The fourth Thursday in November is, of course, Plantsgiving, a day anticipated for weeks by botanists all across America. That’s when we transform a national day of gluttony into a challenge: put as many botanical ingredients on the table as possible. The winner is the host with the most
***Note for educators: There is a G-rated version of this newsletter from which we have omitted mention of alcoholic beverages and salacious details about ancient Egyptians' beliefs about lettuce.*** The fourth Thursday in November is, of course, Plantsgiving, a day anticipated for weeks by botanists all across America.
Pumpkins and other winter squashes are gloriously large fruits and are therefore excellent subjects for easy botanical observation. Carving a Jack-O-Lantern or cutting up a squash for a recipe becomes an instructive dissection when you know what to look for. We walk through the necessary information in this
Apples, those iconic harbingers of autumn, are the perfect subject for the conclusion of our summertime interrogation of the rose family (the Rosaceae). If you read our earlier newsletters featuring strawberries, brambles, and stone fruits, then our image (below) of the phylogenetic relationships among important subgroups in the Rosaceae will
Does the summer heat have you feeling drupey? Last month we broke down brambles for you, showing that their “berries” were really aggregates of drupelets. This month in Food for Thought we take on full-sized drupes––peaches, nectarines, cherries, apricots, and almonds. Yes, we know that the peak of
This month we continue our summer romance with the rose family, specifically the cane fruits, or brambles, which include blackberries, raspberries, and their many look-alikes. These cane fruits belong to the branch of the rose family called the Rosoideae, which also includes roses and strawberries. Although these “fruits” are
Welcome to June, when strawberry season is finally well underway across wide swaths of the Northern Hemisphere. With so many strawberries in so many kitchens this month, now is the perfect time to merge botany lab and breakfast preparation by working through the many parts of a strawberry. We kick
Coconut palms grow some of the biggest seeds on the planet, and vanilla seeds, from an orchid, are among the smallest. They are both delicious! They are also the subjects of this month’s newsletter. Just in time for Mother’s Day (May 10th this year), in this month’s
This month’s newsletter lands just in time for Easter. If you haven’t dyed eggs yet, consider making homemade dyes from a variety of plants. The recipe is below in Botany Lab of the Month: Dyeing Easter eggs, violet syrup, and learning about pH with plant pigments. Be sure
We observe two holidays in this March 2026 issue of Gather and Sow: St. David’s Day (March 1st) and Women’s History Month (all of March), which coincides with International Women’s Day on March 8th. Leeks are a traditional symbol of St. David’s Day, and their morphology
Inaugural Note Welcome to Gather and Sow: The Botanist in the Kitchen Newsletter, our new monthly missive! If you followed our Botanist in the Kitchen blog on the old Wordpress site, we thank you. We will henceforth be posting online content from our new site, powered by Ghost, in newsletter