Quercetin for certain
April in my garden means the dawning of the age of asparagus. Every day till the middle of May, asparagus offers its quercetin for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You do like quercetin, don’t you, because it’s an antioxidant that roams around in your bloodstream like a neighborhood watch agent protecting your tissues from the free radical demons and election deniers which damage cells, plus it helps to lower inflammation and stress levels.
Asparagus asks that you only gently cultivate around its crowns during early spring because this is its time to shine. Later the spears will produce ferns that gather energy for the crowns so we can have more quercetin next spring.
As you know, quercetin is a pigment. It adds color to the skin and leaves of plants. It is considered a flavonoid which is not the name of a rap singer, but a compound found in many plants with a basketful of potential medicinal properties. Test tube users in lab coats claim quercetin lowers blood pressure and cholesterol levels, plus it improves brain health by juicing up your circulation. This does not mean it makes you smarter.
The richest per pound source of quercetin is capers, which are flower buds of the caper bush. They taste like nasturtium buds. I do not know what qualifies a food to be a superfood, but one source called capers a superfood. The bushes grow all around the Mediterranean Sea and up to southern Russia but hardly at all in the United States. This, of course, means I should direct my seed search team to find some caper seeds so I can furnish quercetin-rich capers hither and yon. Problem is caper bushes might survive in Pine Bluff or Arkadelphia but not in our part of Arkansas, and that is not a good enough reason to move to Pine Bluff.
So, instead, I can grow red onions. Onions have the most quercetin of all vegetables, and among onion varieties red ones contain the most because quercetin is a pigment. Around here, we should plant short-day onions such as Red Creole and Red Rock, because onion varieties are particular about the length of sunlight needed to produce bulbous onions and we probably also qualify for intermediate-day onion varieties. I apologize for onions and their persnickety ways, but they do contain quercetin for our benefit, and I can be persnickety too, if necessary.
Our favorite pickle spice dill – skinny lacy thing – contains a third more milligrams per 100 grams of quercetin than red onions. Go figure! Dill is also a perfect companion plant for asparagus, lettuce, onions and cucumbers, but not a good neighbor for peppers, eggplants or potatoes. It is okay with tomatoes until it begins to mature because it attracts pollinators and deters pests but harvest it early so it doesn’t affect tomato growth.
In a discussion about healthy foods, you know kale and broccoli will get airtime. However, they provide only small percentage of quercetin compared to onions. If red onions were the Ft. Smith of Arkansas quercetin, kale would be El Dorado and broccoli would be Heber Springs… much smaller, although El Dorado has a new arts district which also lowers stress levels. Kale also provides zeaxanthin which helps us see better, but if word gets out about its benefits, Tennessee, Florida, and Sarah will try to ban it to protect our kids.
Blueberries, blackberries, grapes and apples also provide ample amounts of quercetin. Blackberries and grapes grow wild on my rocky hillside. Birds eat the grapes before I get them, but quercetin finds its way into red wine, so I’m good there. Depending on whom you ask, blackberries rank about a half-step behind red onions on the quercetin count, which means they provide a potent dose. Not far behind is a tasty red or orange bell pepper. In fact, a diet of fresh vegetables, fruits and nuts will supply us with plenty quercetin and other flavonoids.
Quercetin is humble and dutiful. It knows when we eat blackberries or drink red wine, it is not because of quercetin. But it does its job anyway.