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The Spice Trail Teacher resource

Year 4

Education @ Adelaide Botanic Garden 

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Taste and Variety

It is hard to imagine how boring, tasteless and dangerous food was before the year 1500. The age of exploration changed all that and was considered so important that the year Christopher Columbus went to the Americas is considered by many people to be the beginning of the Modern Age.

Newly discovered foods helped people have tastier, safer food and increased variety.

One of the claims made about Botanic Gardens is that you can travel the world in any one of them. So follow the Botanical Treasure map on a voyage around the world, through the tropics and the deserts to find the spices we use in our modern lifestyle.

Inquire about the life on a ship in 1490. Why was rum added to the drinking water and why was citrus eaten? Discover where the flavours of vanilla and chocolate come from. There is no question as to why they were so valuable!

But most of all dispel the myth that the motivation of all early European explorers was swashbuckling adventure and a quest for cities of gold. The more common cause was to break the overland trade route blockade controlling and restricting the flow of spices initially by the Arabs and later the Venetians into Europe.

For the first people to open the sea routes the prize was much greater than gold and jewels – it was spices!

At one point 1Kg of spice was worth more than 1kg of gold.

But think…we can’t make new gold. We can grow new spices and make as many as we want in the end.

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Bookings

All visits to the Botanic Gardens should be booked as part of risk management.

Self-Managed Excursions

Booking online: http://www.botanic.sa.edu.au/index.php/book-online Booking by email: dehbgschools@sa.gov.au booking form here Booking by phone: 08 8222 9311

Education Manager discussions and bookings

ph: 08 8222 9344 or email: Michael.yeo2@sa.gov.au

Guidelines when in the Garden Students must be supervised at all times while in the Garden. Before starting your walk please remind your group that:

• Gardens are peaceful places for people to relax and enjoy. • Walking slowly and talking quietly ensures everybody will enjoy the gardens. • Plants are fragile, touch them gently. • Flowers, leaves, bark, seeds etc. growing on plants or lying on the ground are there for all to

enjoy. When you have finished with plant material found on the ground always return it to the garden.

• Keeping to paths and not walking on beds or borders avoids damage to plants. Risk Management

• Water: The garden has a number of open water bodies and requires close supervision by teachers and supervising adults.

• Student ratio: Adult to student ratio is recommended at 1:10, for early years and junior primary this should be lower.

• Weather: Excursions at the Adelaide Botanic Garden are outdoors so sun protection is required, insect repellent at certain times of the year is recommended. Light showers are not an issue in the gardens and at time enhances the experience. There are a number of sheltered areas throughout the garden and raincoats are preferred to umbrellas.

• Washing: After working in the wetland or handling plant material hands should be thoroughly washed particularly before eating.

• Toilets: There are 5 groups of public toilets across the Garden as indicated on the maps.

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Copyright: ©2015 The State of South Australia, Department for Education and Child Development and the Botanic Gardens of South Australia. This publication is protected by copyright. It may be reproduced by South Australian teachers for use with their students.

Contents

• Purpose and key idea of the trail • Australian Curriculum Connections • Before the excursion • After the excursion • Map • Acknowledgements • Teacher background information

Purpose and key idea of the trail

Target year level: year 4

Key ideas:

• Why did the great journeys of exploration occur? Consider a variety of reasons. • What inspired exploration by 3 world navigators, explorers and traders and what was

the effects of their travels? • What were some of the natural vegetation resources provided by the environment?

Students will investigate:

• Some spices introduced to Europe by Vasco De Gama’s route to India. • Spices involved in the Voyages of Columbus to the Islands in the Americas • Dampier the game changer. • How to follow a map

Students are encouraged to observe, analyse, inquire, record, hypothesize and connect knowledge they already have with new learnings.

TfEL: Provide an authentic context in which to engage learners and build their understanding whilst using a range of learning modes.

Time:

Allow about 1 hour for this session.

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Australian Curriculum Connections

General capabilities

• Literacy (listening, reading, discussing issues in the garden and speaking about them.) In particular the pre and post trail activities.  

• Numeracy (organise and interpret historical events and developments, analyses of data to make meaning of the past, timelines,  mapping)  

• Critical and creative thinking (ask questions, locate and select information, develop interpretations, exploring the past)  

• Ethical behaviour (principles, values and virtues, acting with moral integrity, acting with regard for others, critically exploring the character traits, actions and motivations of early explorers). There are particularly some issues around colonisation that compare our current view of ethics with that view of several centuries ago.  

• Intercultural understanding (perspectives, beliefs and values of people, past and present)  

Cross-curriculum priorities

• Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia

Learning Area focus Year 4

History Journey of at least one world navigator or trader including contacts with other societies. Why did great journeys of exploration occur?  Geography Natural resources and the environment. Mapping and the countries of the world and their location.    

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Before the excursion 1. Discussion - The Spice of Life

What will be on your table tonight for the evening meal? In Europe in 1450AD, if you were lucky it might have been a stew of turnips, cabbage, celery, Brussel sprouts with a chicken neck and some pig fat. One of the first spices that made food tastier was pepper, but most people could not afford to use it as food but instead used it as a general medicine for colds. At one stage in Europe a kilo of pepper was more valuable than a kilo of gold! People wanted better. They just couldn’t afford or get different foods, so it is a good point at which to discuss why these spice plants were so valuable.

2. Learning the concept of Supply and demand and price. 3. Ethical issues to discuss - Sailors, buccaneers, privateers and pirates.

Navy discipline was very important. Captains had life and death power over the sailors. Some sailors managed to get their own ships and worked privately for a country. They were called Privateers. They could often break the “rules” which regular navies had to follow e.g. England often used Privateers (like Captain Francis Drake) to rob other countries or go where the other countries claimed that part of the seas for themselves. England loved them-other countries hated them. So…if you didn’t like the Privateers you called them robbers (Pirates). Many Pirates and Privateers became very important Explorers. One of these was the first Englishman to see Australia – William Dampier. Sometimes Pirates would fight over treasure (gold and yes…spices). When they went to fight they would use swords strapped to themselves with big belts tied with buckles. These sailors were called Swashbucklers. When they were hungry many of the sailors would use their own private BBQs (called a Buccan) to cook their own food. They were called buccaneers.

4. Spice rack activity - Check out the spice-rack at home and compare the spice to the plant. 5. Fridge activity - Check out the fridge and list the fruits and vegetables inside, then trace

where they originated.

Vocab introduction:

Words Spices People

Circumnavigation Banana Pirate

Doldrums Cardamom Privateer

Tropics Cinnamon Buccaneer

Scurvy Vanilla Captain

Colonize Turmeric Explorer

Monopoly Cocoa Swash buckle

Contaminated Sugar Slave

Kaffir Lime Sailor

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After the excursion Activities, research and discussions:

• Check out the seeds and plants in the Diggers Shop on the Schomburgk Pavilion. • Research the word curry and find out what is in it. • Find maps of the voyages of De Gama and Columbus, then discuss their voyage strategies. • Dampier is thought by many to be the first world traveller to make the world seem smaller. • Who was Admiral Zheng He and where and when did he travel. • Investigate the overland route of spices to Europe before Vasco De Gamma, use it to

highlight the blockade and price issues. There are analogies today with petrol.

Encourage students to bring their family back again at a different time of the year.

The garden is a living museum. As such when you visit some of the plants may not be in fruits, flower or even above ground. Come back later when you can see them in the season they are best displayed.

Acknowledgments

Content: Michael Yeo and John Thorpe

Design and Layout: Tom Chladek

Photographs: Indiana Yeo

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Map

Teacher background information

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This section provides teachers with background information on each plant or station. Some suggested student responses are included; they are by no means exhaustive. The student section is full of activities that are designed to encourage students to engage with the garden plants more closely whilst they observe record, discuss and use the information collected.

Finding the plants:

The plants on this trail may be found by referring to the map and by looking for the plant nameplate. There is also a photo match of the plant to help.

STATION 1. The Economic Garden – citrus and long sea journeys.

Kaffir Lime and citrus

Many food and herb plants grow in this garden. We sometimes forget how difficult these long distance journeys were, it presents a good opportunity to look around and ask a question like;

What foods the students might take with them on a 3 month voyage with no fridge.

Some examples might be, dry biscuits, grain, dried and salted meats, citrus (scurvy), sauerkraut, pickled vegetables. Herbs for flavour and medicine.

Get them to look around for ideas keeping with in the circle of the garden. Lack of fresh fruit and vegetable of course was a major issue, with few sea captains overcoming it until Cook. Citrus was used as a way of managing scurvy. There is a circle of Espaliered plants around the garden including, lemons, oranges and of course limes from SE Asia. Discuss with students, why citrus was taken on board the ships.

Why was citrus used to manage scurvy?

Keeps well, lots of vitamins and minerals

Water

This is another great discussion. Our water is chlorinated to keep it safe, (NB: The UN estimates more lives were saved in the 20th century by clean water than modern medicines). So how did explorers manage fresh water and keep it fresh on long journeys? They had no ice, chlorine or filters. How do you think explorers managed fresh water and kept it fresh? Rum and alcohol drinks was one of the solutions, by adding it to drinking water to sterilize it. Many sailors probably drank more alcohol based drinks than water for this reason.

(water was stored in large wooden barrels and it was often a whipping offence to take a drink directly from the water tank)

Find the Buddha’s Hand Lemon

Kaffir Lime 

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Herbs

Investigate the herbs, students may pinch off a small leave, crush it and pass it around to smell. Do they have them at home? If so what are they used for? Ginger was certainly used for seasickness, have any of the students used ginger tablets?

Many herbs came from Europe and the Mediterranean.

What is the difference between herbs and spices.

Herbs are mainly leaves, spices are flowers, seeds, bark, roots etc.

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2. The Garden of Health - India and Vasco De Gama Turmeric and curry leaves The spices from India and Asia came to Europe on the overland trade routes through the Middle East even in times BC. So they were not discovered by the explorers. But the price was increased so much that only royalty could afford them, and sometimes they could not even buy them with gold because they were in short supply.

Finally the Portuguese, who were great sailors decided to break the overland route control of spices by the Arabs and Venetians. They looked for a sea route to India. Many tried but never returned until Vasco De Gama sailed down the coast of Africa, through the tropics, around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean to land in Calicut. He returned with spices and opened the sea route to India. Now Portugal controlled the Indian spice trade and brought in many ship loads.

There is a complete garden bed of plants near the southern side of the path to the Western Gingko Gate which are from India. Find the Turmeric, the root of the plant is used in cooking, for flavour and colour. Is it in Flower? (big white flowers near the base in Autumn) Turmeric is also used as an antiseptic, more recently it has been shown to assist in the treatment of dementia?

Curry Leaves and Cardamom

Pinch a curry leaf, crush and smell it. Have you smelled that before? Curry leaves do not have a pleasant smell but add lots of flavour when cooked with other food. Cardamom is considered the Queen of Spices, because of its exotic flavour used in both food and drinks. Turkish coffee and Chai. What other spices can they spot in this garden?

Discussion: To travel to India De Gama needed to overcome a number of challenges.

• The Cape of Good Hope (rough seas) • The tropics (no wind, the doldrums and disease and food deterioration) • Pirates (East Africa) • Primary motivation for travelling to India was to bring back spices and make financial gain.

They were looking for a sea route to break the overland spice route monopoly of the Venetians and then the Turks What was Columbus thinking? The Spanish also wanted cheaper more readily available spices particularly pepper, which made salted meat palatable. They planned to travel to India by travelling west across the Atlantic and the Americas were discovered as a bi-product of this search.

 

Cardamom seed pods are used in food.

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3. The Amazon Waterlily Pavilion - Columbus and Chocolate Cacao and Vanilla.

Feel and discuss the tropical Climate in the Amazon Waterlily Pavilion. Most of the collection here is from Guyana in Central America.

While the Portuguese were sailing around Africa to get to India, Christopher Columbus approached the Queen and King of Spain with the idea he could travel the other way around the world and get to India and the spices first. (Columbus was Italian and was offering to travel for Spain for a price. He knew the earth was round but thought it smaller than it was.)

However he bumped into the West Indies islands (off the coast of Florida in the USA) before getting to India. He made three trips across the Atlantic Ocean but never actually landed on mainland North America. He never made it to India either. But he did however, find some exotic plants in Central America. Cacao, Vanilla beans and Tomatoes to name a few.

Chocolate is made from the pod of the Cacao plant. Much vanilla essence is imitation because it is cheaper to make. The flowers of the vanilla plant are hand pollinated early in the morning, which makes the spice very labour intensive to produce. This is the reason for both the expense and why most is produced in Madagascar and Indonesia where the wages are low. Tomatoes, corn, capsicum, chilli, pineapple, tabasco, allspice, and potatoes are from Central and South America. Ask students to imagine their diet today without these treasures.

4. The Museum of Economic Botany – Relics of the past Museums of Economic Botany were common in the 18th and 19th centuries. Explorers and Travellers would bring back exotic plants from their travels and the colonies, then display them to the public. This building is one of only 2 such museums left in the world so in itself it has a historical story to tell. Most of the collection is from 1850 – 1890 and is good to show plants we can’t grow in the garden in Adelaide. The big Cocoa beans and the vanilla beans and strands are in the middle display table. The Coco De Mer is the biggest seed in the world. It looks like two large coconuts jointed together. Discussion: Displaying the plants like this was like

advertising the new ipad on TV, it was marketing designed to sell more items.

Vanilla (below) forms a bean when it is mature. 

Cacao

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5. Classification Garden – Cinnamon: The Dutch East India Company

Cinnamon

When Spain invaded Portugal they also began to dominate the spice trade and became the new controllers of price and supply to Europe. The Dutch were a very strong sea fairing country in the 17 and 1800s. They in turn became annoyed with the Spanish controlling the spice trade. They established a company called the Dutch East India Company and travelled across the Indian Ocean to Sri-Lanka (Ceylon) and Indonesia in search of tropical spices. They found them and planted large plantations in the islands to the north west of Australia which are now Indonesia but then referred to as the Spice Islands or Batavia.

Why do you think the Dutch people bothered to do this, when they could have just bought their spices from the Spanish and Portuguese?

To make money and get access to cheaper spices.

If there are green leaves on the ground, (depends on the season), students can crush and smell them. There is a faint smell of cinnamon in the leaves. But the bark of the tree is used to make the cinnamon. As the bark dries it curls up into a Quill. (Pictured)

Ethical discussion:

This is a ripe discussion from a number of viewpoints. The behaviour of the Dutch was quite brutal as they conquered the people and enslaved them to work the plantations. So it presents a discussion of ethical views of today and yesterday (although this process still occurs today). Environmentally they cleared the amazing biodiversity of the forest to grow their crops. This destroys the homes of the people and animals who live there and contributes to the increase of climate change (deforestation is the second biggest contributor). There is a current parallel with palm oil and Orang-utans.

The Dutch East India Company took the spices back to Europe and sold them for lots of money. Within 50 years they were the richest company in the world.

Cinnamon was one of the spices they grew and traded, they took it from Sri Lanka to Indonesia; at one stage 1 kilo of cinnamon was more valuable than 1 kilo of gold.

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6. Bananas and Sugar – William Dampier Sugar Cane and Bananas

These plants are both grown best in the tropics. We think they originated in our closest neighbour, New Guinea. They are very important crops to the planet, sugar is the biggest crop on earth and bananas is 5th biggest. (Sugar is also used to make fuel and alcohol.) Check with the students who has a banana and some sugar in the house most weeks. Imagine the worldwide market for these goods.

William Dampier the English explorer, trader, pirate and buccaneer was perhaps the first world traveller. He circumnavigated the world 3 times in his search for riches and changed the way people thought about trade and travel. He also made a lot of money writing early travel books and one of his ventures

inspired the book Robinson Crusoe. Dampier also collected a lot of animal and plant specimens in his travels and is believed to be the first navigator to chart the ocean currents of the world. Many other travellers including Captain Cook used his charts later in their explorations.

On one adventure Dampier transported banana plants to Brazil as a cheap, easy to grow, high energy food for the slaves on the sugar and tobacco plantations.

The bananas plants at the gardens usually have a frond of bananas on them somewhere most parts of the year. Bananas are the largest herb and are a leaf not a tree. Each leaf stem fruits only once.

Because of selective breeding over thousands of years, modern bananas don’t have seeds so they are propagated from the rhizome which shoots from below the ground. (The new plants can be seen shooting around the base of the stems).

West of the banana plants is the sugar cane. Imagine life without sugar! The sugar is extracted from the stem of the cane as a thick liquid and refined. Early sweeteners in Europe came mainly from sugar beet and fruits.

Discussion:

From discussions about bananas and sugar students may realise how valuable these plants are in the world economy. So the first people to bring these and other spices to the worldwide economy had so much to gain. Currently annually the most valuable traded commodity is petrol (oil) second is coffee – A Plant!!

  Sugar cane 

Bananas 

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HMS Roebuck 1690 – One of Dampier’s expedition Vessels. Wikipedia