
Kale, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts are all the same species - lukas
http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/8/6/5974989/kale-cauliflower-cabbage-broccoli-same-plant
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daveloyall
I can't believe the author left THESE out:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=geometric+brassicas&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=geometric+brassicas&tbm=isch)

You can make them at home, but it requires a lot of work and luck, since
brassicas cross-breed if they are near each other at all.

~~~
technotony
Another plant he left out was Arabidopsis, which is the model organism most
studied by plant biologists as it has the second shortest plant genome (they
used to think it was the shortest). My company
([http://www.glowingplant.com](http://www.glowingplant.com)) is engineering
these to make them glow in the dark... so maybe we can make glow-in-the-dark
broccoli next ;) It's not hundreds of years to make new cultivars now,
dramatic changes can be achieved in months. Fun fact: you can make an
arabidopsis look like a Brussels sprout with the modification to a single
gene... it wouldn't taste as good though, that takes more genes!

~~~
jarin
That's probably because it's not even in the same genus as the others.

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jakespencer
Though the article mentions it, I can't believe the headline left out
broccoli, which is the form of this species that I eat the most of.

~~~
dang
Let us rectify the insult to broccoli.

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Pirate-of-SV
In Swedish and I guess in other languages as well it's not that mind blowing.

We call them: Grönkål, Blomkål, Vitkål, Broccoli, Brysselkål

~~~
bonchibuji
Here are the Finnish names (in the order of the headline):

lehtikaali, kukkakaali, kaali, parsakaali, ruusukaalikasveille

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OmarIsmail
I've unintentionally known this for about 25 years. Nobody ever believed that
I was allergic to broccoli or cauliflower and just thought I hated them. Then
one day I tried out kale and found that it tasted similar to broccoli to me. I
asked my wife if she felt the same way (brussel sprouts also taste the same)
and she said they all taste very different to her.

We then looked up and saw that they're all part of the mustard family.

So if you're ever curious if a plant is part of the mustard family just let me
taste it and I'll let you know... and then throw up on you.

~~~
taejo
If you taste them raw, they all definitely have a common, slightly mustardy
flavour.

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mmanfrin
As is mustard. It's a pretty astounding species.

~~~
aamar
The mustard that we typically eat as a condiment or greens are _Sinapis alba_
, _Brassica juncea_ , and _Brassica nigra_ , which are in the same family as
_Brassica oleracea_ , but they aren't the same species.

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BrainInAJar
what is this? /r/TIL ? Of course they are...

~~~
mdturnerphys
[http://xkcd.com/1053/](http://xkcd.com/1053/)

~~~
BrainInAJar
Yeah, I understand people learn new things all the time, but is HN a really
appropriate place for Facebook posts?

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stygiansonic
Great example of the power of selective breeding.

~~~
mbreese
Ah yes, selective breeding... also known as the original method for creating
GMOs. Nowadays we can just do things a bit faster without all of the waiting
required for multiple generations of crops. But that doesn't mean that we
haven't been practicing artificial genetic selection for millennia.

~~~
undersuit
Ah yes, validating all GMOs just because we've been breeding cultivars for
thousands of years.

Safety not gauranteed: The solanine heavy Lenape Potato, sure solanine is in
all potatoes, but when did a non-green one make you sick? The "killer
zucchini" from New Zealand with dangerous amounts of curcubitan caused by a
aphid outbreak in the organic fields.

Mono-cultures can happen: The Irish potato famine could have been reduced in
severity if there were more variety among Ireland's food crops or their potato
cultivars in 1845. While nowhere near as devasting to humanity, the
destruction of the Gros Michel banana cultivar and the impending threat of the
newest banana-phage on the current Cavendish cultivar aren't exactly a good
faith offering on future mono-cultures, GMO or not, being avoided.

~~~
hibikir
You seem to be making two contradicting points here.

On one end, you talk about food safety, and how altering the DNA of a plant
means it might not be safe anymore. But in that case, the best thing we could
do is to make sure we are always making plants with the exact same genetics:
All clones. That's the only way you can tell what you are eating. There are
more genetic changes in a naturally bred, not inbred crop than there are in a
GMO event vs the untraited plant.

Then you seem to dislike monocultures: If you want the plants to be safe from
some phage, nothing better than high genetic diversity in plants, which leads
to us really having no idea of how safe what we are eating is.

We either want to treat them as drugs, and make monocultures the way of the
world, or we look for genetic diversity, in which case having some BT toxins
embedded in your corn plant won't be that bad. Just ask agribusiness to make
sure there's at least 8 different germplasms per bag or something like that.

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contingencies
As it happens I learned this last week or so creating my latest Wikipedia
trivia page, the ultimately badass
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_superfoods](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_superfoods)

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31reasons
Whatever you want to call it, they don't have exactly the same genome. Calling
them the same species is like saying Dog is Wolf and Human is Ape.

~~~
sp332
I'm not sure if it has changed, but things used to be called the same species
if they can interbreed with each other and produce fertile offspring. Dog is
wolf, yes; man is ape, no.

~~~
MikeTaylor
What you are describing is known as the Biological Species Concept. It's one
of at least 28 species concepts that have been proposed in the scientific
literature -- they were surveyed in a review paper whose reference
irritatingly escapes me. Anyway, the BSC is not the only game in town (and is
particularly useless to those, like me, who are palaeontologists.)

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daveslash
I don't believe it. Very interesting read, and I don't doubt that the plants
all originated from the same species . However, I'm not convinced that they
are _still_ the same species; can one assert that we have, through artificial
selection, induced speciation? I believe this is more likely.

I will admit that the definition of "species" is subject to debate. The
general definition to which I subscribe requires that two individuals are able
to mate, produce offspring, and that can then mate and produce offspring of
its own. A major shortcoming with this definition, however, is that it does
not address Ring Species.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species)

~~~
jacquesm
The word 'believe' has no place in a scientific debate. Either you know or you
don't know. What you believe does not enter into it, that means you need to do
more research or read up on the research that has already been done.

~~~
DanBC
That's nonsense. There are lots of parts of science where someone could
reasonably say "I believe it's this, but I'll change my mind if future science
changes my mind".

An example of where this is useful is around Neanderthals. "Did they have
language?", "Did they have burial with ceremony?" are questions where it's
fine to have belief on the current evidence because there's not enough data to
know the answer.

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kolev
Yes and they all are powerful goitrogenic plants. Don't eat them raw... unless
you hate your thyroid! When I see people sipping on raw kale juice, I feel
sorry for them! Raw is not always better! Would you eat raw potatoes, for
example, or raw mushrooms (toxins), or spinach (rich in oxalates)?

~~~
wcummings
If you have a healthy thyroid, raw kale is fine. Similarly, if you have
healthy kidneys the amount of oxalates in raw kale or spinach shouldn't be a
problem.

So tired of hearing this nonsense from people who read a few blog posts
instead of asking their doctor.

~~~
kolev
Hmmm... I think "healthy" is very relative and Google is planning to put all
its powers to determine exactly what that means. How about not relying on
something so subjective and just do a little extra effort to cook the
problematic foods?

~~~
hga
Well, for me, I hate cooked broccoli, love it raw. Although come to think of
it, I never eat all that much in one sitting.

So I'll be looking into the details of this.

~~~
kolev
Trans-lycopene in cooked tomatoes is times more compared to raw, for example.
Steamed broccoli is definitely more pleasant to eat to most and those chewing
it raw mostly do it thinking it's healthier this way. The popular wisdom is
that in a soup, cell walls of vegetables are broken and nutrients are released
in the broth - is there a PubMed article on this? How about centuries-old
practice instead? Just now medicine finds, for example, the merits of
Ayurveda. For example, the combination of turmeric and black pepper in curry
is now scientifically proven to increase curcumin's bioavailability by orders
of magnitude. Should you always wait decades or forever for science to prove
something that's passed the test of the ages?

~~~
xenophonf
> How about centuries-old practice instead?

Centuries-old practice had people leeching the vile humors out of their bodies
when they got sick, too. The ancients got a lot of stuff wrong, and what they
got right was largely by accident. I'll trust scientific rigor along with the
confidence intervals and error bars over received wisdom every time.

Also, here's a link to a Pubmed article on chicken soup:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002768/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002768/)

Nothing about breaking down the cell walls of vegetables to release the
nutrients, so I don't know if that's true.

And here's another Pubmed article about soup, highlighting the danger of food
fads (because people don't want to wait for nutritional science to prove
something and instead rely on the "test of the ages"):

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3279073/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3279073/)

~~~
kolev
I meant to say "practices that survived till nowadays". Your position of
"PubMed it or it didn't happen" is really entertaining.

~~~
xenophonf
Homeopathy has survived until nowadays, despite a lack of evidence of
efficacy.

You also mis-characterize my position on PubMed. It is a search engine with
which I am familiar, not the summation of all scientific medicine. If I can't
find something in PubMed, my thoughts on a matter remain "dunno", which is
orthogonal to "believe/disbelieve" or "accept/reject". I included links to
PubMed articles on soup as a humorous rejoinder to your rhetorical question.
That was probably unnecessary, and I apologize.

~~~
kolev
Well, homeopathy, ﻿﻿Dr. Schuessler's salts, and Dr. Bach's flower remedies are
most probably just a placebo, which is better than many drugs especially in
the States, although I know many who swear the Boiron flu "meds" really work
and I don't think placebo performs well with viral and bacterial infections.

