A few hundred years ago a new fad was sweeping through the ranks of European privilege. It was a substance refined from an enigmatic plant brought back from the New World. While it was hailed as a 'miracle' by some, more recent experience has shown that long term consumption can lead to erratic behavior, serious weight fluctuations, and systemic organ failure. Even one time users can fall victim to immediate, fatal cardiopulmonary collapse. But it's not all bad: I must confess, on my very first date with Mrs. DS, at the close of the roaring nineties, she and I both indulged. Soon the mysterious extract worked its neurotransmitter magic, we gazed into each other's now fluttering, blazing eyes, and fell madly in love.
If you could travel back about 150 million years, you'd be well advised to watch where you step. Saurian monsters abound, hungry eyes watch from ambush. With all that to worry about, it would be easy to miss the most important new organism to arise in ages, standing low amid the tangled ferns and towering conifers. But a sharp-eyed observer might have made out a dash of red or yellow, in contrast to a planet which had known only green rain forests and blue oceans for eons. It was an archaefructus (Left), the first angiosperm, more commonly known as a flowering plant. And it would change the world.
After the K-T Impact 65 million years ago that wiped out the dinos, flowering plants served the survivors up with a smash hit; fruits, nuts, and grasses. Seeds were transported far and wide by animal courier, often deposited in a pad of rich, homemade fertilizer, pollen was transferred by insects. It was the most ingenious strategy ever devised by flora. The new plants spread like wildfire. Earth was soon graced by lovely blossoms and sweet perfumes from snowy pole to balmy equator.
The partnership offered to animals by humble grasses alone transformed entire continents. By about 30 million years ago they dominated the steamy forest floors and vast arid plains, giving rise to the largest land-dwelling mammals in the history of life on earth. Over the next 25 million years a few of these hardy flowering grasses evolved into the forerunners of modern grain and sugar cane. Those two groups of angiosperms now account for about three-quarters of the human diet. Trillions of calories are consumed every day in the form of wheat, rice, corn, and sugar. And each pound of meat, every gallon of milk, represents bushels of grain. Quite literally, humans are flower-powered.
Of course, the plants could never fully trust their new animal partners. So they developed potent counter measures. Wait until fruit is ripe, when the seeds are ready for dispersal, and you were rewarded with a tasty treat. Eat them beforehand, and you might get a tummy ache from hell. And consuming the leaves, stems, or bark, could earn the offender a lingering, toxic death. Many modern drugs originate from such defenses; Quinine from tree bark, caffeine from coffee beans, and narcotics from Opium Poppies.
Which brings me back to my first date with the future Mrs. DS and the highly habit forming, brain altering substance we ingested at the dawn of the Millennium. The source was a flowering plant, the substance it produces is sublime. Yet, we broke no Draconian Drug Laws. It was first used in a crude form by the Aztecs (Or Mayans) over a thousand years ago. They called it Xo-co-latl. But we know it today as Chocolate.
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