("Storybook")
(static buzzing)
("Vienna Beat")
- Hi, everybody.
Now, I haven't been visiting
the national parks very much lately.
I've been mostly at home,
and so I've been spending a lot of time
with the vegetables, and
spices, and herbs in my kitchen
and thinking about how they remind me
of the plants in the national parks.
First of all, remember
that plants generally
have an above ground part, here,
where the plant makes
its food using sunlight,
water, and air,
and a below ground part, the roots,
where the plant connects to the soil
to get water and mineral nutrients.
Almost all plants have these
parts, but plants have a lot
of other different things they need to do,
and so they have a lot of other structures
that they build to meet those needs.
("Pinky")
Let me tell you how this
ginger rhizome reminds me
of Everglades National Park.
Now a lot of plants that
have green bendy stems
like grasses have rhizomes,
and the rhizome is a special
underground storage stem.
It's a bit like a basement,
where you could put things
that you don't need right now,
but you might need later.
A lot of the plants that we eat
are some kind of underground storage stem,
like garlic, and onions,
and sweet potatoes,
and the advantage of having this kind
of underground storage stem is
that if something bad happens
to the leaves and the shoots,
then the plant can regrow new stems
and new leaves like this sweet potato
that's been sitting in my
kitchen for a long time.
See how it's growing new stems and leaves.
Now the reason that the
ginger rhizome reminds me
of the Everglades is that the Everglades
are full of sawgrass.
Sawgrass is what gives
the park its nickname,
the Sea of Grass, and the
sawgrass has rhizomes.
Which is good, because if
the sawgrass gets eaten
by hungry snails
or if the stems get broken by strong winds
or burned up by fire,
the underground sawgrass
rhizomes can grow new stems.
("Little Tomcat")
Mm smells good. Now
cinnamon is actually bark.
It's actually curls of bark
cutoff from the cinnamon tree,
and bark serves as a kind of armor
to protect the soft parts of the stem.
It protects the stem
from cold temperatures
and from insects that
might want to eat the stem.
Botanists or plant scientists love bark,
because you can look at the texture,
and the color, and the shapes on bark
and tell what kind of
tree you're looking at.
When I smell my cinnamon
here in my kitchen,
it reminds me of the
beautiful, giant sequoias
in Kings Canyon in Sequoia National Parks,
because those sequoias are huge,
and they have also
really, really thick bark.
It can be like 18 inches thick.
It's so thick that it can help protect
the sequoia trees against fire.
("Planet Zero")
I have some flowers that we eat.
I have broccoli, which
is a kind of flower,
and then I have some
flowers from my garden,
rather than from my fridge, dandelions,
which actually are an edible plant.
Now flowers are very important to plants,
'cause it helps them start the
process of making new plants,
but they're also really
important to pollinators,
like bees 'cause they feed them.
They give them nectar
and pollen that they eat.
The dandelion actually
is a relative newcomer
to North America.
The dandelion was brought to North America
by Spanish and English immigrants
who use it as food and medicine,
and in the national parks,
it can disrupt the native
plants that grow there.
So I think of dandelions as a bit
like someone interrupting a soccer game.
So your soccer game is your native plants
who are all working
together or working apart
but playing by the same set of rules
and playing the same game,
and then the dandelion or
invasive plant runs out
onto the field and interrupts the game.
So in parks like Denali
National Park in Alaska,
rangers and visiting
student interns work hard
to remove dandelions so that native plants
can grow and prosper.
Well, everybody, thanks for joining me
through this trip through my kitchen.
Remember that when you eat,
you're connected to the farmers,
and the plants and animals,
and the water and the soil,
even in the places that you've never been
where your food comes from.
Thanks, everybody.
("Balloons Rising")
