Botanical Interest in ‘No Such Thing as a Fish’

One of my favorite podcasts is ‘No Such Thing as a Fish‘ (NSTaaF) from the QI elves (writers). Each week, the four co-hosts bring a fact they present to the others and discuss. In Episode 167, “No Such Thing as Milk From a Yak“, two of the four segments were devoted to botanical subjects.

One about the Melbourne City Council program that gave an email address to the 70,000 trees in the city (NSTaaF thought it should be called Tree mail). The program is designed to get citizens to report any issues with the trees, however, some people send more personal emails to trees. NSTaaF got into the tree’s perspective with some emailers maybe sending stalker-ish messages to a tree (that can’t run away and are rooted to the ground!). They also ask how creepy it would be if someone came up to a person and tattooed they love someone else on them.

The third segment moved on to talk about the new record holding chili pepper, ‘Dragon’s Breath’ (2.4 million Scoville Heat Units), the Scoville scale, and something they love on the podcast: Nominative determinism. The farmer who created the previous record holding Carolina Reaper pepper is named Edward Curry. Both segments get to how plants show up in our society, define culture as well as some botanical facts.