ON MICKY D’S FILET OF FISH, TRAWLING, POLLOCK, SALMON, AND SUSTAINABILITY

As a boy on Long Island, I eagerly anticipated St Patrick’s Day—it was the harbinger of spring—but besides the religious holiday, it was the age-old, traditional Long Island “opening day“ of the winter flounder fishing season.  So each year on or near that date I would drag my 10 foot, cedar frame, canvas hull canoe from the barn loft and with a pail of clam bait and several coils of twisted linen (Cuttyhunk)  hand lines rigged with lead weights and Chestertown #9 flounder hooks, I would head to Great South Bay near Smith Point to fish for winter flounder (Pseudopleuronectes  Americanus) .  There, among the waving reeds and smell of salt water  I would splash though the clear shallows and paddle out to the edge of the channel where I would drop my anchor ( half of a concrete-block) and tie it off  over the bow.  With four # 9 Chestertown hooks  baited with small chunks of fresh quahog i dropped the lines over the bulwark of the canoe and  I tied off two lines to my  bare toes and  two I held in hand.  In a short time,  I that long anticipated little tug on the line, that mystery of what is at my bait.  My lines were busy and  one after another I would land a flapping flatfish with a brown back and white belly  with the both eyes on the right side of its head, and a tiny mouth—at that point stuffed with the red-threaded stem of a Chestertown hook. In a short time I caught  a dozen fat fooot long winter flounder. That would be taken home for a special dinner. 

Last year, I revisited my old Great South Bay fishing haunt.  My old canoe was long gone and I had no hand lines or fishing gear, but curiosity and nostalgia led me  to seek out  my old boat launching site near Smith Point. Was it still there?   It was!  There was a lot more asphalt roadway than in the past, and instead of sandy path to a beach with waving phragmites reeds, there was  a formal launching site…But I found not one  fisherman in sight on this warm sunny day after St Patricks Day.  

The boat launching site was guarded by a town official, an old gentleman about my age.   

“Where is everybody?”  I asked. 

“I’m right here every day” responded, the oldster, somewhat annoyed to be interrupted from watching a film on his iPhone.. He raised his glasses to his forehead then warned me: “So if you think you could launch a boat over there—-you should know you  need a town permit first.”

“No, I have no boat.  I was expecting to see a crowd of flounder fishermen down here on this lovely opening  day.”

“Flounder?. Ain’t been a winter flounder caught here in decades. I guess about 1980 we seen the last of ‘em. Where you been?”

I was absent from the area I admitted to my self as I walked away astounded. Where had all those “inexhaustible” supply of flounders gone? 

Gone the same way that other “sustainable” fish stocks have gone…to smaller and smaller fish, younger and caught at younger age until they simply disappear.  

In the 1950s and 1960s winter flounder were thought to be inexhaustible. They were a popular food fish for the recreational and commercial fisherman. Their stocks were claimed to be inexhaustable. And for the fisherman young and old, there were no rules about, size, numbers to keep, or season of he year.  Millions of fish were taken both commercially and for recreation in the 1980s, this once “sustainable” species collapsed by over 99% by 1980.  What a loss?

Atlantic Salmon once spawned in our local streams, they are gone too, The common eel once a common “pest fish” which if caught made a tangle of you lines and hooks when landed, its slipper surface and wiggly snake like shape and was almost impossible to contain—and very difficult to remove it from the bottom tackle. They ae gone too. 

The Atlantic Cod once were caught in local waters but are now only a faint memory of old timers.  

In 2022 the population of river herring or alewife in Long Island sound collapsed to only a quarter of its former population.  The river herring (alewife)  are forage fish which are prey for other major game and commercial fish species,

Almost all of these population collapse stories are glibly related to climate warming or rising ocean temperatures, permitting  authorities to ignore overfishing and blame the demise of fish stocks on something no one can control and no one has to respond to. 

But a recent story about another “ inexhaustible”, “suststainably harvested” forage fish in the far off North Pacific  made me think again about that nice square of tasty white fish I so enjoy at our local McDonald eatery. .  

YAHOO NEWS in : “Fish in American Fishsticks is fueling a fight over trawling in Alaska”.(10-9-26) reports on a major fish controversy with a species we are all very familiar with. The fish is the speckled skinned Pacific pollock (Gaddus chalcogrammus),  a 1 to 3 pound semipelagic member of the codfish family.  The pollock is blessed (or cursed)  with a very nutritious and  tasty snow white flesh which makes it very desirable as human food. If you think you have never encountered one, you would be wrong,  Yes pollock is not a local fish. It is caught in nets in for off Alaskan waters, filleted, frozen, then squared up to a good sandwich size,  zapped with microwaves, stuffed into a soft bun, smeared with tartar sauce and sold to you in a small box. The Pacific Pollock is not just a common American food fish. It also feeds millions in the UK where it is made into the infamous and unappetizing  “fish sticks”. In Germany it is consumed as white fish, and in Asia as faux crab meat (surimi) or faux lobster. Yahoo authors claim the pollock fishery is “the second largest fishery on Earth”. 

To exploit this excellent source of fish protein for human consumption about 3.3 billion pounds (1,500,000 metric tons) of  pollock are caught annually. Mc Donald’s uses tons of it for its Fish Filet, and other companies also exploit this fish stock as well. All of them claim the pollock fishery (worth about $500 million dollars annually) is sustainable.  (With that amount of money involved….it would be difficult to find someone to claim otherwise) . But perhaps some unbiased ecologists and marine scientists might.

But “sustainable”  is what was claimed about the Atlantic cod fisheries of the Grand Banks off Nova Scotia. It was sustainable until it collapsed in 1992 and fishing for cod was closed to all fishing with  the hope that the stocks will return.  But once a fish population has been decimated as a result of overfishing, other dynamics take over which make recovery less likely.. 

This author can state: catching 3.3 billion pounds of Alaskan Pollock (Gaddus chalcogrammus ) each year is very likely  NOT sustainable. The pollock is a major forage fish preyed upon by other species. Pollock live and die at the mid point of the oceanic food chain. They range in the water column from near the surface in the North Pacific to depths from 300 to1000 feet,

As fingerlings, pollock feed on algae and floating crustaceans (zooplankton) such as copepods and krill (euphausiids) and as they get larger they take shrimp, amphipods, squid, and small fish such as Asian smelt, herring, and even sand launces.  In turn, they are the major prey for for larger fish like  salmon, cod, halibut, and sea birds, as well as marine mammals such as toothed whales, seals, stellar sea lions and orcas.  

When pollock die, or are eaten by predators these wastes drift down to the sea bed where innumerable forms of benthic organisms consume them, benthic fish, detritus feeders, molluscs, sea bed invertebrates, and crustaceans (crabs).  When humans remove 3.3 billion pounds of pollock the other forms of life and fish species dependent upon pollock are  do not reproduce, and eventually expire as species. 

Removing billions of pounds of a forage fish— a foundation species like pollock—means less available  for species such as sea birds, salmon, crabs, halibut and orcas. Furthermore, such disruptions in the food chain place stress on the entire system. The entire ecology of the ocean is affected.  A harbinger of such distress is the fact that some very recent study of the population (biomass) of pollock in the eastern Bering Sea report a 30% drop in biomass. 

Although trawler fishing for pollock is less lethal than other forms of trawling—since pollock shoals swim at mid levels— trawlers drag their nets at these depths, not on the sea floor. U However pollock trawlers still catch millions of non target fish. Often these species are those which prey on pollock…salmon being one of the major species taken as “by-catch”. Once dragged up in a crowed net and spewed on the slimy deck the dead or dying salmon, halibut, etc.  are then dumped overboard as waste. In 2025 the Alaska pollock fishery is claimed to have caught and dumped 44,000 metric tons of by catch (or 100 fully loaded 747-8  jet planes worth of smelly fish) 

The salmon fisheries are declining each year in Alaska, in recent years the collapse has caused officials to close some regional fishing altogether. In 2024 Canada and USA instituted a seven year salmon fishing ban on the Yukon River.  Salmon fishermen complain that with fewer pollock available as prey the obvious reason is fewer prey species for them to feed on.  Government agencies (NOAA fisheries) which control how many fish can be harvested. These estimates are based on reports of fish landed (and the age and health of each species). These agencies often claim that the pollock population is stable and could sustain continued harvesting. In response to the declines in salmon NOAA biologists claim that it is climate warming is the cause of salmon decline ( but when there is no other palatable reason for anything bad these days anthropogenic warming gets the blame). But if that was so,,,pollock would be impacted by warmer water too. If that is true then both salmon fishing and pollock fishing should be limited.  

State and Federal government agencies are just that “agencies of the government”. They are sensitive to public opinion and government pressures.  They can not be trusted to make scientifically sound decisions. 

You can not take billions of pounds of food fish out of a system and not have a deleterious effect on the population of the fish in that system dependent upon that food. 

(Strange cases of dying sea mammals, orcas attacking sailboats, disappearing fish species all suggest environmental stress—though not related to the pollock fishery.) 

REQUIEM FOR A TREE—OUR NATIVE AMERICAN ELM. (October 2026)

 Along my suburban neighborhood walking path, this early October day, I was affronted by an unpleasant sight. A neighbor’s home, once graced with a rare, one-hundred-fifty year old American Elm, I admired  every walking day, had been cut down.  Just last week it rose over the peaked roof of its lovely home, today its leaf-dappled shade was gone. In its place, only a pile of raw sawdust, from which protruded the crudely amputated stump of a once magnificent native tree.  Its gentle shape and soft foliage gone, the home poked up angularly out of its low hill, stark and barren.  

The American Elm (Ulmus americana) is a tall (80 plus feet) tree with with lovely lanceolate deep-toothed  leaves and graceful sprays of leafy branches that spread into a tall, wide canopy, then arch downward making it one of the most graceful specimen-trees of the eastern forests. The flash of black and orange among these hanging branches is often that of the  Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula), for the low dangling branches attract these birds which build incredibly complex pouch-like nests of plant fibers on the tips of terminal branches to protect their young from climbing predators. The tree was once common in American forests from the Mississippi River east to northern Maine and south to central Florida. In those pe 1950 days it was found in a wide range of habitats and is a hardy tree which can grow in a variety of soils and in colder zones (even to -40F) within it natural range.  

In many US cities and in my childhood residence of Brooklyn, NY, Elm trees were common street plantings. I can remember as a boy walking along an urban, tree-lined, street where tall and wide-branching Elms wove their branches together high up over the black asphalt roadway, almost closing off the sky. And thus where a young lad might imagine himself— not in the bustling man-made angular world of steel, glass and concrete, but walking on a far-off forest path. That is as long as he persisted keeping  his eyes turned upward —(—a dangerous way to walk on a city street).

When I was only ten years or so, and still capable of childhood fantasy, sadly, the lovely Elms began to die  off one by one.  Dutch Elm Disease—a fungus imported from some far away place—turned each one from graceful green, into stiff and barren, deadwood. There were no green sky shading leaves in summer and no nesting weaver birds, clinging to globular nests which glide in summer breezes on thin, down-turned branches .

Plant pathologists who study these things claim that only one tree (1) in every hundred thousand (100,000)  was resistant to the deadly Dutch Elm tree fungus.  I suspect that my neighbor’s tree was one of these..rare one in a thousand specimens. It was the only American Elm in our town.  

The new patch of lawn and a few low bushes were planted in place of this magnificent, rare and threatened tree…But no one knows, or it seems—-cares.  It was only a “some kind of tree” to those city bred folks..who find shabby green lawns more to their taste. 

ON BLACK PEPPER, KING OF SPICES AND IMPETUS FOR THE AGE OF DISCOVERY

 AGE OF DISCOVERY

In the Age of Discovery (the 1400s to 1600s ) early explorers such as Christopher Columbus, Vasco Da Gama, Magellan, John Cabot, Giuseppe Verazzano, and Henry Hudson all were motivated to take long and dangerous sea voyages to find the elusive western passage to the fabled “Spice Islands” and the source region of immensely valuable commodities such as: Black Pepper, Nutmeg,  Mace, Cardamon, Cinnamon, and Ginger.  As a result of their ultimately failed efforts to find the non-existent western passage an event which would gain for them self-aggrandizement and immense wealth if successful. They failed but inadvertently discovered the New World and changed the course of history. 

The underlying motivation for these daring,expensive, dangerous  undertakings was the great demand for and high prices of seemingly inauspicious common plant based products we call “spices”.   

What were some causes of the high demand and high prices of these products? A question which seemed interesting based on the great impact this  historic quest had on world history.  

Black Pepper (Piper nigrum) is one of most common and the spice with the longest (over 4000 year) history of use. It is also the most traded, and sold-in-the-most-volume.  Today the world uses over 550,000 metric tons per year. The nation of Vietnam uses the most, followed by India and the USA.  We in the USA import almost 70,000 metric tons of black pepper each year.  (About 200 grams per person in USA or about 7 ounces per person/year)  Pepper is used world-wide in almost every cuisine. Black pepper is the king of all spices..with the most demand and most common uses as a seasoning, and (in the past) as a medicine. Pepper is derived from the fruit of a tropical vine native to the lowland forests of India’s Malabar Coast.  (By the way—It is noteworthy as a comparison  that the USA —third in use of pepper as a spice—is the biggest first consumer of a powerful narcotic drug—-it consumes and illegally imports  350 tons (yes tons) of cocaine each year!)

What made black pepper so “in demand”? Like a modern drug, common seasoning spices like black pepper—are plant based stimulants which can alter human senses and impact mood.   Spices have an effect on human physiology and metabolism and—one central and critical human sense we all take very seriously—taste.  

The active ingredient in peppercorns is piperine a natural alkaloid which is the origin of its heat and pungent taste. Piperine is alleged to increase the absorption of certain minerals and vitamins into the gut and act is an antioxidant as well as an anti-inflammatory agent. It is also claimed to have so called “digestive benefits”. 

Why did piperine evolve in the pepper vine? What was its function or purpose? Its acrid (spicy?) and heat generating impact animal tissues piperine may have functioned as a insect or herbivore repellant. It may have also functioned as an insecticide and a larvacide, while the fruit remained on the plant. And perhaps, after the seeds fell to earth, piperine acted as a seed protectant to control or limit chemical or biological decay of its fruits and seeds in its particularly warm humid biologically active native soils.

Pepper’s active ingredient piperine. can generate body heat (thermogenesis) and raise human metabolic rate temporarily. It also has a complement of unique flavors and allied chemical properties. These mimic the way certain recreational drugs function in the scan body. Its taste is sharp, and pungent. Besides it physiological activity pepper grains generate most of its “heat” response on the epithelial membranes of the oral cavity and tongue—-a particularly sensitive area with a particularly high concentration of nerve endings creating a dense network making more precise perceptions possible.  

All of these properties transform and intensified the most essential of human senses—- the taste of foods—often radically transforming and improving the experience of taste. Thus spices  have the ability to alter often banal local foods into something much more palatable and pleasant. This almost universal human response was a prime driving force which kept demand for pepper and other spices so high.  

Pepper also acts, when combined with salt and other spices, as a food preservative. Many foods such as various cuts of meat (hams) and various dried and highly seasoned pork sausages are preserved over long periods by use of pepper and salt.  Pepper also has anti-fungal and anti bacterial properties, as well as alleged medicinal uses as a warming agent and an aid to digestion. 

ORIGIN OF BLACK PEPPER

The Malabar Coast is an exotic region sometimes referred to as a tropical paradise with a unique climate and biome. This region of India is subjected to seasonal winds which carry moisture-laden air from the Arabian Sea over coastal India. These winds are forced upward over the lower slopes of western Ghats (mountains) and as they do so they release the copious moisture they carry as rain.  These seasonal (monsoon) winds are the main cause of the unique and highly humid tropical climate, (viz. monsoon tropical climate) of the region where pepper plants thrive.  Τhe monsoon winds  are responsible for the highly diverse biome which has evolved over millennia in this region (i.e. plants and unique animals) adapted to this low lying humid tropical state. The pluvial downpours often in the order of 100 inches or more each year,  as well as  high tropical air (95F)I temperatures have given rise to the very distinctive plants such as the pepper vine as well as unique animal species native to the area. 

Black Pepper (Piper nigrum) is native to India’s southwestern Malabar Coast, a tropical region about 10 degrees North of the equator in the Indian state of Kerala. In its native land Black Pepper grows as a climbing vine in the humid broadleaf forests of that region. The  plant thrives as  a perennial, woody, climbing vine with ovate, leathery, dark green leaves and tiny white flowers which when flowering hang in a long narrow clump from the vine stem (like a thin bunch of tiny grapes) or spikes. The “fruits” of the pepper vine look like tiny cherries (drupes) and after fertilization mature on elongate spikes into a tiny fruit with a thin green, hard, outer skin. The vines which have a shallow root system are adapted to the moist tropical forest soils and the shade of the dense broadleaf forests. They climb on forest trees to a height of ten or more meters (more than 33 feet). These specific adaptations to climate and environment make it difficult to transplant them to other climatic and bio zones.  

It is the fruit and seeds of the pepper plant— the tiny peppercorns— which are the highly valued part of this plant. If the berries are harvested when they are green..then dried, the peppercorn turns black to produce black pepper. If berries are harvested when they ripen to a yellow or red color and then the seeds are removed and dried they become  the white variety of black pepper.  The red variety is produced by harvesting when the berries are fully ripe (red) and drying the berry to produce the red peppercorn.  

In prehistoric (Neolithic to Iron Age) times native tribal communities thrived in the southwestern tropical coast of India where they exploited the rich plant and animal resources of this region.  In the dim prehistoric past they must have discovered the unique properties of the tiny spicy fruits of the Black Pepper vine, using it to flavor and improve the palatability of other wild foods they exploited.  

These early hunting gathering  communities eventually engaged in early agriculture, fishing, and trade with more urbanized communities in northern India. By as early as 2000 BCE these southwestern coastal communities were trading fish and local forest products such as wild pepper collected from forest vines for decorative bread, ceramics and metals with more complex highly urbanized communities of northern India viz the Indus Valley Community which thrived in northern Inda from about 3000BC to 1800BC. 

The Indus Valley Community of northern India used pepper from the Malabar Coast as a food additive and  taste-intensifying agent as well as a preservative. From the Indus Valley culture peppercorns soon found their way to the Middle East and then to Egypt and on to Greece and Rome.  

In Egypt its properties as a food spice were less important, but its other chemical properties as an anti-fungal, antibacterial and larvacide were put to work by Egyptian mortuary cult practitioners, priests and embalmers.  When the tomb of Ramses II, was discovered by archaeologists in the in the early 20^th century, the entombed Pharaoh  was found to have peppercorns stuffed in his nasal passages. These probably served as an antibacterial and anti-fungal agent. 

In 4^th century Greece pepper was known as a rare luxury imported from India and used as a medicine and as a food seasoning. It was also claimed as an antidote to poison Hemlock (though there is no substantive proof of this claim). It also had uses as a veterinary aphrodisiac to encourage mating in sheep and goats.  (An allegation from 19^th century Sweden suggests that black pepper was spread on the wooden dance floors to rise in a heat generating cloud on human tissues and stimulate female body parts.) For these above reasons it was in demand as an expensive luxury and status symbol. 

It was during the Roman Republic and later during the Empire that pepper was in greatest demand as both a seasoning and a luxury status symbol.  Black pepper was used as a seasoning ingredient in 3/4 of the recipes described by ancient Roman epicures such as Apicius .  Historians estimate that during 1^st and 2^nd centuries AD Rome imported 130 metric tonnes of black pepper annually. These massive amounts created storage problems in Rome. Eventually specialized warehouses for pepper were built just outside of the Roman Forum in the heart of the City.  

In 410 AD Alaric, King of Visigoths surrounded Rome and threatened to sack the City if his ransom demands were not met. These included a large payment in gold and as well 3,000 lbs of black pepper. 

By the Middle Ages, Arab and Venetian merchants dominated the maritime trade routes to India’s Malabar Coast via the Arabian Sea route through the Straits of Hormuz into the Red Sea to Alexandria and then north in the Mediterranean into the Adriatic and to Venice.  During this proud other spices with similar chemical and physiological responses where added to the demand for spices. 

WHAT DROVE THE SPICE TRADE

What drove the explorers of the Age of Discovery  to commit to such arduous dangerous journeys?

Pepper and other similar common food spices such as Black Pepper, Ginger, Cardamom, Turmeric, Cinnamon and others do have certain things in common  with addictive or recreational drugs. Like recreational drugs, food spices contain physiological active chemical compounds which can interact with the human nervous system. Compounds in Black Pepper and Cinnamon have the ability to bind to certain receptors which can affect human mood and also have anti-inflammatory and pain reducing effects..but produce no emotional “high”. 

Both piperine and capsaicin (from chili peppers) activate receptors which can release endorphins which can create the feeling of satiety, calm, and mental positivity.  These chemical properties are relatively minor as compared to recreational and medicinal psychoactive drugs but can have relatively powerful effects on people who live close to nature, have few food or drink stimulant sources  and consume basic unaltered foods. Furthermore, spices used as a seasoning alter a basic human sense—taste- and in higher doses may even alter human physiology and mood.   It was these effects which generated such great demand and initiated and maintained the intensity of the spice trade.

Similar to the effects of “recreational drugs”, spices are sourced from exotic locales, or  from distant often tropical climates. These geographic] restrictions on access impact the supply side of the supply vs demand relationship, cause unfulfilled demand and thus can elevate prices and their market value.

The laws of supply and demand control cost. Recreational or “club” drugs, are a prime example of the economics of high-value, high-demand products. As noted above recreational drugs are sourced in exotic locations where persistent disruptions or barriers between producer and consumer often occur. Distance to market, danger to traders, and/or barriers to sale such as legal prohibition all can decrease supply and increase prices.  These “barriers” make illicit drugs enormously profitable . As a typical example  cocaine,  may cost $1,500/kg to produce in South America’s Columbian jungles, but will sell in urban New York or San Francisco for $70,000/kg —an almost 5,000% profit over costs. 

To provide an example of how enormously profitable the spice trade was in the Age of Discovery. Dutch investors and stock holders of the Dutch East India Company (which focused on the spice trade) in the 1500s expected profits of at least 400%.  But local suppliers of spices made unimaginable profits on spices even greater than our modern drug-trade profits.   

As spices moved from its tropical source in one nation to transporters, to sea-faring traders, and to various importers and distributors in several nations and locations each trader added a hefty markup in price. Thus a 10lb package of nutmeg might cost one British penny (1 p) in a local market in the Banda Islands of Indonesia, but after passing though several nations and different traders, sell in London for  two British pounds 10 pence (L 2 10p)for a markup of about  *50,000%.  Thus the potential percent profit over costs in trading spices such as nutmeg or pepper in the 1500-1600 could be as much as ten times greater than the enormous profits which drive the modern drug trade values (such as nutmeg or pepper) had about ten times higher profits over that of the modern drug trade (Note cocaine profit cited above.)

Not to ignore the fact that much of the high human demand for neuroactive drugs lies with the fact that regular use often causes addiction of consumers, leaving  them physiologically dependent upon their next “hit”. Some elements of this phenomenon apply to use of spices.

*Alkaloids are organic, nitrogen bearing compounds with carbon atoms arranged in one or more hexagonal (or pentagonal) rings. This class of organic chemicals —alkaloids—are common physiologically active plant chemicals widely produced by many different plants:  Coffee plants produce the alkaloid caffeine , nicotine is an alkaloid produced by tobacco plants,  morphine from the opium poppy, cocaine from cocoa leaves, etcetera. 

*(Note: Before the British decimalized the pound in 1971 a pound (L) was worth @ 240 pennies or pence—it varied some over time.)

Early in the Paleozoic Era about 425million years ago (mya) (in the Silurian Period) a watershed event in the Earth’s evolution occurred when Thalophytes, simple green plants with no roots stems or leaves adapted to life on land by developing vascular tissues.  Thalophytes include sea weed, algae, fungi, moss, slime molds, lichens. As green plants they produced their own food (photosynthetically combining water and carbon dioxide in the presence of sun light to produce simple sugars). The advent of vascular tissues in green plants created a huge competative advantage for these plants over the plants without these tissues. 

Vascular plants adapted vascular tissues as support tissues which permitted the plant to carry its food generating organs (leaves) upward into the sunlight where it could more effectively compete for light and space.  

Vascular Plants (or Trachyophytes) were no longer confined to oceans, lakes and marsh lands. Their adaptations permitted them to colonize the expanding areas of upland environments.  They could access water from moist ground and carry it aloft by way of rigid transport tissues (xylem which carries water up to the leaves) and thus could out-grow their competitors which were limited to either life within water or on the Earth’s damp surface. Vascular plants became immensely successful. Only 40 my later, or in the Devonian Period @ 385mya, forests of early vascular tree like plants or early Archeophytes. (See: Cairo, NY fossil Archeopteris forest)   

The new ability to rise upward toward the sunlight and yet continue to access water (essential for photosyntheses)  by way of roots in the ground gave trachyophytes great advantages over other forms of plant life. But this benefit came with a disadvantage. Rooted plants can not physically move to evade or mitigate stress, unfavorable physical conditions, insect attacks, bacterial or viral diseases, or the depredations of herbivores.  

Rooted plants had to turn to morphological changes (spines, scales) and chemical responses to deal with these threats to survival. Over vast periods of time (hundreds of millions of years) vascular plants evolved uncounted and marvelous chemical responses to these threats such as: sticky latex to gum up spiracles of insects, salicylates, tannins, essential oils (cedar oil), and alkaloids, and uncounted others all to deal with these threats to their survival. 

Each of these chemical substances were produced by plants as a means of avoiding, controlling, preventing or discouraging bacterial, insect or herbivore attacks or infestations and environmental stress. 

Ι have a great affinity for black pepper (Piper nigrum). I use it with enthusiasm on almost any food. I grind it fresh over meat, eggs, entrees, and pastas often with abandon. I enjoy it black, white (more fragrant and a little less pungent) and with white pepper those tell tale little black dots are not visible). There is red—black pepper too (not to be confused with pepperconcino the Italian red pepper, not related to P.nigrum).  Other folk near me at dinner may suffer with my use of pepper. The fine particles can be lofted up over a steaming  plate of spaghetti algli e oligio, to drift into the air space of my less “pro-pepper” colleagues and dinner guests. 

The tiny particulates can and often do elict paroxysms of sneezing in these innocents. When this occurs I slink off away from table to avoid conflict. Later, encountering these teary eyed and redfaced victims of my excess, I am accused of being addicted to pepper. I wondered about this. Can a simple spice like pepper be addictive? 

Those fragrant little black “bbs”with a dark gray rugose outer surface skin, or the more common ground black pepper are an ubiquitous occurrence on almost every family dinner and restaurant table and  presence where food is served and in almost all modern cuisines. Black Pepper, derived from, the tiny fruit of a tropical vine, has been used as a food flavoring agent for more than four thousand years.  But what makes it so popular and until recently so expensive? 

But, like many modern drugs, plant growth  was restricted to a tropical humid climate—and  could not be grown in Europe. Furthermore, its actual origin was unknown and for a long time, this information was kept as a trade secret to limit its exploitation. In addition for these reasons even its mode of cultivation was unknown in Europe.  Its climatic and soil requirements made it impossible to cultivate in Europe. Thus it was a commodity in high demand, but due to its unknown exotic (distant) origin and inability to grow locally its supply in the market place (which trickled in via circuitous and lengthy trades routes) was very limited. The law of supply and demand applied. Its like modern illcit drugs, pepper’s exotic nature, high demand and its rarity enormously fueled its value.