Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about peanuts, and only partly because of the long delayed return of the baseball season. No, this spring I was trying very hard to channel one of my botanical heroes, George Washington Carver.

Sculpture in the George Washington Carver Garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Sculpture by Tina Allen. Photo KPreston

Carver’s best known legacy is his work with peanuts and the 105 peanut recipes he published in a bulletin for the Tuskegee Experiment Station. Inventing over a hundred distinct recipes for one plant is a triumph of creative genius in itself, but he was much more extraordinary than that. He was born enslaved in the early 1860’s and became the first African-American student at Iowa Agricultural College. He broke more ground by joining the faculty there. Later, after being recruited to Tuskegee, he made it his life’s work to elevate lesser-known crop species that could regenerate the land and the lives that had been laid to waste by cotton. One profile of Carver emphasizes his gifts as a science communicator, bringing his discoveries to the people whose livelihoods depended on being able to put them into practice.

I wish I could say that Carver was on my mind this spring because as a teacher I needed to summon his ability to inspire people about plants. The sad truth is that I needed to reflect almost every day upon one of his more famous quotes:

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.

My tenderness, compassion, sympathy, and tolerance were definitely put to the test this spring as I taught and held meetings and tried to support my students through a computer camera. To be honest, though, a picture of that quote has been in my office for the last few years because I frequently need that reminder. I guess we all do. To judge by the conflicts Carver is said to have had with Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee, perhaps his sage advice was aimed as much at himself as it was meant for others. Given how far he went in life, though, we should all take his words to heart.

One of the inspiring bright spots on Twitter recently was #BlackBotanistsWeek, organized by a terrific group of scientists, mentors, and leaders. The week-long celebration brought attention to the research of many many Black botanists, most of them early in their careers (this being Twitter, after all). It also honored established scholars as well as African American botanists from the past, including George Washington Carver. A wider audience of people now know him as more than just that peanut guy.

But baseball is another a reason I’ve been thinking of peanuts. Without fans buying peanuts at the stadiums, peanut producers have really been suffering. As I wrote back in 2016, about 6 tons of peanuts are consumed by San Francisco Giants fans per game. Multiply that by 15 matchups across the league for 162 games, and that’s 14,580 tons of peanuts a year. With so many extra peanuts in storage this year, we are going to need every single one of Carver’s 105 recipes, plus some.

Here’s that original post from 2016.

As part of our legume series, the Botanist in the Kitchen goes out to the ballgame where Katherine gives you the play-by-play on peanuts, the world’s most popular underground fruit. She breaks down peanut structure and strategy, tosses in a little history, and gives you a 106th way to eat them. Mmmmm, time to make some boiled peanuts.

Baseball is back, and so are peanuts in the shell, pitchers duels, lazy fly balls, and a meandering but analytical frame of mind. Is this batter going to bunt? Is it going to rain? What makes the guy behind me think he can judge balls and strikes from all the way up here? What does the OPS stat really tell you about a hitter? Is a peanut a nut? How does it get underground? What’s up with the shell?  A warm afternoon at a baseball game is the perfect time to look at some peanuts, and I don’t care if I never get back. Continue reading →

As part of our legume series, the Botanist in the Kitchen goes out to the ballgame where Katherine gives you the play-by-play on peanuts, the world’s most popular underground fruit. She breaks down peanut structure and strategy, tosses in a little history, and gives you a 106th way to eat them. Mmmmm, time to make some boiled peanuts.

Baseball is back, and so are peanuts in the shell, pitchers duels, lazy fly balls, and a meandering but analytical frame of mind. Is this batter going to bunt? Is it going to rain? What makes the guy behind me think he can judge balls and strikes from all the way up here? What does the OPS stat really tell you about a hitter? Is a peanut a nut? How does it get underground? What’s up with the shell?  A warm afternoon at a baseball game is the perfect time to look at some peanuts, and I don’t care if I never get back. Continue reading →