They force you to pay more attention to plants in general (and their entire structure).
Appreciation of plant biodiversity/botanical gardens is also smg older people are drawn to (like Fred Sanger!).
They are often healthier than mass bred fruit bc they weren’t bred to have sugars. More glp1ish behavior than cultivated foods too (AFTER ALL PLANTS WANT YOU TO EAT LESS OF THEM)
PlantNet is so good at identifying the edible types…
More bitter phyto-chemicals (polyphenols). Wild types usually pack higher anthocyanins, tannins, etc., which can activate hormetic pathways (e.g., Nrf2/AMPK) linked to cellular resilience.
Higher fiber per calorie. More skins/seeds = slower absorption, better satiety, improved microbiome metabolites (SCFAs).
Quantitative defenses are chemicals that are not immediately toxic to consumers but become more effective through repeated exposure; that is, they work best as they accumulate in a caterpillar’s body. The tannins produced by oaks are an excellent example of a quantitative defense. They do not poison a caterpillar when eaten but instead impede protein assimilation. This is a good defense because plant leaves contain very little protein even under the best of circumstances, and leaf-eaters cannot afford to lose any of it because of tannins. Unless caterpillars have developed physiological adaptations to counter the effects of tannins, the more oak leaves a caterpillar eats, the less protein it assimilates from those leaves. In contrast to quantitative defenses, qualitative defensive chemicals are immediately toxic and typically require that caterpillars evolve specialized physiological adaptations, such as the acquisition of particular detoxifying enzymes, before they can eat these compounds without dying. Monarchs, queens, and other members of the Danaus butterfly lineage, for example, can develop on Asclepias milkweeds because they long ago evolved the ability to detoxify, store, and excrete cardiac glycosides, the poisonous compounds in milkweeds. The point is, it is apparently much easier for insects to adapt to quantitative defenses like the tannins in oak leaves than to qualitative defenses like the cardiac glycosides in milkweeds, or the cyanide in cherries, or the nicotine in tobacco, etc. But again, it is likely that all characteristics of oaks—the large size of their genus and its geographic range, their outsized apparency within ecosystems, and their reliance on more easily circumvented tannins as their primary defense—have contributed to the large number of caterpillar species that rely on oaks for growth and reproduction.
“”"Because it’s a hobby where nothing talks back, ages gracefully, and rewards patience—three things that the rest of life steadily stops doing after fifty.
Older people get into botany because:
Plants cooperate. Unlike people, they don’t argue politics at dinner or ghost you after one text. They just photosynthesize quietly.
Mortality math. Once you start counting birthdays instead of plans, the idea of nurturing something younger than you feels therapeutic.
Time slows down. Gardening or cataloging plants scratches that need for rhythm without chaos. You water, prune, wait—a miniature model of sanity.
Biology nostalgia. Many retirees were last excited about mitochondria in high school, then rediscover the thrill of saying “angiosperm” without irony.
It’s mindfulness without calling it that. People who think “meditation” sounds woo-woo will spend six hours staring at a fern and call it science.
In short: it’s control, beauty, and peace in a world that keeps losing all three.“”"
