The nasturtium is a member of the mustard family known as Brassicaceae, which contains five species. It is native to South America and brought to Europe by the Spanish conquistadors at the end of the 15th century. By the 17th century, Dutch and Spanish herbalists began developing another species and shared the seeds with British and other European botanists.
The pansy is a member of the genus Viola – it is closely related to the violet and of the species Viola tricolor. Its common name is derived from the French word “pensée” meaning “thought” because the petals of the flower can resemble a human face that nods downward in contemplation.
Petunias are a member of the Solanaceae family that includes eggplants, peppers, potatoes and tomatoes. They became a separate species about thirty million years ago. The Petunia inflata is a small purple flower that attracts bees with its bright color, but some flowers lost their color and became Petunia axillaris, a larger white flower, resulting in the production of modified scent compounds to attract hawkmoths.
We were at a local park, and while I tried to take more than five consecutive steps on my slackline without slipping, my best friend, B, was lying belly-up in the grass, musing to no one in particular about the miracle of capillary action. To give a bit of context, he spent the last year working on a research project funded by NASA, the aim of which being to grow lettuce on the ISS. As he would say, he needed only to build synthetic root systems, and everything else would just fall into place.