Episode 59: Monster-Beating Mocktails & Flashy Flowers - Petunia
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Rotted! This week we are continuing on with our flower theme with a plant you’ve likely seen popping up more and more now that a lot of us are past our final frost date- petunia.
Petunias are a popular fluted flower that come in a variety of colors. They are popular in landscapes and hanging baskets due to their delicate looking, but fairly heat resistant blooms. They like to be well watered in nutrient rich soil so they can really focus on keeping those blooms vibrant.
As a member of the solanaceae, or nightshade, family, petunias have bad ass cousins like henbane, datura, and of course, belladonna. But unlike those baddie botanicals, petunias aren’t poisonous.
These guys are on the smaller side, with most only getting about 4 inches tall, with about a 2 ft spread in the ground. They are annuals, but they do reseed easily, so it’s not unheard of to see them popping up in the same spot each year.
Just like a TON of the other popular landscape plants, petunias have been hybridized to heck, coming in pretty much any color or growth structure you can imagine. Some are really trumpety, others are floppy with lots of petals, and ONE that was just approved for sale here in the US last year is even bioluminescent.
That one is known as “firefly” and it was actually created by splicing in genes from a bioluminescent mushroom! I’ll likely dive into that in another episode or a lightly rooted, and these kinds of products are popping up all over the place recently!
While petunias could someday replace your nightlight, that’s not the only way they can be used to ward off monsters. According to ancient incas,the smell of petunias was so strong and sweet that they were able to ward off underground malicious spirits.
Their scent was so powerful, in fact, that the incas would even collect a group of buds and tur n them into a powerful elixir. Unfortunately I couldn’t find more on what kind of drink they made, but I am sure it was delightful and refreshing and VERY good at keeping those evil spirits at bay.
The petunias the incas used in their mocktails were a little different than the ones we’re all oggling at in nurseries today. Those varieties really didnt come until the early 1900s, when german and japanese botanists developed the varieties we know and love today.
Whil they have been loved across europe since the 1880’s, petunias sid’t hit their it girl status here in the S until the nursery boom in the 1950’s, when gareneing became more accessible to way more people, and you no longer had to start all of your plants from seed or cuttings.
Since then, petunias have been constantly reimagined and remixed in pretty much eerie way imaginable.
In food, Petunias have always been a popular topper in salads and garnish for drinks, but now they are even being used to improve the artificial cherry flavor. This all started in the purdue food science research lab, where scientists discovered that petunias actually contain Benzaldehyde- the chemical used to recreate that iconic cherry/almond scent we see so often in soda and candy.
This chemical is important to food scientists as it’s complicated and a little expensive to make in the lab. It’s also what attracts pollinators, so while we know lots of plants can make it, it was hard for them to pin down exactly which ones did, and what exactly was there…that is, until they brought in petunias.
Now that they know they contain the compound, they are working on finding a way to extract it and transfer it into yeast, which would bring the cost of making these flavorings WAY down…
If that’s not cool enough, petunias were also used to treat a slew of respiratory ailments! Often they were brewed into a tea, where their antiinflammatory and antibacterial properties were believed to help people breathe just a little easier.
Next time you see one of these fancy florals in the world, I hope you’ll take a second to say hello, and give it a good sniff to keep the monsters at bay.
I know this was a shorter one, but we have a lot of exciting things coming, and I am excited to share those all with you soon! Until then, thanks so much for supporting me, this show, and this weird little corner of the internet. I am really excited to make some new things for you guys, and bring back a few of the old formats we have moved away from. See you then!
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petunia
https://lumbyvalleytimes.ca/the-petunia/
