[HN Gopher] Centuries of selective breeding turned wild cabbage ...
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Centuries of selective breeding turned wild cabbage into different
vegetables
Author : bensouthwood
Score : 125 points
Date : 2026-03-11 16:07 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.worksinprogress.news)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.worksinprogress.news)
| goodmythical wrote:
| Fun fact, peppers, petunias, datura, and tobacco are all in the
| same family: Solanaceae.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| you have done potatoes a profound insult by not including them
| in this list
| inkyoto wrote:
| As well as to eggplant and belladonna.
| masklinn wrote:
| And tomatoes.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| you are both right of course
|
| but for some reason my fealty to potato does not extend
| to tomatoes and eggplant quite the same way. i feel
| toward potatoes sort of how gary Larson feels about cows
| msandford wrote:
| Years ago I made harissa out of peppers for sauce for
| baked chicken wings. To my surprise it tasted tomato-ey.
|
| After doing some Google searches I realized the plants
| were related and eventually it sort of made sense.
| Peppers are almost like a very dry, very firm tomato.
|
| In hindsight it's obvious but at the time it was very
| surprising.
| hollerith wrote:
| Sure, but cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, etc, are all
| the same _species_.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| I already knew about this phylogenetic tree (although I have
| always heard the common ancestor be called the "wild mustard",
| not wild cabbage), but the article was quite interesting.
|
| I only wish that as a PSA, they had included the reminder to
| people over 30 years old who hate Brussels sprouts, that the
| delicious ones you can eat today are not the ones they hated in
| their youth, and if you haven't had sprouts in years you might
| want to give them a second try (salted, oiled and baked, not
| boiled or steamed of course!)
| cpard wrote:
| I think the sprouts trauma is the result of picking the wrong
| cooking method.
|
| I was so surprised when I tried baked sprouts for the first
| time (use a really host cast iron skilet for even better
| results) that I started to believe that every vegetable can be
| delicious as long as you bake it!
| 0_____0 wrote:
| The modern cultivars literally taste different, it's not just
| cooking method. The bitter compounds were identified and bred
| out.
| cpard wrote:
| How long ago did this happen?
| 0_____0 wrote:
| 1990s research at Novartis, not sure how quickly the new
| cultivars were adopted,.maybe someone else can chime in
| pfdietz wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/10/30/773457637
| /fr...
| jdougan wrote:
| Did they get the sulfurous compounds out as well?
| flir wrote:
| I wish I could find "authentic" sprouts in supermarkets.
| I'm sure there's a niche for it.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| There's many delicious and easy ways to eat vegetable! Two of
| my favorite:
|
| - Belgian Stoemp: basically smashed-potatoes with smashed-
| other legumes. Cook everything together (with herbs if you
| can), smash, add lipid and salt and you're done!
|
| - German Ein Topf: put vegetables, beans and sausages in a
| pot (I use tofu ones or tempeh). Cover, cook slowly. It's
| almost a salty Tajin from the north.
|
| - Recover bland vegetables (sprouts or anything) to a
| fantastic soup in 5 minutes: add a bit of water, coconut
| cream (or caw cream / silken tofu...), spices. A bit of tahin
| and corail lentils if you have. Mix and adjust water.
|
| Bon appetit :)
| lokar wrote:
| a popular concept:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamppot
| lukan wrote:
| "I started to believe that every vegetable can be delicious
| as long as you bake it!"
|
| Baking is good, but I also came to another conclusion -
| vegetables that are disgusting if they are cooked to a slimy
| paste, can be delicious eaten raw in a salad!
| glenstein wrote:
| Great point about brussel sprouts and it's truly fascinating on
| a number of levels. I think we're all tempted to believe the
| story that our palate just changes as we get older. But that's
| not what happened with brussel sprouts! They became cultivated
| differently to change their taste and so the modern ones we
| have are not the bitter ones we had as a kid.
|
| I think there's a similar story for, say, canned peas which
| used to be nasty and made me think I didn't like peas. Granted
| I still don't consider myself someone who likes peas from a
| can, but fresh peas in a salad, or flash frozen peas in a bag
| that stores in the freezer, I'm open to those.
|
| That's not to say that our tastes don't change, but brussel
| sprouts are kind of a fascinating mirage where it seems like
| the change might have been growing up into adulthood when
| really it was a chang in cultivation. These are just off the
| top of my head, but over the past couple of decades, there's
| been a quiet revolution in mass produced veggies on a number of
| levels that in each of their individual instances trace back to
| fascinating stories of science.
| Azrael3000 wrote:
| When I read the title, I immediately though, I think this is
| going to be about Brussel sprouts etc. as I just saw a video [0]
| that mentions the same lineage. The video is part of the series
| about the evolution of the flagellum, which is really well made.
|
| [0]: https://youtu.be/Frioffo53wo?t=1205
| locusofself wrote:
| I love these vegetables. Especially Broccolini and Brussel
| Sprouts. YUM
| estebank wrote:
| Ah, yes. You can't throw a rock at produce without hitting a
| brassica oleracia.
| defrost wrote:
| The roots of the young Brachychiton acuminatus can be cooked in
| ashes and eaten like a sweet potato .. but despite the _vast_
| number of rocks in its native habitat .. not a single brassica
| oleracia will be found by throwing them.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| The point is over ... ... ... there, not
|
| here.
| hollerith wrote:
| What I appreciate most about these vegetables is that they're
| much lower in that pesky _oxalic acid_ than most vegetables in
| the human diet.
| culi wrote:
| Since we've been eating oxalic acid for millions of years I
| highly doubt it's a problem for us. In fact it acts as an
| antioxidant, can inhibit the growth of many bacteria/fungi, and
| can bind to heavy metals like lead and mercury.
|
| It makes sense to avoid stuff high in oxalic acid if you're at
| risk of kidney stones but it seems silly to worry about
| something we've been consuming for longer than we've been a
| species for
| Sharlin wrote:
| Not nearly as drastic as the cabbage case, but to me it's also
| interesting that there are three ancestral, wild species of
| citrus fruit - mandarin, pomelo, and citron - and all the popular
| modern cultivars are hybrids of those three.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| There's other wild citrus genes involved in there too for some
| species.
|
| https://www.jlauf.com/writing/citrus/
| culi wrote:
| And there are also stuff like finger limes, kumquats, etc
| that don't at all fit into this citrus triangle
| Razengan wrote:
| Centuries of selective breeding would turn me into different
| vegetables too
| eternauta3k wrote:
| A tasty Kwisatz Haderach full of vitamin C
| myself248 wrote:
| For some reason, there was a whole series of brassica oleracea
| memes going around in 2020 (does that make it a meta-meme? or is
| that the meme itself, and the images are just instances of the
| meme?), and they're still wonderful.
|
| Just image-search "brassica memes" at your favorite engine.
| mjd wrote:
| If you liked this, you will be delighted to learn about the
| "Triangle of U": the common brassicas are not just tetraploid,
| they are Frankensteinian mashups of earlier diploid species with
| different numbers of chromosomes!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_of_U
| mjd wrote:
| Bonus trivia: unlike nearly all plants, brassicas make do
| without symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza
| IAmBroom wrote:
| What the...
|
| That's like hearing some mammal babies don't consume milk!
| culi wrote:
| Yeah the family is pretty unique for not relying on
| mycorrhizal fungi but it does still rely on other fungi like
| Serendipita indica which is a basidiomycete fungus and acts
| as a facultative endophyte. Meaning it can live on its own in
| the soil but it can also develop inside plant roots and play
| many of the same roles mycorrhizal fungi play.
|
| It's actually at the center of a lot of research attention
| right now for its potential to act as a booster for
| vegetables that DON'T make traditional mycorrhizal
| associations
| mjd wrote:
| I didn't know about this. Thanks!
| culi wrote:
| Just as fun is the Citrus triangle
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_taxonomy#/media/File:Ci...
|
| Citrons, Pomelos, and True Manderins are the progenitor wild
| species that were hybridized to give us everything from
| clementines to grapefruit to key limes and more
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Because I love cabbage... the blog post shows "Gai lan" as an
| Asian example. There are so much more!
|
| You are probably aware of napa cabbage, but there's also Taiwan
| Cabbage (goes by other names of course...)
| https://www.westcoastseeds.com/products/taiwan-cabbage
|
| It looks a lot like a flatter "green/european" cabbage. It's
| leaves and stems are finer and softer than a European cabbage,
| while still being pretty crunchy (as opposed to napa). Compared
| to European cabbage, you could actually just stir fry these.
|
| Gai lan is just one variety of "Chinese broccoli" - there are
| multiple varieties with different stem thicknesses, and
| "branching ratios". This will let you pick to suit your preferred
| level of crunch and leaf area to coat with sauce =)
|
| And finally, all of the bok choys are also part of this family.
|
| If you look, you can straight up find the half way points between
| subfamilies
| https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/080bca1a659bf2f8b12bca1494c67...
| culi wrote:
| Speaking of Asian vegetables, _Brassica oleracea_ tends to get
| all the love because Europeans are more familiar with
| cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, etc but
| _Brassica rapa_ is perhaps even more diverse.
|
| You might be familiar with turnips, bok choy, napa cabbage, and
| mizuna, but within Asia, there are a dizzying array of
| vegetables barely documented that are all derivatives of this
| weedy mustard.
|
| Vegetables like Jima Turnip of the Tibetan plateau, Taicai,
| Wutacai, etc are hardly documented in English at all
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| I knew it couldn't be coincidence that a green cabbage looks
| exactly like a giant brussel sprout.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| This doesn't mention the one brassica that I hate more than any.
| Bastard cabbage. Like the other brassicas it is edible from
| flower/fruit to the root. Goes good in salads, etc. Unfortunately
| it is an invasive species here in Texas that quickly overwhelms
| native wildflowers. It appears along roads where work has been
| completed and rights-of-way reseeded using non-native grass
| mixes.
|
| It is native to Africa and southern Europe I think but is
| invasive here in the US.
|
| I first found some in my yard a couple of years after I bought a
| load of "topsoil" from a local materials provider. Not only was
| the product not a topsoil (it was river channel fine silt that is
| mostly clay-like particles with zero permeability and zero
| organic content) but the first thing to sprout on the pile of
| left-over soil was a tall plant with yellow flowers. There was a
| single plant that year. I had no idea what it was and asked one
| of my kids to ID it after it had already dried. Since it wasn't
| flowering stage when I asked they couldn't get a clear ID so i
| left it in place. That was a huge mistake. It produced uncounted
| quantities of small seeds that fell all around it and evidently
| birds loved it.
|
| The second year saw it sprout up in a 10m radius around the
| original plant with isolated outliers. Again, I did not know what
| it was so I let it grow until summer (it is a late winter/early
| spring plant, one of the first to sprout) by which time it was
| obvious that this thing was gonna take over if I didn't do
| something. I sent a few more photos to my kid and this time I got
| the bad news - bastard cabbage.
|
| With that info in hand I began implementing my eradication plan.
| I watered in all the plants that I could locate. It was summer
| and the ground is very dry and soil is hard here at home. With
| the soil nice and wet I pulled or dug every one of those bastards
| that I could find knowing that I would be doing the same thing
| again next year.
|
| So far it has been several years of walking the property, pulling
| these bastard cabbages as I find them. So far this year I have
| less than a dozen plants but the season is young. I have found
| about half of those plants growing where previously I had never
| seen any and the others were growing in the original affected
| area.
|
| Just like my years-long battle against St Augustine grass,
| stickers, goatheads, and Johnson grass I will win. I have
| eradicated those plants from my property though it took more than
| a decade to completely eliminate the Johnson grass.
|
| Once I can identify the plant at each growth stage its days are
| numbered, sometimes with three or four digits, but I will win in
| the end.
| rectang wrote:
| It's amazing that it only takes centuries. Under natural
| selection, species traits stay relatively stable for thousands or
| even millions of years.
|
| I suppose that means natural selection tends to have more of a
| pronounced effect when there has been a severe environmental
| change that wipes out a large fraction of the population and
| leaves behind only those with adaptive mutations. Otherwise, the
| adaptive mutation stays in the population but doesn't proliferate
| excessively. Selective breeding can then be interpreted as an
| extreme version of environmental stress.
|
| I had previously imagined that evolution was a slow process but
| it seems that its more of a punctuated equilibrium, where when
| changes occur they occur quickly.
|
| (Caveat: not a biologist, just a layperson speculating and
| learning.)
| culi wrote:
| It doesn't "take" centuries, it's just been going on for
| centuries. You can probably develop a very unique cultivar in a
| single lifetime. This is quite common in the horticultural
| industry and is especially feasible with weedy species like
| Brassicas
|
| And the stability of the traits is mostly due to careful
| management. Most of these vegetables will very easily hybridize
|
| In the Andes there are still traditional farmers that maintain
| over 300 varieties of potatoes. Each one has a name and a
| history. Some are only ornamental, some are only eaten in
| soups, some are medicinal, some are a bright purple, some are
| extremely long, some look like giant pinecones. Just look at
| the incredible images in this article
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/29/how-peru...
| like_any_other wrote:
| I'm just glad this only applies to plants, and possibly
| animals, and not humans.
| dsign wrote:
| Genes of the wild cabbage: "yah man, we will turn this leafy body
| into whatever you like. That you are going to eat it? We don't
| mind a bit, as long as you make more copies of us; that's all
| that matters."
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| The canis lupis (or the better analogy canis familiaris?) of the
| plant world.
|
| Though I'm struggling to think of a dish I actually enjoy from
| that plant group.
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