[HN Gopher] Silphion: a miracle plant thought to be eaten into e...
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Silphion: a miracle plant thought to be eaten into extinction 2k
years ago
Author : p4bl0
Score : 155 points
Date : 2022-09-23 23:25 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nationalgeographic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nationalgeographic.com)
| ianai wrote:
| Am I the only one who thought it weird the first thing the guy
| does to introduce the plant is rip it from the ground, presumably
| killing it? Unless he put it back, but didn't see that mentioned.
| msrenee wrote:
| I assume it was in a stand of plants of the same species. You
| sort of need a specimen to ID and document the species.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Silphium is most probably a big Apiaceae related with, or in
| the genus Ferula. Is the best match for the description. Ferula
| is not a rare genus in the Mediterranean and we are still
| discovering new species. One in 2007 for example. I don't know
| the status of this particular species, but I assume that
| "probably" is not rare. They are short lived perennials that
| seed and die.
|
| But we need to take in mind that we could be searching in the
| wrong place. The Mediterranean islands had humid forests, with
| exclusive species of maples, coniphers and elms. Not much
| unlike Japan. Thousands of new flowers and herbs. This world
| has vanished long time ago.
|
| So we would need to compare Silphium not only with the
| Mediterranean Flora, but see further and include all families.
| We have relict species in the Pyrenees in tropical families
| with South African relatives for example.
| onychomys wrote:
| > I don't know the status of this particular species, but I
| assume that "probably" is not rare. They are short lived
| perennials that seed and die.
|
| The end of the article mentions that this one is still
| critically endangered, with 600 known specimens.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Ok, then. If this really matters for the survival of the
| population or not, depends on the context. When the plant
| seeds is dead already. Flowering starts a metabolical
| countdown that ends with the "suicide" of the entire plant.
|
| He has part of a flowering stalk in the hand, not viable
| seeds there. Yes is bad, but... he could have good reasons
| to do it.
|
| For example if he wants to pollinate a batch of cultured
| plants at the lab to assure to increase the genetical
| diversity but remaining purebreed. Scientists do this all
| the time.
|
| Or he could want to maintain an herbarium because we need
| to assure that this is the only Ferula species in our
| breeding population, and this needs sampling the population
| and microscope.
|
| Or to take a sample of the pollen to see if both plants are
| the same. Search for fossil pollen of Silphium in
| archaeological sites sounds like a reasonable idea to me.
|
| Or to sample the chemicals to see if some could be useful,
| (would lead to the plant being cultured, propagated in mass
| and saved as economical resource).
|
| Or to deliberately forbid the plant flowering when is
| small. To abort the dying countdown and potentiate
| vegetative grow (so the plant flower one year later with
| much, much more seeds in a bigger plant).
|
| Of course could be just because... national geographic
| wanted a stupid photo
|
| But before to start badmouthing anybody, we need to have
| all the context. As botanic, he can have solid reasons to
| remove part of a flower stalk in an endangered species.
| Governments grant special permits for scientific work
| covering exactly this things.
| melagonster wrote:
| he had found how plant it in artificial environment,
| maybe can't work on recovery population but enough for
| this.
| nicoburns wrote:
| It doesn't look like it was the first thing he did. Article
| says he's been studying the plant since the 80s
| temporallobe wrote:
| goda90 wrote:
| Firefox reader mode helped me get around that.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Given there's an unpaywalled archive link at the top of the
| comments, as there always is, I'd argue that means it's no
| longer paywalled content, at least not for people on HN.
| [deleted]
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Most "miracle plant" claims are pseudoscientific woo. In this
| case it's even worse - it's claims of stories of claims that are
| hundreds of years old.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| Pseudoscience of this nature is derived specifically from
| selfish incentives. Nowadays, you can get pretty rich by
| convincing others something is a "miracle plant" ("super food",
| etc), and so that's why it's become a cliche.
|
| Did those same or similar incentives exist back then? It
| doesn't seem like anyone got rich or powerful from claiming
| silphion is a miracle plant, and with how widespread the
| agreeing claims are it's at least worth investigating.
| simonh wrote:
| Oh come on, medical botany and snake oil selling has been
| huge business for pretty much all of recorded history.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > It doesn't seem like anyone got rich or powerful
|
| A plant that isn't super common... Sure - there will have
| been people with fields of the stuff selling it at high
| prices to city dwellers who can't get hold of it any other
| way.
|
| It's worth even more if it's hard or slow to cultivate so
| competing people can't take a few of your seeds and plant
| them in their own fields and steal your market.
| onychomys wrote:
| I assume the main professor had eaten some safely before throwing
| his silphium party for all those historians at the end of the
| article, but still, I'd have been pretty nervous about digging
| into a big pot of lentils flavored with some random plant. Lot of
| really toxic things out there in the world, and just because it
| smells nice doesn't mean it's not going to shut down your
| synapses later!
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Lot of really toxic things out there in the world, and just
| because it smells nice doesn't mean it's not going to shut down
| your synapses later!
|
| Or the other direction of firing those synapses into high gear.
| Know your dosage!
| 2ICofafireteam wrote:
| Whether it's a random plant or table salt, the dose is what
| determines how safe it is.
| woodruffw wrote:
| One of the few pieces of useful information I took out of
| scouting was the "universal edibility test"[1] -- I assume the
| professor did some version of it, probably abbreviated because
| just about everything else in _Ferula_ is edible (at least in
| doses used for flavoring).
|
| [1]: https://www.backpacker.com/skills/universal-edibility-
| test/
| pvaldes wrote:
| And the Apiaceae family is particularly evil in that sense.
| Ferula is in the same family as the carrot, but also is a
| distant relative of Hemlock and of the "Joker's plant".
| msrenee wrote:
| I'm not finding anything call "Joker's plant". Is that a
| reference to something that went over my head?
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| Potato in itself is poisonous, no need to go looking for any
| relatives (and there's plenty more poisonous plants in the
| nightshade family). Yet we still eat it.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Please explain how this food (a staple for millions, for
| centuries) is poisonous?
| pvaldes wrote:
| Everything in potatoes (leaves, flower and fruits) is
| poisonous. All except the potato but not always.
|
| Green potatoes are very poisonous because they have a
| defensive substance called solanin. But crops were
| selected to remove the solanin.
| DC-3 wrote:
| The tuber isn't poisonous unless it suffers prolonged
| exposure to sunlight (this is why you should not eat
| green potatoes). The green foliage and tomato-like fruits
| of the potato plant are poisonous, so should not be
| eaten.
| noasaservice wrote:
| Solanine poisoning can even be done by gas inhalation.
|
| Potatoes _are_ inherently poisonous, especially if they
| are sprouting. But in the potato tuber itself, the doage
| is low enough not to worry... as long as you 're older
| than 3 or 4. Beneath that, and you can subject children
| to poisoning accidentally.
|
| https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/14/girl-8-orphan
| ed-...
| simonh wrote:
| Also while I wouldn't call raw potato poisonous, it does
| contain toxins that are neutralised by cooking.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| > Most home processing methods like boiling, cooking, and
| frying potatoes have been shown to have minimal effects
| on solanine levels. Boiling potatoes reduces the solanine
| levels by only 1.2%, making it an ineffective way to
| decrease the concentration of glycoalkaloids in
| potatoes.[23] Deep-frying at 150 degC (302 degF) also
| does not result in any measurable change. Alkaloids like
| solanine have been shown to start decomposing and
| degrading at approximately 170 degC (338 degF), and deep-
| frying potatoes at 210 degC (410 degF) for 10 minutes
| causes a loss of ~40% of the solanine.[24] However,
| microwaving potatoes only reduces the alkaloid content by
| 15%. Freeze drying and dehydrating potatoes has a very
| minimal effect on solanine content.[25][26]
|
| > The majority (30-80%) of the solanine in potatoes is
| found in the outer layer of the potato.[26] Therefore,
| peeling potatoes before cooking them reduces the
| glycoalkaloid intake from potato consumption. Fried
| potato peels have been shown to have 1.4-1.5 mg
| solanine/g, which is seven times the recommended upper
| safety limit of 0.2 mg/g.[18] Chewing a small piece of
| the raw potato peel before cooking can help determine the
| level of solanine contained in the potato; bitterness
| indicates high glycoalkaloid content.[18] If the potato
| has more than 0.2 mg/g of solanine, an immediate burning
| sensation will develop in the mouth.[18]
| CDRdude wrote:
| The leaves and stems of the potato plant are toxic for
| humans. We eat the tuber.
| morelisp wrote:
| Technically the potato tuber is also part of the stem. If
| the tuber is exposed to sunlight it's as toxic as the
| rest of the stem.
| kragen wrote:
| Aside from the well-known toxicity of potato stalks,
| leaves, and flowers, and of the tuber once it has been
| exposed to enough sunlight, even the _edible_ tuber is
| usually poisonous enough to noticeably irritate your
| mouth and throat if you eat a mouthful or two raw. You
| have to cook it to make it edible.
|
| There's a couple of orders of magnitude of errors in your
| comment: it's _hundreds_ of millions, for centuries, or
| _tens_ of millions, for _millennia_.
|
| But potato has nothing on cassava, which has also been a
| staple for tens of millions for millennia. Looks like
| you're a Yank, like half the people on this godforsaken
| website, so you might only know it as "tapioca". In both
| cases, being poisonous discourages insects and other
| wildlife from expropriating your crops, and James C.
| Scott famously argues that being underground makes it
| more difficult for a certain kind of human pest to
| expropriate them as well.
|
| So the humans deliberately eat roots _because_ they are
| full of cyanide. Truly they are space orcs.
| msrenee wrote:
| I was enjoying your comment until it stopped being
| informative and turned into pointless nastiness.
| kragen wrote:
| Condolences. I didn't intend any nastiness, if that
| helps.
| chasil wrote:
| It's right in the wiki.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato#Toxicity
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Ok. TIL.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Solanaceae (Potato family) hold the bigger body account
| among all plants, for sure.
| amluto wrote:
| Even some edible carrot-like plants can produce enough
| photosensitizers in their sap to deliver quite nasty burns.
| Be careful bushwhacking through things that look like
| carrots!
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Silphium certainly seems to have been a member of the (200+
| strong) Ferula genus given their physical similarity to the plant
| depicted on ancient coins from Cyrene (in modern Libya).
|
| However, there seems to be some doubt whether this particular
| plant, Ferula drudeana, from Turkey, is the same plant or not.
|
| The romans, who so valued Silphium, also sometimes used a
| different plant, Asafoetida as a cheaper alternative, so the
| properties of Silphium obviously weren't totally unique, and
| Ferula drudeana may well be very similar if not the exact same
| plant.
|
| The appearance of Silphium on coins does differ a bit from these
| plants - more fleshy "arms", but maybe that's just artistic
| interpretation.
| RandomWorker wrote:
| I'm fascinated by the medical properties. They should extract the
| chemical and see what effects they have.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > ancient silphion resisted cultivation
|
| Can't fall to mention that this is also shared with some big
| Apiaceae. Too big for pots and that typically don't tolerate
| having its deep roots being moved or disturbed in any way.
|
| The photos shown plants being moved from pot to soil, so
| definitely can be cultured carefully, but is more difficult than
| other crops.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| So maybe this is (similar enough to) the original plant, or maybe
| it's a different one. But either way, they said it was delicious.
| So I hope they manage to cultivate it!
| Maursault wrote:
| Neither the article nor the wiki page reveals exactly who thought
| it was _eaten_ into extinction, which I find difficult to believe
| is a notion that came from legitimate experts on the subject.
| Certainly many animal species were eaten into extinction, and
| many plant species have gone extinct, but I have not heard before
| of any plant species that were eaten into extinction.
| juunpp wrote:
| The title itself is cheap click-bait. "This miracle plant was
| eaten into extinction 2,000 years ago--or was it?" Well,
| clearly it wasn't if the header image shows somebody today
| holding the plant, was it? I wonder when will people on the
| Internet just be able to tell a fucking story by keeping it to
| the point.
| radarsat1 wrote:
| well it does say "was thought to be extinct" right under the
| photo, which seems to speak to your point.
| juunpp wrote:
| Yeah, contradicting the question/statement in the click-
| bait is the first thing you do afterwards in a modern
| article.
| generalizations wrote:
| The article talks about how the plant is extremely difficult to
| cultivate; I wonder if the reason it could be eaten into
| extinction is because it only grew in the wild, and couldn't be
| properly farmed in proportion to its popularity.
| msrenee wrote:
| They said it was extremely difficult to cultivate, but they
| were able to get them to sprout using cold stratification...
| Kind of a basic technique nowadays. Lavender, hardy hibiscus,
| some geraniums, phlox, Chinese lantern, black-eyed susan -
| all of these common plants need cold stratification to
| germinate. Home gardeners utilize a plastic bag and their
| refrigerator. I'm sure this was more vexing in ancient Rome,
| but the article was talking about cultivating the modern
| plant in question. Unless there was a lot more to it that the
| article glossed over, "extremely difficult" is not the the
| term I'd use to describe the process. It's one of the basic
| techniques propogators try with a new species when dropping
| the seeds in the dirt doesn't work.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Well that is literally the story of this plant. It was valued
| by the emperor of Rome so much that it was worth its weight in
| gold. It only grew in one spot and was stripped bare for
| profit. It never grew back.
|
| I couldn't get the article to load on mobile, so I'm not sure
| if it talks about this, but there was some theory that it was a
| natural hybrid and therefore the one instance of the plant was
| the only one ever grown. It's known that the seeds never took
| root and it was never found outside of this one hillside on the
| eastern Mediterranean.
| cercatrova wrote:
| I think the parent is asking, how do we know that story is
| truly how it happened? Perhaps it's an allegory about profit
| like you said, to teach others not to kill the goose that
| lays the golden eggs, as a parallel. Another comment in this
| thread talked about how changes in Roman microclimate made it
| unable to thrive anymore.
| woodruffw wrote:
| The Romans thought they ate it into extinction (although they
| didn't really have the concept of "extinction," per se -- it's
| more likely they just thought there was no more for them to
| find).
| perihelions wrote:
| More commonly called "silphium" -- for the benefit of those
| searching for past HN threads,
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silphium&type=all
| layer8 wrote:
| Amusingly, another name for it is "laser":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium
| rnhmjoj wrote:
| Laser is thought to refer to some product derived but not
| entirely made out of this plant. I can't find the source
| right now, but I remember reading a theory that argued that
| the plant never actually went exctict. Instead, the technique
| for producing the flavour of laserpicium the romans loved (it
| was also produced in Greece and elsewhere, but it was
| somewhat different) was simply lost after they took over the
| productions in Cyrene.
| alexvoda wrote:
| I say the first step now (if it wasn't done already) should be to
| send seeds to the seed bank in Svalbard and other seed banks
| (distributed resilience) allong with documentation about how it
| was cultivated.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Article mentions that there are 600 known plants in existence,
| and that 300 of those have been propogated in botanical
| gardens.
| haspoken wrote:
| https://archive.ph/gZ5J8
| jbverschoor wrote:
| So what does it taste like?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Related: https://www.theonion.com/new-delicious-species-
| discovered-18...
| pvaldes wrote:
| Is close to fennel, probably more acrid and resinous.
| woodruffw wrote:
| The article compares it to asafoetida, which is visually
| similar and comes from the same genus ( _Ferula_ ).
|
| Asafoetida smells pretty awful (I have a little jar of it),
| but it adds a pleasant onion-to-garlic flavor to dishes.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Gotta say the webmd description doesn't make me want to try
| it:
|
| -- start quote --
|
| Asafoetida is a plant that has a bad smell and tastes
| bitter. It is sometimes called "devil's dung."
|
| People use asafoetida resin, a gum-like material, as
| medicine. Asafoetida resin is produced by solidifying juice
| that comes out of cuts made in the plant's living roots.
|
| People use asafoetida for conditions such as breathing or
| throat problems, digestion problems, or by women to restart
| their menstrual periods after menstruation has stopped for
| some reason. Asafoetida is also sometimes applied directly
| to the skin for corns and calluses, but there is no good
| scientific evidence to support these uses.
|
| In manufacturing, asafoetida is used as a fragrance in
| cosmetics and as a flavoring ingredient in foods and
| beverages. Asafoetida is also used in products meant to
| repel dogs, cats, and wildlife.
|
| -- end quote --
|
| https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-248/asafoe
| t...
|
| Was this really the closest thing to Silphium ?!
| woodruffw wrote:
| I think that description is a little exaggerated -- it
| doesn't smell _amazing_ , but it doesn't really smell
| like dung either. Most Indian/Indian subcontinent grocers
| should have powdered asafoetida for sale; you can
| see/smell for yourself!
|
| It tastes very good with any kind of dal (split beans,
| lentils, etc).
| tootie wrote:
| Tasting History did a video on it:
|
| https://youtu.be/D-QHd4_1geE
| amai wrote:
| "A 2021 paper made the case that Ferula drudeana, an endemic
| species found in Turkey, is the true identity of Silphium based
| on similarity of appearance and production of a resin with
| supposedly similar properties to Silphium.[16] However, this
| hypothesis has not, as of 2022, gained traction. One problem with
| this hypothesis is that F. drudeana appears to be much more
| closely related to other Anatolian species than to North African
| Ferula species,[17] which would be consistent with the origin of
| Silphium in North Africa."
|
| See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium
| no_identd wrote:
| That's what I thought unfortunately, and doubly so because a
| few months ago I read something completely different on this--I
| unfortunately don't currently recall where--where the
| hypothesis was that actually Silphion was a... I don't recall
| exactly anymore, but, something like, a special phenotype of an
| even more special naturally forming, _infertile_ hybrid of two
| other plants which required very specific conditions to be able
| form grow, and that changes caused by the Romans to the local
| microclimate there made it go extinct.
|
| Actually, here's a paper which seems pretty darn close:
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2021.7859...
| I think it wasn't this paper, but probably someone's writing
| based upon that paper, and here's a quote from that paper, a
| quote which actually references the very same 2021 paper, which
| that natgeo article references:
|
| "The double-seeded schizocarp of F. drudeana is also consistent
| with silphium's own fruit. However, its foliage fails to share
| a resemblance with silphium's in both shape and structure
| (Miski, 2021)."
|
| Funny how Miski none-the-less claims that it's actual Silphion,
| despite (apparently) his own work (as referenced by the paper I
| linked) contradicting this. I haven't yet finished reading the
| natgeo piece[edit: by now, I have], but I'd suspect something
| like Miski probably having made some pharma discovery from
| this, patented it, a stealth mode startup behind it, and the
| natgeo article act as a fluff piece to--please pardon the pun--
| fluffer up venture capital investor interest. Or something like
| that. Could also just be a case of stupidity and
| sensationalistismic[sic] sensation-greed, i.e. Hanlon's razor,
| &c.
|
| Also, here's the Twitter thread, by the NatGeo article author,
| for the NatGeo article, and that thread doesn't make me any
| less suspicious (albeit also not more suspicious):
|
| https://twitter.com/lostsupper/status/1573296595860332546
|
| Edit:
|
| Now if only I'd re-find that piece on the formation of this.
| Given what the NatGeo piece mentions about Greeks having
| possibly moved seeds from North Africa to Anatolia, perhaps F.
| drudeana makes for _half_ of what we 'd need to bring Silphion
| back!
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