Lessons From a Turnip

Turnips (Brassica rapa)

Work on my book has begun in earnest along with unusually good cooperation from my kids on their Math and English (my kids get to play online as a reward for these independent studies). Which means my time to write a post has been nil. 🙁

So, I thought I’d let you in on a bit of what I’m researching for the book!

One of the biggest problems skeptics have with Noah’s ark is the number of animals it would have needed to hold.

One of the only observable “proofs” of Evolution is how animals and plants change and recombine to “create” new “species.”

The funny thing is they don’t look at how these two things interact. You don’t have to take hundreds of dogs on the ark to explain the breeds we have today. You just need a “master set” of all the genes in one canine pair hand picked by God Himself. I’ve talked about bats and mice making up well over half the known species on the planet. Noah didn’t need to take more than a handful with him to explain those 1,000s of “species.”

Romanesco broccoli

For my book, I also want to show people similar processes in plants. Creation Ministries International recently put out a paper on the Brassica family which is quite fascinating, so I’m going to start there for a plant eye-opener.

As a girl I remember seeing a “brocoflower” at the grocery store and wondering how such a thing worked. I learned in an Italian cookbook that broccoli was developed there. I also heard somewhere how brussels sprouts are part of the same family. That sounded crazy! Turns out, these examples barely scratched the surface of the variety built into these plants.

Black Mustard

The CMI article stops just short of saying the entire family of brassica plants, from black mustard to cabbage to turnips could have come from one master plant. What we do know is these plants are very similar, many can cross with each other and do something else very cool….

Their chromosomes can mix around in ways ours sure can’t. Somehow, both the pollen and egg can both give the full number of chromosomes. So, instead of having 9 pairs like cabbage, or 8 pairs like black mustard, their offspring can have 17 pairs of chromosomes producing something called Ethiopian Mustard. Now, that’s wild!

You will notice, Ethiopian mustard didn’t get new genes from scratch. The existing information was rearranged in a different way to make something “new.”

Brassica oleracea (Wild Cabbage) – naturalised population growing on seacliffs below a mediaeval monastery at Tynemouth, Northumberland, UK (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here’s something CMI didn’t get into much, but is exciting to consider. What if Noah took some master Brassica seeds with him on the ark and saved them for his garden? We know these plants have been used for food since earliest known times. You probably remember Jesus talked about mustard seeds. Every part of a Brassica plant is edible, so all you need is something to grow large enough to bother harvesting. Odds are, these plants started making all kinds of “sports” from early on. People would have been careful to preserve them if they tasted good to them!

God has truly given us richly all things to enjoy. Even kale. 😀

He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; Psalms 104:14 

Next time, I’m planning to share an analogy explaining DNA to make a parent thrilled. 😀