Chives and meadow garlic: two members of the onion family

Chives and meadow garlic together in my herb garden in 2010.

Chives: (Allium schoenoprasum) a classic herb that produces edible leaves, bulbs, and flowers. A perennial plant, chives is widespread in nature across much of Eurasia and North America. It is the only species of Allium native to both the New and the Old Worlds.

Chives are a commonly used herb and vegetable with a variety of culinary uses, but mostly for garnish, because with their hollow stems they fall apart during cooking. They are also used to repel insects, but chives are not native to Florida. 

Meadow Garlic: (Allium canadense) a rarely used perennial herb native to most of eastern North America. It also produces edible leaves, bulbs, and flowers. It's leaves are solid which means that this plant does withstand cooking. As a crop, it has a few characteristics that are a bit different. It dies back for the summer, so leaves are not available for harvesting then, but you could dig the bulbs to use if you know where they are. They sprout again from their bulbs in mid fall, bloom in the spring, and die back after blooming. They produce several bulblets in each flower head, which readily grow where they fall, so this crop spreads rapidly once it's established.

When they are available from late fall through to spring, I use the leaves for both salads and cooking in soups, omelets, stir frys and more. Because the leaves are solid they are more useful in the kitchen than the chives. The taste is similar to, but not the same as chives or garlic chives (Allium tuberosum) and it has a bit of spicyness or heat. All three have an onion overtone, and of the three, chives is the most bland. The meadow garlic flowers also have more flavor than the chives flowers. 

Grapes (Vitis spp.)

A muscadine grape (Vitis rotundifolia 'Alachua')
Credit: Ali Sarkhosh, UF/IFAS

Florida's grapes

There are six species of grapes that are native to Florida, while some have small ranges, grapes are found in all parts of the state. 

- Summer grape (Vitis aestivalis)
- Florida grape (Vitis cinerea var. floridana)
- Catbird grape (Vitis palmata)
- Muscadine (Vitis rotundifolia)
- Calloose grape (Vitis shuttleworthii)
- Frost grape (Vitis vulpina)

The muscadine grape is native to all of Florida and from Delaware to eastern Texas. This is grown as a sustainable crop in Florida and has been bred so that this normally dioecious plant (with separate male and female plants) is self-fertile or monoecious.

Why do plants produce caffeine?

I've covered this topic on my cruise ship presentations on coffee.

A bit of plant science for this post...

Caffeine is the most widely consumed psycho-active substance in the world!

Caffeine is not the work of Satan, nor the product of some mad scientists working in a chemistry lab; rather, it’s the result of millions of years of plant evolution. 

All plants build a variety of compounds including enzymes. Many of these molecules serve as a defense against enemies of the plants—large and small. 

Building caffeine is an expensive process (energy-wise) for the plant, so why do they do it? 

There's nothing Spanish or mossy about Spanish moss

Spanish moss adds to the South's character and elegance. 

Not Moss

Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is a flowering plant in the pineapple family (Bromeliaceae), so it's not a moss at all. (Mosses are non-vascular, non-flowering, spore-producing plants.) It's an epiphyte or air plant found in damp areas near waterways or swamps because it absorbs its moisture and nutrients from the air, so while it hangs from trees, it's not a parasite like mistletoe and does not rob the host tree of water or nutrients.