Solanum

Solanum Dangerous and beautiful, tasty and deadly, nature’s guessing games... When I was a child my mother told me that her parents and other wise adults warned her never to eat tomatoes. After all, it was well known that all parts of the tomato plant, especially the ripe red fruit so loved by birds and horn worms, were deadly poison. Genetic bits bind the natural world together, we *****Sapiens distantly to the genus Solanum, including that tomato I mentioned, flourishing perhaps in your garden, dying in mine, flattened by hail and record rains. Eventually some brave soul, forgotten to history, bit into one, juice dribbled past her smiling lips and down her chin; she survived. Antediluvian genetics... Might it be possible that the primordial soup imparted a tiny drop or two of Solanum juice to us humans? After all, we are beauty and danger, juiciness, compassion narcissism, light and the darkness, joy, anger, and grief in varying measure. If so, the tomato prevails. The rule then is: eat the fruit and all is well. Eat the greens in an otherwise lovely salad and be dead before dessert.