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Bug of the Week: Cacao Midge

July 31, 2013 / / 0 Comments

We found our bug of the week today from an unusual source, a children’s picture book called No Monkeys, No Chocolate by Melissa Stewart, Allen Young and illustrated by Nicole Wong. no-monkeys-no-chocolate(For a full review, see our sister blog, Wrapped In Foil).

You may wonder what a book about chocolate and monkeys has to do with insects. It turns out that cocoa trees grown in open plantations don’t make as many seeds as trees grown under the canopy of the rainforest. When scientists began to tease out the reasons why, they found that cocoa flowers are pollinated by a small fly called the cacao midge. The flowers are highly complex, so not just any insect can do the job. The flowers are also not self-pollinated. That means our chocolate bars and hot chocolate are the direct result of the presence of a tiny fly.

What does this fly look like? I was able to find this video of Mark Moffett (the insect photographer equivalent of Indiana Jones) capturing a photograph of the elusive fly.

Now that we know about the cacao fly, I would say chocolate lovers will definitely want to do everything we can to preserve it!

No Monkeys, No Chocolate, by Melissa Stewart, Allen Young and illustrated by Nicole Wong

Publisher: Charlesbridge Pub Inc (August 2013)
ISBN-10: 1580892876
ISBN-13: 978-1580892872

 
Disclosure: I am an affiliate for Amazon, and if you click through the linked title ad and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission at no extra charge to you. Proceeds will be used to maintain this self-hosted blog

Mystery Seed of the Week 168

July 30, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Our mystery seeds today are hard to spot.

mystery-seeds-168

When they are all mixed up with the other flower parts in the seed heads, it is hard to tell the seeds from the debris. They are beige and not very distinct.

mystery-seeds-usdaphotograph by Steve Hurst @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database

Does this cleaned up, close-up view help?

If you care to, please let us know in the comments if you have an idea what plant this week’s mystery seeds come from.

Edit:  the answer is now posted.

Seeds Sprouting Inside Tomato

July 30, 2013 / / 57 Comments

Our mystery last week had to do with seeds.

mystery-tomato

The brown bumps on the outside of the tomato were the clue.

tomato-seeds-sprouting-inside

You might have been able to guess if I had shown you this view instead. Do you see the stems and green bits under the tomato skin?

tomato-seeds-sprouting-peeled

Peeling back the tomato covering, those are tomato seedlings sprouting inside the tomato fruit.

tomato-seeds-sprouting-opened

If you open it up to the center, you can see the seeds are sprouting from inside the tomato. It wasn’t rotten or mushy at all. All the tomatoes in this cluster that I had purchased from the grocery store had sprouting seeds.

It turns out that it isn’t all that uncommon for certain cultivars of tomatoes to do this, particularly the “tomatoes-on-the-vine” variety from the grocery store.

The first part of this video explains it is called vivipary when the seeds sprout inside the fruit, usually when still attached to the mother plant.

 

We also regularly see seeds sprouting inside our pink grapefruit towards the end of the season.

grapefruit-seed-sprouting-in-fruit

These are from fruit still hanging on the tree.

grapefruit-seed-sprouting-inside

Can you see the long root?

 

Have you ever opened a fruit and found a seed sprouting?

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