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Comment by girishso | Hacker News Reader

I have eaten it many times, vendors say it's a root. But the last time I ate it, it was little more fibrous and hard and I ate little more than the usual. For the next couple of days my tongue was itching and I had little difficulty speaking. Then I googled it and read somewhere that it's not edible.

It's surprising experts don't know what the thing is given it's so commonly available.

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Yikes. Your symptoms were likely caused by calcium oxalate raphides, little mineral needles present in raw agave (and several other plants). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphide

Your linked article says at the bottom that these things are also present in spinach, beets and pineapple.

Most cultivated edible plants have been selected against having too many raphides. Though people can still be sensitive to fresh pineapple and kiwifruit which contains proteases that amplifies the damage done by the oxalate needles.

Wild plants, on the other hand , has not been subject to the same selection process and could easily contain a dangerous amount of oxalate.

This has been enlightening. I've sometimes definitely had this feeling when eating some pineapple but not other pineapple. Interesting.

That's extremely interesting. Nature never ceases to amaze.

May be, but it surely scared the hell out of me.

Usually I don't bother with nits but in this case:

> had little difficulty speaking

Has exactly the opposite meaning of what you intend unless you turn it into:

> had a little difficulty speaking

Not too confusing in this particular comment, but I could see this causing problems down the line for you.

TFA says it's probably Agave. They also say:

> However, it may not be so healthy. “Agave has lots of alkaloids. It can be poisonous if eaten in large quantities. Maybe that’s why they sell thin slices,” Dr. Yadav, now retired, warns.

There are over 270 species of agave, that doesn't really answer anything.

If you read the article they say the specific Agave that they linked to using DNA analysis.

From the paper

> The similarity search showed 89% identity with the partial sequence of the plastid locus maturase of Agave sisalana

89% isn't very similar though.

Species doesn't mean as much in the plant world. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, kohlrabi, and gai lan are all Brassica oleracea. You can have specimens that are even technically the same cultivar but wildly different alimentary character.

TIL that the vegetable aisle has half the species I thought it did.

I think napa cabbage and a few others are also all the "other" brassica.

Oh yeah. Brassica rapa has your turnip, napa cabbage, bok choy and rapini/rabes. Brassica napus gives canola oil, swedish turnip, and rutabaga. Mustard comes from B. juncea, B. nigra and B. hirta.

Also those species names aren't really even guaranteed to be accurate because biologists, botanists, geneticists, etc, can't even really agree on where to draw the line.

There's a whole genre of Brassica memes and it's fantastic.

https://mobile.twitter.com/faineg/status/1386522223901618177...

Hooray!! I totally love the way 'Brassica' vegetables provide such a vivid illustration of the amazing variety that some selection-pressure can yield on the development of essentially a single type of input organism. Makes you wonder what might happen when these types of selection-pressures start affecting humankind more!

Brassica and domesticated dogs diversified because of controlled breeding. Unless you get a bunch of totalitarian eugenicists with differing goals, I dont know how this could happen with people.

I could imagine it happening if interstellar colonization ever becomes a thing, maybe.

The DNA analysis didn’t identify the exact variety.

Trade secrets are trade secrets.

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