Botany

What We’re Reading: The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart

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Drunken-Botanist-Cover-low-res

What We’re Reading: The Drunken Botanist. The Plants That Create The World’s Great Drinks.

Algonquin Books, 2013.

Author: Amy Stewart

Exploring botany in a bottle, plant by fascinating plant, with cocktail recipes. Organized by process and botanical families, and styled with a nod to antique tomes, chapter headings include:

Part One: We Explore The Twin Alchemical Processes of Fermentation and Distillation from Which Wine, Beer and Spirits Issue Forth.

The entry for Apple, Malus domestica, Rosaceae (Rose Family) – includes a discussion of cider, notes regarding heritage apples, outlines apple spirit styles, and provides cocktail recipes with history notes. Pear, Pyrus communis, perry and pear spirits are examined as well.

Full of fun facts to know and tell, with Grow Your Own and Field Guide sections, and a diverse array of recipes.

This is the kind of reading you can easily enjoy with a glass of cider; educational, informative, and amusing – a very handy imbibers reference guide indeed.

Visit: drunkenbotanist.com

What is a Sport: Darwin, Mutants, Apples & The Red Gravenstein.

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LOC apple image

SPORT: 

Spontaneous somatic mutation and mutant cultivars.

Mutations are often called bud variations, bud mutations, somatic mutations, bud sports or briefly, sports.

Darwin (1868) defined bud variations as ‘all changes in structure or appearance which occasionally occur in full-grown plants in their flower-buds or leaf buds’ and in many cases ascribed these ‘changes’ to ‘spontaneous variability.’

source: Mutation Breeding: Theory and Practical Applications 1988

A. M. van Harten, Agricultural University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

SPORT:

A sudden variation in habit of growth or blossom color from the rest of the plant or others plants of its kind. Caused by a genetic change that may be accidental or spontaneous, or intentionally induced.

source: www.botany.com

SPORT: 

In botany, a sport or bud sport is a part of a plant that shows morphological differences from the rest of the plant. Sports may differ by foliage shape or color, flowers, or branch structure. Sports with desirable characteristics are often propagated vegetatively to form new cultivars that retain the characteristics of the new morphology.

source: wikipedia.org

See: Red Gravenstein. This variety is a sport (natural genetic mutation) of the Gravenstein apple.

Species: Malus domestica. Parentage: Sport of Gravenstein. Origin: Washington, United States.

source: orangepippin.com