
	510-559-1602

	Norman Van Akon
	800-559-1602

Group 5

Red papaya, high in vitamin A; very ripe, probably has viable seeds; tried to find … counted 25 types of fresh leafy greens;  which types most common?  Also lychees in syrup – unfortunately peeled; they also grow well in San Diego, also papaya;  chicken manure is key to growing papaya – and you need two plants b/c male and female;

Group 6

We were also overwhelmed; how many can you grow; snacks; naturally processed snacks (scat); most expensive, least expensive in produce section; ginseng - $100 pound; veg substitutes; non-edible rice products; ended up counting # of different Brassica (18); how many roots?  But how many underground things – 17;  the students figure out which are stems, which are roots; and 14 diff kinds of ginseng in canisters; intrigued by dried fish in bags mixed with nuts; counting numbers was a lot easier to focus; [with students, an original orientation visit, then they can develop Q’s for follow-up]

Group 7

Reading market and through middle of Chinatown; sugar cane 6 ½ feet tall; Fresh “frieese” and “asparation”; lots of leafy stuff; large, trimmed hunks of a root; wrapped in shrink wrap; [coconut?]

Teaching Ideas

Focusing on plant parts

Use it to teach world geography; have kids bring plants from supermarket, put strings from food to a map
	2 levels: where is it currently grown, and what is it’s botanical origin; old world/new world; debate about some (sweet potato and taro);  cilantro orig. came from Med.  Spanish brought a lot; 

How do plant scientists make a decision on origin of plant?  Is there a website?  There are some;
	Find wild relatives, and high diversity

Monocot/dicot: thin sections of plants from market; 

Flours: differences in content in those from roots vs. those from seeds;

Cultural change in local products; changing food crops; improving local agriculture; how people identify with the foods they eat; GM food; "corporatization" of food; 

Potato repository …fears of losing varieties of potatoes; were there originally one kind? Or a lot of variety?  Good discussion of this in Botany of Desire; microclimates; plants can be manipulated in various ways, so line between species and variety and genus can be fuzzy; but some natural diversity (like banana) but one is picked out and artificially selected;  [bananas are genetically “old”; not disease resistant; if they’re all clones, then there is no genetic diversity…habitat is being reduced; same happened to rubber].  “Blight” curriculum; event-based curriculum; potato famine, other famines caused by plant disease; perennial corn; one of the web sites is from the Zapatistas in Chiapas….