Trail Mix: The Flexisexual Apricot

Hey, plant lovers and plant killers. I'm Jonathan.

And I'm Jeanette.

We're two old high school friends, current geriatric millennials.

This is Plant Sluts, the podcast where plants meet pop culture, sex, gossip, and

all the dirt in between.

Coming to you from a backyard in

Salem, Oregon, and a rooftop in Montreal,

Quebec, where plant slots.

We're Plant Sluts.

Oh, my God. Hey, Sluts.

Hey, Sluts. Welcome to the fourth episode of our trail mix series.

This series where we unpack the weird history hiding in your fanny pack.

So today we're peeling off the tough skin to reveal the fleshy inside scoop.

But first, let's share garden status updates. Jonathan, what's going on in your garden?

Absolutely nothing.

Woo.

Woo. Really? That's my update.

Okay.

Just nothing. Just nothing.

I have been just fucking up everything. I tried to transplant some tomatoes and seedlings and they are now limply crying at me on the little seed starting bar cart. So everything's a mess. Nothing seems like it's gonna work out. And I think I'm at that point of the season where I don't believe that I will have a garden, or at least a successful one, and maybe all my house plants need to be thrown away.

You don't think you're just, like, catastrophizing a bit?

I do think I'm catastrophizing. Okay. Okay.

I'm sure, like, people really relate to that. I mean, I do. I feel like that a lot. I'm, like, embarrassed when people come over to my house and see my house plants. Like, even. Even when I show them my garden, I'm always, like, so embarrassed about it. I think your garden will still look beautiful.

Thank you.

And I think you shouldn't be so tough on yourself.

Yeah, we're in early days, you know, like right before the last predicted frost. And it's just kind of like things not going exactly how I planned and thinking, like, how am I making this mistake again? Like, I've done this before, you know, and you add something new into the mix and suddenly everything's off. But yeah, it's just kind of that pack pessimistic lull before everything springs to life.

I think there's still a lot more time to replant your tomato seedlings. Like, they. They catch up.

Yeah. All right, it's time for plant placements. Okay, we're going to read our botanical charts. In this segment, we create a category and have to decide our sun, moon and rising signs.

So if I remember correctly, your sun is who you are at Your core and the big personality themes. Your moon is feelings and emotional inner world, and your rising is your outer vibe.

Yeah. And today we're going to reveal our stone fruit personalities or fruits with the hard pit in the center. So I let you know that we were doing stone fruits for this episode, and. And Jonathan, what did you decide your sun sign is?

So I think my sun sign would have to be almond, but specifically the candied almond that you have at Italian weddings that you, like, throw at people.

Yeah.

They come in, like, little cellophane packs that you give as, like, wedding favors. I don't know if you. You know what I'm talking about, right?

Are those Jordan almonds?

Jordan?

Yeah, Jordan almonds.

I don't know.

Are they, like, pastel colors?

Yeah, yeah.

I think those are called Jordan almond.

Oh, okay. They're a little bit fancy and composed. Almond is really, like, at the center of the health craze, like an almond mom. So I think there's a little bit of, like, intensity about wellness there. And I guess I'm always the friend that has a plan and definitely a reusable water bottle or a reusable bag or that kind of thing. So a little bit like granola y.

I guess you're definitely giving off almond mom energy.

Thank you. But without the almond mom budget. So what would your sun sign be?

For my sun sign, I think I'm a prune, which is, to me, a prune is like a calm, reliable, grounded person. And, you know, very regular.

Yeah.

A little wrinkly, too. How about your moon? What did you choose for your moon?

Well, for my moon, I. I chose also prune because I think that people misunderstand the prune. It kind of has a bit of, like, old person energy. And I think if I'm talking about my feelings and my emotional inner world, I often feel misunderstood. And I don't want to say that, like, I'm emotionally intelligent, because that would be pretentious maybe. I don't know. But I think I'm, like, reflective a lot, so that's where like, that wise stuff might come. It's like I'm kind of like. I'm open to kind of thinking about my emotions and, like, where they come from. You know, obviously, like, lots of money and years in therapy have created that. Like, it's not. It's not just, like, natural, but. Yeah.

Comparatively to people who ignore their emotions and don't know why they're acting, how they're acting.

Yeah.

I would say you're emotionally intelligent and kind of in Touch with that.

Yeah, Like, I'll act really bad. Like, I'll. I'll overreact, but I'll know that I'm overreacting.

Yeah.

That doesn't stop me, though, from overreacting. Same.

Just terrible behavior and then dissect it later. So for my moon, I chose the olive, which is a savory, bold, and slightly divisive stone fruit. Some love it, some can't deal. Has, like, strong opinions, but, like, also a refined taste and, like, my own emotions. Sometimes I love olives, and sometimes I can't deal.

It has a low smoking temperature. Like. Like olive oil. You tend to go up and smoke at the smallest amount of heat.

Oh, my God, that's so true. Jonathan, what's your rising stone fruit?

And this is my outer vibe. Right. So for my outer vibe, I chose dried apricot. What? It's. Because, I don't know, it's, like, practical. You can bring it with you everywhere. It has a tough skin. I think it's dependable. Oh, okay. I give, like, a dependable vibe.

Yeah.

And it's true. It's like, that's one of my things, is, like, I really feel guilty when someone can't depend on me or if I make a commitment and have to cancel or uncommit.

Yeah, you're definitely not flaky.

And what about yours? What's your outer. What's your outer vibe?

My rising stone fruit, I think would be a cherry. It's small, punchy, high energy, sometimes chaotic, and it's sweet and tart, kind of in equal measures.

Mm.

It pops into the room and needs to be noticed, but it's also very, like, sweet and wholesome. I had a marcino cherry last night.

Yeah, but you're not like. Are you saying that you're like a marcino cherry? Those things are so gross.

No, I'm not a marcino cherry. Only when I drink.

I. Okay, so that was a cool. I like that segment.

Hop over to our Instagram and make sure you post your sun, moon, rising stone fruit placements so we can get to know everyone else's and make fun of you. Yeah, we'll try to make fun of you. Time to grab a mug, pick some herbs, and spill the tea.

Today we have a doozy. So have you been following the Ohio Master Gardener drama?

Have I? Kinda. I seen Tiktoks. It feels like the plot of a very boring telenovela, but I'm here for it. Spill it, let me know.

Okay, so I first came across this from Grant McHorst's Insta. So his handle is the gardening grant. Here's the breakdown. A master gardener in Ohio, her name is Pamela Coral Bennett, wrote an article for the Dayton Daily News. In this article, she decided to, quote, debunk the myth that we all need to plant native plants.

The absolute blasphemy of it.

It gets worse. So she actually defends the North American lawn. She claims that turf grass is actually an ecosystem that supports biodiversity and that we don't need to worry about things like light pollution and pesticides in our backyards.

What is she being sponsored by, like, big sod? Who paid for this article?

Scots? I don't know. So that's exactly what the Internet said. A landscape account called Birdsong Landscapes posted a massive rebuttal that teared apart every single claim. And now the Internet is so mad that they started a petition to have this woman, Pamela, stripped of her master gardener certification. I looked it up. It really only has about 200 signatures. So take that.

You know, that's actually a lot of signatures in the Ohio master gardener, like, circuit Community. Yeah, they are coming for her crown. But getting into the science, you are a landscape architecture student. What's your kind of professional take on turf grass being called an ecosystem?

Look, claiming a lawn is a healthy ecosystem is like claiming, like, a parking lot is a national park just because there's a seagull that lands on it. I mean, technically, lawns and turf grass house some insects, you know, like grubs, ants, worms. They've all adapted to live in the monoculture that is our lawn. But it's basically a biological desert. Right. Like, it requires a lot of water. It's usually pumped full of synthetic nitrogen, which, by the way, runs into our waterways. The idea that you're doing the environment a favor by planting Kentucky bluegrass instead of native milkweed or corn flowers or whatever is just, like, ecologically false. The lawn. I looked this up. The lawn is apparently the largest irrigated crop in the United States.

Wow.

It's an ecological disaster.

It's the patriarchy trying to dominate nature. Like, literally shaving the earth every weekend so it doesn't get messy. I'm not saying that as anti man, because men are being oppressed by this system. Being forced to mow constantly when they could be, like, watching football.

Yeah.

Or their kids.

Yeah, exactly. It's like the Victorian obsession with control all over again, you know?

And so what's her take on native plants? Like, what's her reasoning?

I mean, she did say that she has native plants, but she also has non natives. That pollinators like. And she's saying that this is fine and that it's about balance.

Yeah, balance. I would say I also have native and non native plants that pollinators like. But taking out that turf lawn is like my number one goal.

There's nothing wrong with having turf grass. The idea is that like you're working towards something or you just like you recognize what it is for what it is literally. And I think the problem is that she was debunking it. She was trying to dismiss that whole idea. Right. And that's like where her power was misused. And that's why I think they want to take away her master Gardener title. Pollinators are not a monolith. And yeah, a European honeybee could land on a non native petunia. But like native bees, butterflies and their caterpillars, they've co evolved with a lot of these native plants for millions of years. They need these specific host plants to survive. Like a monarch caterpillar. You know, it's not going to eat grass. It needs milkweed, period.

And that's why I have some being cold stratified in my fridge as we speak.

Oh.

So do we think she should lose her Master Gardener title? Like, do you think the petition is justified?

I don't know. I'm not one for Internet cancellation. But like I was saying earlier, like the Master gardener title implies that you're like a trusted source of horticultural science. And she works for the Ohio Agricultural Extension, State univers. Oh, she works for the Ohio State University, I believe.

Oh.

And so she's supposed to be educating the public.

Yeah.

So if you're using that platform to spread information that harms like a lot of these efforts for restoration, restorative and ecological efforts because you like a tidy lawn, like, I don't know, that sounds like malpractice or it just sounds really irresponsible.

Yeah, I agree. I think the plants have spoken and we are voting Pamela off the islands.

So next time you feel bad about your messy native garden, just remember that you're doing a lot better than an Ohio Master Gardener is.

Oh, thank you.

So today it's all about the apricot or apricot or whatever the orangey dried fruit that you find in trail mix. Jeanette, do you eat around the dried apricots or do you dig right into them?

I buy full bags of just dried apricots. That's my trail mix.

Yes, yes, I am the same camp as that. I love dried apricots. So the scientific name is Prunus armeniaca. And the word apricot comes from the Latin word praecox, which means early ripening or. Or a premature. It's the root of the word, like precocious.

Oh, thank God. Some fucking etymology.

So they earn the name because they are the eager beavers of the prunus family. So that includes most stone fruits. They are the very first trees to bloom in the spring. But because they are premature and they finish early.

Oh, no.

They are incredibly vulnerable to late spring frosts. So if you're growing them anywhere outside of a stable, warm Mediterranean climate, like tucked away in a sunny Italian olive orchard, for instance, fuck you. Or safely managed inside a climate controlled greenhouse, they will break your fucking heart. They bloom at the first sign of warmth, but get hit by a sudden frost and they drop all their fruit and ghost you.

That's been happening a lot in this region this year. We've been seeing early tree blossoms and then followed by frost. So I'm a little worried.

Well, and there are some varieties that have different blooming times, but that's the. That's kind of like the breaking point for an apricot.

Well, I found some good information about a health craze that started in the 70s, and our dear apricot was at the center of it. Actually brings us back to some of those plants we talked about in other earlier episodes, like bloodroot and the black salve. Yeah, and that fine line between medicine and poison. Jonathan, have you heard of vitamin B17?

No, that sounds like complete bullshit. What is that?

In the 1970s, massive unregulated wellness trend claimed that apricot seed extract marketed as B17 was a miracle cur for illness. And people were eating handfuls of the raw kernels. Inside that hard pit of an apricot is a small seed that looks exactly like a tiny almond. And it's packed with a compound called amygdalin.

Amygdalin.

And this turns into hydrogen cyanide when digested. But it wasn't curing anything. People were just giving themselves low grade cyanide poisoning, and then the FDA eventually had to crack down on it. But you can still find it kind of lurking in the weird dark corners of the. The wellness Internet space today.

Oh, okay. So sitting right next to the black sal. Yeah, but wait, because I do know that these kernels are actually consumed today. Like the apricot has an important place in Armenian culture, like, hence the botanical name Prunus armeniaca. An Armenian friend once gifted me an apricot jam that had like, mixed inside it. Whole apricot kernels.

Yeah. You can likely handle, like, a small amount of cyanide, but I wouldn't be eating that by the handful. And actually a lot of almond flavoring, like amaretto, is not made with almonds, but with apricot kernels.

Yeah. Actually, I do know that the spread of apricot is quite intriguing.

Trade routes.

Yeah. It likely originates from Central Asia, like Kyrgyzstan or Tikmenistan, and was taken and domesticated heavily in Armenia. Then from Armenia, it was brought to Italy, your motherland. And instead of traveling through Europe via the continental route, it actually went across the Mediterranean to North Africa and it did the whole tour of the Maghreb and popped over to Spain and then from Spain went to France and, you

know, spread around back to the apricot you're likely to find in your trail mix. When you dehydrate an apricot, it becomes an absolute powerhouse. It loses its delicate nature and becomes this, like, indestructible brick of energy. Dried apricots are so nutrient dense and shelf stable that NASA sent them to the moon on the Apollo 15 mission. They are the ultimate survival food. The astronauts died, but the food survived.

They found that they didn't actually eat the apricots, they just ate around them.

Yeah.

Add that to our apocalypse list, please. Dried apricots.

Yes. Have you ever noticed that dried apricots at the grocery store are really bright and like a glowing orange, but then if you dry them yourself, they turn out brown and look like a weird shoe leather?

Mm. Yeah.

That is because commercially dried apricots are gassed with sulfur dioxide before drying. That chemical preserves that bright orange color and stops the fruit from oxidizing or, like, rusting, basically, when it hits the air. Organic unsulfured apricots are naturally brown and taste more like caramel.

Right. I actually really love the brown ones. I prefer them. I find that they taste a lot like Earl Grey tea. I don't know why. That's, like, the first note that comes to me when I eat them.

I haven't really tried them, but now I'd like to.

So apricots are really flexisexuals. Oh. They are like Gen Z of the fruits in the way that they, like, swing left, right and all over the fucking place. Apricots are really easily bred with others in the Prunus genus. So other stone fruit like nectarines, peaches, cherries, whatever. Breeders because of that, have really gone crazy crossing them specifically with plums to create designer fruits. So I looked up some examples and we have pluots, which are mostly plum with a little bit of apricot. Apparently they're sweet and they have a smooth skin. And then there's apriums, which is mostly apricot with a little bit of plum. They're fuzzy, dense and tart. And then picatums, which is this three way cross between a peach, an apricot and a plum.

I thought pluots were in the Sims 3, but I think I'm thinking of plumbots, the little green thing that dances on top of their head. I'd love to cross breed some stone fruits in my orchard when I get rid of that lawn that that lady loves.

Pamela, Jeanette, it's time for you to tell us some magical shit about apricots.

All right. Apricots have some magical associations. Their element is water, they're feminine. And the ruling planet is Venus. Duh. So I was trying to look at our charts and see who I can compare it with and making sure hopefully we're not repeating ourselves too much. But my Venus is in Cancer, which is a water sign. So I thought I would hesitantly talk about myself.

Oh yeah. Very hesitant.

So Venus in Cancer and minds in the 11th house. It kind of shows like an emotional, vulnerable and sensitive person. The nurturer of the friend group who loves hosting. I feel like that was me pre pandemic.

Yeah, I forgot like what it's like to host people.

Yeah. Like I used to always throw parties and just have people over and now it's. That's kind of gone away.

I had people over last night.

Oh yeah.

And it was like at a moment where I was like, oh, I could just invite people over for dinner. Like I had forgotten exactly like this. I had forgot that like that's something that I could do.

Yeah, totally. If your Venus is in Cancer, you might be like over caretaking your friends and you might take on everyone's emotional problems. I seek that out when I'm like texting with friends. But also they may feel hurt by social rejection because their heart's tied to community friendships and any conflicts can hit really hard.

I wonder if like that has to do also with the apricots ability to cross with a lot of these species. Like they're afraid of social rejection and so then they over care take in the way that they just kind of let the other species or the other variety take over.

Yeah, they kind of take on everyone. They don't leave anyone out.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I also found some interesting folklore having to do with apricots because of its shape, which is like plump, soft, and flavor fuzzy with that cleft down the middle. And it's really sweet, dripping flesh. It was considered a potent aphrodisiac in Renaissance Europe and even in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, when the fairy queen Titiana is under a love spell and trying to seduce Nick Bottom, who at this point had his head turned into a donkey's. She orders her fairies to feed him apricots to get him in the mood.

Okay, I have no fucking clue what you're talking about. I have no recollection of any of this. In the Midsummer Night's Dream, I think I've successfully blocked out everything from high school, including all of those books that they forced us to read. I know that I've read it, but I have no idea what you're talking about. Like, none of these names or even like, Nick Bottom, who was turned into a donkey. Like, that sounds crazy. I didn't even. Nick Bottom with the tanque head.

If we go over to Egypt. The short and unreliable apricot season has created an Arabic expression, feel mishmish. I think it's pronounced okay, which kind of means in apricot season or in apricot, they use this phrase, feel mish, Mish. Like how we use when pigs fly. Like, kind of implying it's never going to happen.

I like that. I'm gonna start using that in English. Yeah, like, not the feel mishmis, but like, just saying I'll do it in apricot season.

Yeah, really? Strangely, I found that the US Marines consider it really bad luck to eat or possess apricots, especially near tanks. And the superstition has been documented since at least the Vietnam War and often thought to originate from World War II. Even saying apricot is considered unlucky. So they call them cots, forbidden fruit, or a fruit.

That's so weird.

Like, where the fuck did that come from?

Not the most problematic thing coming out of US military culture.

I guess I'm just wondering, like, who they attacked to get so scared of apricots.

Yeah, like what? What kind of trauma did they have with the apricot? Yeah, like, how could it be? No questions, no follow up questions. If you are in the U.S. marines, please let us know. Plants pod gmail dot com. Okay, no, but seriously, to end this segment, I think that next time I stare into a nice fleshy apricot with that nice defined cleft and juicy flesh, I will see it for its eagerness, for its sluttiness and for the ability to put me in the mood.

Hell yeah.

And I will be wearing that around my neck around any U.S. marine that approaches me.

Well, there's also some witchcraft where you wear the pit as protection because they consider like the pit that protects the seed kind of a sympathetic magic. So you could wear that as an amulet if you happen to be around anyone. Thanks for getting slutty with us.

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