lazyevaluationranch:05/08/20 Ripening fruit on one of the sichuan peppercorn trees, our only cr
lazyevaluationranch:05/08/20 Ripening fruit on one of the sichuan peppercorn trees, our only crop to survive this year’s Deerpocalypse.At some point in the distant past, plants in the Zanthoxylum genus hit on a reasonably clever strategy to avoid being eaten - they contain sanshool, which produces touch hallucinations by triggering the nerves that normally detect soft touch. Deer apparently do not like Plant That Keeps Touching The Inside Of Your Mouth after you eat it. Deer are sensible beasts.Humans, on the other hand were like, dude, this fruit makes you hallucinate some sort of fizzy electric thing touching the inside of your mouth! That’s awesome, let’s eat lots of it!Hot peppers in the Capsicum genus contain capsaicin to trigger nerves that normally detect heat and make eaters hallucinate that their mouths are burning. Mints in the Mentha genus contain menthol to trigger nerves that normally detect cold and make eaters hallucinate than their mouths are freezing. All these plants just trying not to be eaten failed to reckon with the human tendency to say, “Whoa, this is so weird, I’m going to eat more of that.”On the other hand, here is a little grove of half a dozen carefully tended Zanthoxylum trees, half a planet away from the mountains where they evolved, bent by strange sea-winds and perched upon by wrens whose songs their ancestors could not have dreamed of. Perhaps it was a good strategy after all. -- source link