By Alastair Culham

Rosemary makes a tasty addition to many savoury dishes. My favourite is a rub of salt and crushed fresh rosemary leaves put on potatoes before roasting but it’s also lovely with lamb and even with citrus based desserts. Rosemary was probably introduced to the U.K. in Roman times and it is reported in Banckes’s herbal (1525) as a plant with a remarkable range of reported uses: “take the flowres and make powder therof and bynde it to the ryght arme in a lynen clothe, and it shall make the lyght and mery… Also take the flowres and put them in a chest amonge youre clothes or amonge bokes and moughtes shall not hurte them…. Also boyle the leves in whyte wyne and wasshe thy face therwith…thou shall have a fayre face. Also put the leves under thy beddes heed, and thou shalbe delyvered of all evyll dremes…. Also take the leves and put them into a vessel of wyne…yf thou sell that wyne, thou shall have good lucke and spede in the sale…. Also make the a box of the wood and smell to it and it shall preserne [preserve] thy youthe. Also put therof in thy doores or in thy howse and thou shalbe without daunger of Adders and other venymous serpentes. Also make the a barell therof and drynke thou of the drynke that standeth therin and thou nedes to fere no poyson that shall hurte ye, and yf thou set it in thy garden kepe it honestly for it is moche profytable….” Continue reading →

By Alastair Culham

A single tree of the brazil nut

Filling your lap with the sharp fragments of nut shells as you work through a bowl of shell-on nuts is one of the pleasures of Christmas.  Less fun is later treading on the sharp  fragments that have pinged across the room unnoticed.  The, sometimes, superhuman effort of cracking open the nuts is a sure sign the plant didn’t really want you to eat them.  One of the most challenging nuts to crack is the Brazil with it’s tough shell and almost no air space inside to allow movement.

Brazil nuts were the most exotic of the standard selection of mixed nhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4065611.stmuts seen for sale each Christmas in the UK. Hazel, walnuts and almonds can all be grown in the UK and around much of the rest of Europe however the Brazil nut really does come from Brazil and it has a fascinating biological story. The pecan has now replaced the brazil as the exotic nut of choice for a standard supermarket bag of mixed nuts due to fear of aflatoxins in the shell-on nuts but this is a poor second choice in my opinion. Shelled brazils are still readily available. Continue reading →

By Maria Christodoulou & Kalman Konyves

With Christmas approaching quickly, many of you are braving the cold and crowds to complete your Christmas shopping. If you do have time for a break you may enjoy one of the most popular lattes on the high street, a Chai latte. Before we go off at a tangent and start debating how much of the high street product actually deserves the name (we are very picky with our beverages here… But we do love Meera Sodha’s Massala Chai), we want you to take a minute and appreciate the star of today’s Advent Botany Blog, the Queen of Spices: Cardamom. Continue reading →