Thanks Granddad!
The next time you find yourself tuning out advice from an elder such as Mom, Dad, Grandma, or Granddad, think about what happened with a scientist named Charles T. Bryson.
When Bryson was a boy in northeastern Mississippi, Bryson's grandfather (John Rives Crumpton) told him about something he had learned as a child. Crushing the leaves of the "American beautyberry" plant helps keep biting insects away from farm animals used to do chores, like horses and mules.
It was well known among Mississippi farm folk in the early 1900s that placing the crushed leaves under an animal's harness would mash out oily stuff that would keep biting insects away. Eventually, people there began mashing the leaves and rubbing this plant "juice" on their own skin—and they found that the stuff worked as well for them as it did for the animals!
It seems as if this helpful bit of knowledge became forgotten over time, perhaps because other ways—such as repellant sprays—were found to help keep insects such as mosquitoes away.
But guess what? Bryson grew up and became a botanist in the ARS Southern Weed Science Research Unit in Stoneville, Mississippi. And he passed on to other ARS scientists what his granddad had told him about the crushed beautyberry leaves.
This has led to research that may prove to be the next great scientific breakthrough in the fight against mosquitoes!
The scientists who Bryson shared his remedy with work in the ARS Natural Products Utilization Research Unit in Oxford, Mississippi. One of them, a chemist named Charles Cantrell, was so interested that he began studying American beautyberry plants to see what it is about them that mosquitoes and other biting bugs don't like.
Cantrell―with Jerome Klun, an entomologist (an insect specialist) in the ARS Chemicals Affecting Insect Behavior Research Unit in Beltsville, Maryland, and Oxford research leader Stephen Duke―extracted several compounds from the plant that repel bugs!
Among these compounds was one called callicarpenal (cal-e-CAR-pen-all), which shows a lot of promise for keeping mosquitoes away from human skin. In fact, the compound looks so promising that the scientists have applied for a patent for it, to help encourage commercial production.
Next, they will need to make sure that callicarpenal is not toxic to humans, and then test it on volunteers. But judging from the knowledge passed down from the past, this step shouldn't pose much of a problem.
So now you know: There IS much to be learned from our elders. So perk up your ears! You may even learn something that will lead you to create the next "big thing" when you become big!
By Luis Pons, formerly, Agricultural Research Service, Information Staff.
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