Horticultural and Agricultural Edition.

Cabbage. Cabbage, broccoli, kale, cauliflower, collards, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, and cole slaw are all the same plant, merely trained differently in its youth. The resulting variety of forms teaches us the value of education in personal development.

Spearmint. While crusading in the Holy Land, Richard the Lion-Hearted discovered that Spearmint, in spite of its name, makes a very poor spear indeed, and in his embarrassment was only with difficulty dissuaded from condemning the entire disloyal species to the gallows.

Spinach. It was long believed that spinach contained large amounts of iron, but this old wives’ tale was conclusively disproved by an almost childishly simple experiment with an electromagnet.

Tomato. Only its susceptibility to frost prevents a single tomato plant from eventually covering the North American continent.

Vanilla. Of all the common spices, Vanilla is the only one that is extracted from a corsage.

Watermelon. So-called “seedless” watermelons are deseeded in sweatshops throughout the Southeast, most notably in the area around Darien, Georgia. It is notorious that most of the melon deseeders are paid less than a dollar per seed.

Zucchini. In the wild, zucchini are ferociously carnivorous; but they pose no danger in the garden, as long as they are treated with suitable deference.

Dear Dr. Boli: Is there anything that you don’t know? Please explain. —Sincerely, Bewildered in Beechview.

Dear Sir or Madam: There are many questions to which Dr. Boli does not have an answer, though he consoles himself with the reflection that no one else seems to know the answers either. On these subjects, like Socrates, Dr. Boli knows only that he knows not:

If “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” why is New York the Empire State?

Why are the redundant letters C and Q, which express no sounds that cannot be expressed by S or K, admitted into the English alphabet on an equal footing with letters of undisputed utility, such as M?

Why has the man who first imprisoned tea in sad little bags gone unpunished for so long?

If you cut away every bit of a Swiss cheese except the holes, what do you have?

Why are there twenty-four hours in a day, instead of some reasonable number like ten or a hundred?

Why do so many people call themselves “poets” if they cannot construct so much as a simple heroic couplet?

Can nothing be done about prime numbers?

In these matters Dr. Boli professes perfect ignorance. Ignorance, however, is not a fault, but rather an opportunity for exploration. Dr. Boli, who firmly believes that death is largely psychosomatic, attributes his better-than-average longevity to the happy knowledge that there are problems yet unsolved that require his attention.

Dear Dr. Boli: What is a heptagon? —Sincerely, Mike S.

Dear Sir: A heptagon is a figure with seven sides. Etymologically, the word comes from a Greek term meaning “a figure with seven sides,” although some rogue etymologists have suggested a much more recent origin during the bebop era, when a hep-tagon was supposedly much more “solid,” “in the groove,” or “all reet” than a hexagon or, heaven forbid, a square. More research is needed to produce a truly definitive answer.

Mystical properties have long been attributed to the heptagon, and Greek temples to Phthonus were almost invariably constructed in the shape of a regular heptagon, much to the annoyance of the masons’ guild, which repeatedly threatened collective action if its members were called on to lay out one more blasted temple to Phthonus. In spite of their objections, the tradition of ascribing mystical significance to heptagonal shapes, especially regular heptagons, continues to the present day. The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, is actually constructed as a heptagon; but two of the sides, in which our darkest military secrets are administered, are kept hidden from view.

The famous Heptagon Gardens public hall, however, is the result of the unhealthy mixture of Enlightenment-era rationalism with Forks-of-the-Ohio topography. The attempt to lay a rational street plan in a triangle of land resulted in a pair of grids that collide along Liberty Avenue. As a result, buildings along that line of demarcation are constructed in every known geometrical figure, except, oddly enough, for the rectangle, which is unknown on that street.