How did the waffle iron get its name?

This question was answered by Kelly McCorkle, our library intern! 

A patron wanted to know how the name “waffle iron” came about. Digging into the history of the waffle iron, we learn from Electronic Component Magazine (ECM) that modern waffle irons date back to the late-1800s. On August 24, 1869, Cornelius Swartwout of Troy, New York applied for a patent for his invention: the stovetop waffle iron. Created for wood or gas stoves, Swartwout hinged together two cast iron plates to create what would forever be known in America as the “waffle iron.”


While the waffle iron did not become patented until 1869, ECM cites the Netherlands as the place of origin in the 1300s. Waffles were cooked over an open fire using a long, wooden-handled device consisting of two iron plates. CooksInfo.com corroborates this story.

Furthermore, waffle irons have come a long way since the 1800s. CooksInfo.com states that the Charles M. Cole of Oakland, California improved upon the waffle iron design in 1926. His invention was electric, and it allowed two waffles to be made at once. While the waffle iron may not be made of cast iron anymore, the name remains the same and people all around the world still enjoy them. In fact, August 24th is National Waffle Day in celebration of the day Swartwout patented his waffle iron invention. Be that as it may, waffles are good any time of year!

For waffle recipes and information about other inventions, please consult the following books: 1001 Muffins, Biscuits, Doughnuts, Pancakes, Waffles, Popovers, Fritters, Scones, and Other Quick Breads by Gregg R. Gillespie and The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years by John Brockman.

What's the weather like in Alaska during the summer?

This question was answered by Kelly McCorkle, our library intern!

A patron considering a trip to Alaska wanted to know what the weather is like and the time difference from Ohio. To answer the weather question, AccuWeather.com provides a month-by-month view of the historical average temperature for each day. Looking at June, we learn that the average high temperature ranges from 62-67 degrees with an average low of 46-52. July has an average of 68 for the high and average lows in the 50s. In August, the temperatures at the beginning of the month start out in the high 60s, but steadily decline towards the end of the month. Similarly, Alaska.org states that daytime temperatures range from 60-80, depending on the area with nighttime lows in the 40s and 50s. Alaska.org also notes that Alaska experiences exceptionally rainy summers. That being said, it explains that the best time to visit Alaska weather-wise is June 15th to July 15th. One of the biggest perks of visiting Alaska during this time is the extra daylight hours. June 21st is the longest day of the year everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, but because Alaska is so far north, it receives more sunlight than most places. So from late May to late July, Alaskan tourists can experience what AlaskaCenters.gov explains is called the “midnight sun” because it stays light so late into the night.

To answer the question about Alaska’s time difference, we head to WorldTimeServer.com. This website states that Alaska is four hours behind Ohio.

More information about Alaska can be found in the following books: Alaska by Janie Freeburg and The Alaska Bush Pilot Chronicles: More Adventures and Misadventures from the Big Empty by Mort D. Mason.

Why are hedgehogs illegal in Pennsylvania?

This question was answered by Kelly McCorkle, our library intern.

While attending college in Pennsylvania, an Ohio native and Newton Falls Public Library patron became aware that it was illegal to have a pet hedgehog in the state of Pennsylvania. However, she did not know why this was the case. To answer this question, we started with a simple Google search which led to the website for The International Hedgehog Association, a non-profit organization devoted to creatures. IHA reports that hedgehogs do not emit odors like most small rodents, are easy to litter train, have a gentle demeanor, and require no immunization shots. Given these rather positive characteristics, why would hedgehogs be considered illegal?

A news article on Pennlive.com about illegal animals in Pennsylvania provides the short answer to this question. According to the article, the concern regarding hedgehogs is that “they could hurt the local ecosystem if they were somehow released into the wild.” Furthermore, Hedgehogged.com states that the law was originally intended to prohibit the importation of hedgehogs into Pennsylvania but that breeders continued to do so which led to banning hedgehogs entirely.

The current Pennsylvania Law against the importation of wildlife can be found in Title 34: Game under Chapter 21, Subchapter D, and Subsection 2163. However, this law does not specify hedgehogs or any other animals directly. 

We found our information on the IHA website, the article “These pets are banned in Pennsylvania” by Teresa Bonner, and the article “Places Where It’s Illegal to Own Hedgehogs and the Laws Around Them," as well as the Pennsylvania Law on wildlife importation. General information about hedgehogs can be found in the following books: Hedgehogs: Everything About Purchase, Care,and Nutrition by Sharon Lynn Vanderlip, GuideTo Owning an African Pygmy Hedgehog: Housing, Feeding, Breeding, Exhibition,Health Care by Dennis Kelsey-Wood.

What are the black spots on stingrays?

“I was at the aquarium and I noticed that the stingrays all had patterns of black specks on their backs. Was something wrong with them?”

After doing some research, we found that there was probably nothing wrong with the stingrays. Most likely, our patron was seeing the rays’ ampullae of Lorenzini, special sensory organs shared by sharks, skates, and rays. The ampullae are pores leading to jelly-filled canals that end in nerve endings, and they can act as electroreceptors, sensing the electrical pulses given off by the muscle activity of other creatures.They can also detect changes in temperature and water pressure. If our patron had looked closely at the underside of the ray, they would have seen many more ampullae, most clustered around its mouth. These help the rays find food on the sea floor.

The ampullae were first discovered by Marcello Malpighi in 1663, but were not described in detail until 1678. Stefano Lorenzini was the first to describe them, which is why they’re named after him. Though scientists were aware of the ampullae, they did not understand their purpose until the 1960s.

We found our information in Michele Debczak’s article “10 Stunning Facts about Stingrays” on Mental Floss, Barbara E. Wueringer and Ian R. Tibbetts’ research paper comparing the ampullary systems of shovelnose rays in Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, The Encyclopedia of Sharks by Steve and Jane Parker, and Sharks: Ancient Predators in a Modern Sea by Salvador Jorgensen.

What is this yellow fungus on my lawn?

A patron came in and described something that had appeared on their lawn overnight. At first, they’d thought a dog had been sick in their yard, but on closer inspection it seemed to be an ugly yellow fungus. The patron reported that when it rained, the mass released a smoky-looking cloud of spores. It also appeared to bleed.

We had noticed something similar growing in the mulch in front of the library a few weeks earlier. It had eventually disappeared on its own, and we’d never tried to identify it, but we knew what our patron was describing. Because we thought the yellow mass might be a fungus, we checked The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, David Arora’s Mushrooms Demystified, and Peterson’s Field Guide to Mushrooms. However, we couldn’t find what we were looking for.

Searching on Google for an image of yellow fungus led us to an article by Susan Mahr on the Wisconsin Master Gardener Program website. There were several pictures that our patron recognized as the organism growing on their law, which the website identified as the “dog vomit slime mold.” Technically, it’s not a fungus at all. While scientists used to place slime molds in Kingdom Fungi, they were moved to Kingdom Protista, which serves as a catch-all for eukaryotic organisms that are not plants, fungi, or animals.  

According the Mahr, the dog vomit slime mold begins its life as a spore. These spores develop into cells, which join up to form the slimy-looking yellowish-brown plasmodium. The plasmodium creeps across the land, consuming the bacteria and other organisms that thrive in decay. When it runs out of food or gets too dry, the plasmodium transforms into an aethelium, or a “fruiting body” – the puffy yellow mass that will release spores and begin the cycle anew.

The aethelium will continue to develop, hardening and darkening in color. It may start to liquefy in spots, which can make it appear to bleed, as our patron noticed. Once the hard crust is broken, it will release its clouds of spores. This may have been the “smoking” that our patron noticed.

Despite its unappealing name and appearance, the dog vomit slime mold is almost entirely harmless. (The spores may aggravate asthma or allergies.) It will eventually dissolve on its own after a few days, though it can also be broken up. A slime mold needs moisture, so they’re usually spotted in hot, humid weather. Watering less, or raking up damp mulch, can be another way to be rid of them.

What does lorem ipsum mean?

“I was setting up a newsletter on the computer, and all the examples were in a foreign language! Why?”

After asking for more details, we found that the language in question was lorem ipsum, not a language at all.

Typically beginning “lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetueur,” it’s a pseudo-Latin nonsense phrase mostly lifted from a treatise on ethics written by Cicero in 45 B.C. According to the Microsoft support website, the original phrase by Cicero is “Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit,” which translates as "There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain."

Lorem ipsum, however, has had letters added and removed to the point where it’s no longer proper, meaningful Latin. For example, according to http://generator.lorem-ipsum.info/, a webpage for generating lorem ipsum and other text, sometimes the letters K, W, and Z are added randomly, just to give an idea of what they would look like.

Because it’s meaningless, lorem ipsum is often used as filler text in design, such as in our patron’s newsletter example. It’s supposed to give an idea of what the finished product will look like without distracting the eye.

Why do I have to tell the computer that I'm not a robot?

“Sometimes when I’m online, a website will ask me to type in a bunch of weird letters and numbers, or pick out all the pictures that have a car or a street sign, or just click a box that says ‘I’m not a robot’ before it lets me go any further. Why does this happen?”

These are a few different examples of a CAPTCHA, an acronym that stands for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart.” According to Architects of the Information Age, edited by Robert Curley, the CAPTCHA was developed in 2000 by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University. Yahoo requested their help keeping bots (which are automated computer programs) out of their chat rooms. The bots were collecting personal information and filling the rooms with spam. However, the programs couldn’t recognize distorted text. By asking users to identify twisted or crossed-out letters before they could enter the chat, Yahoo ensured that only people, not bots, could enter their chat rooms.  

The official CAPTCHA website gives us a few more examples of what it does. It can prevent bots from sending spam comments, stuffing the ballot boxes of online polls, and slowing down email services by signing up for thousands of accounts at a time. If you forget your email password and have to make a few guesses, the site may ask you to solve a CAPTCHA. This protects your account by keeping bots from running through every possible password until they get in.

There are ways to circumvent CAPTCHA. Artificial intelligence has gotten good at solving the ones that are only text, which explains why newer CAPTCHAs can involve images. There are also CAPTCHA solving services, where workers are paid approximately fifty cents to a dollar for every thousand CAPTCHAs they solve.

How do frogs survive the winter?

One of our patrons, who has in the past been concerned about how deer and birds stay warm, was recently concerned about how the tree frogs and peepers around their house make it through the winter. We found the answer in Frogs: A Chorus of Colors by John L. Behler and Deborah A. Behler and a Scietific American article helpfully titled “How do frogs survive winter? Why don’tthey freeze to death?” that cites Rick Emmer, a former zookeeper at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.

While aquatic frogs will hibernate in the water, resting on the mud, and toads will burrow beneath the frost line, peepers can’t dig as well. They’ll find cracks and crevices to nestle down in, or find old leaves to hide under. When the weather gets cold, though, these can’t protect them from freezing. Fortunately, some frogs have found a way to adapt. As temperatures gradually dip, their bodies become saturated with glucose, which acts as an antifreeze protecting their vital organs. The rest of their bodies freeze, their hearts stop beating, and they stop breathing. Once the weather is warm again, they thaw and return to life.

What's Christmas like in Sweden?

One of the library’s book clubs was reading A Man Called Ove by Swedish author Fredrick Backman. Since it’s close to the holiday season, they were wondering how Ove and the other characters would be celebrating. We found the answer on Sweden’s official tourism website and in The Folklore of World Holidays by Margaret Read MacDonald, The World Encyclopedia of Christmas by Gerry Bowler, the Encyclopedia of Christmas and New Year’s Celebrations by Tanya Gulevich, and a tongue-in-cheek article about Swedish Christmas traditions by Emma Löfgren for The Local.

The Christmas season begins with St. Lucia’s day on December 13. Families may celebrate by having one of their daughters get up early and serve coffee and baked goods while dressed in the traditional St. Lucia costume of a white dress, red sash, and a wreath on her head with seven lit candles. Towns and schools elect their own Lucias, and a national Lucia is chosen and announced on television.

Swedes celebrate many customs that Americans would be familiar with, such as setting up a Christmas tree and exchanging gifts. It used to be that the gift-giver would write a short verse about what the present contained, but this doesn’t seem to still be widely done. A tradition that has held is the Disney Christmas special, broadcast at 3:00 PM nationwide every year since 1959.

As everywhere, food is an important part of celebrations. A classic Christmas smorgasbord (or julbord) includes herring, sausage, ham, meatballs, rice pudding, and lutfisk, a dish made of lye-soaked dried fish.

Decorations vary from family to family, but often involve candles, Advent calendars, fresh flowers such as hyacinths, and the Christmas goat, or julbock, often made of straw. The julbock is thought to have originated with the goats that drew the Norse god Thor’s chariot. At one point, it was the julbock and not Santa Claus that delivered the gifts. Though Santa has taken over, the goat remains a part of the season. Since 1966, the town of Gävle has built an enormous straw goat at the beginning of Advent, but it’s an irresistible target for vandals and has been burned down nearly every year.

The Christmas season doesn’t officially end until St. Knut’s Day on January 13, at which point the tree is taken down and everything is put away until next year.

Our patrons can see Frederick Backman’s own take on the holidays in his recently published novella, The Deal of a Lifetime.

What’s the white powder on grapes? Is it a pesticide?

You may have noticed a whitish coating on certain fruits. It’s particularly visible on grapes, plums, and blueberries. It’s epicuticular wax, also known as “bloom,” a natural and harmless part of many plants. The coating protects the plants and seals in their moisture. It’s what makes water slide off fresh kale, and it gives blue spruce trees their distinctive color. You can also find in on certain succulents.

Fruit in the supermarket has often been artificially waxed to make it last longer and look more appealing, and because the process of picking and washing it stripped it of its natural protective coat. Sometimes, epicuticular wax from other plants is used. Carnauba wax (which can be found in everything from cosmetics to furniture polish) comes from a species of palm tree that grows in Brazil; the wax is harvested by beating the dried palm fronds. Other petroleum-, shellac-, vegetable-, or beeswax-based waxes may also be used.

According to Consumer Reports, there is concern that the wax coating may help trap pesticide residue. They recommend buying organic when possible and making sure to thoroughly wash produce. In an article from October of this year, Catherine Roberts suggested that soaking fruits and vegetables in a baking soda solution may be effective in removing some pesticides.

We got our information from ThoughtCo, Consumer Reports, The Atlantic, Succulent Identifier, Washington State University’s Tree Fruit Research & Extension Center, The Demystified Vine, and The Botanist in the Kitchen. If you want to learn more, Aliza Green’s Field Guide to Produce and Melissa’s Great Book of Produce by Cathy Thomas both give tips on how to buy, store, and use fresh fruits and vegetables, while Richard Gianfrancesco’s How to Grow Food and Barbara Pleasant’s Homegrown Pantry explain how to grow your own.

Is there a difference between seltzer, sparkling water, mineral water, club soda, and tonic water?

One of our patrons bought club soda instead of seltzer and they wanted to know what the difference was. It turned out that they all taste about the same, except for tonic water, even though they come from slightly different sources. We found the answer in several sources, including Epicurious, Today.com, and Kitchn.

Sparkling water seems to be an umbrella term that encompasses any kind of carbonated water, but it’s usually used in reference to seltzer or mineral water.

Seltzer is plain water that’s been carbonated to give it fizz. It may also be flavored. LaCroix, Scweppe’s, and Canada Dry all sell seltzers. (On their website, LaCroix maintains that they’re a sparkling water and not a seltzer, alleging that sparkling water is sodium free and does not contain artificial flavor, but other sources did not note a difference.) The word “seltzer” comes from “Selters,” a German brand of mineral water that’s been around since the 17^th century at least.

Sparkling mineral water, such as Perrier or San Pellegrino, comes from underground springs and contains naturally occurring minerals. It may be naturally carbonated by gases in the spring or carbon dioxide may have been added. Since it’s typically imported from Europe, it’s more expensive than seltzer, club soda, or tonic water.

Club soda is seltzer with added ingredients that make it taste more like a mineral water. It usually includes sodium bicarbonate (also known as baking soda), sodium citrate, and potassium sulfate.

Tonic water is the most dissimilar. (It’s also the only one that glows under a blacklight!) While other sparkling waters may or may not be flavored, tonic water is always flavored with quinine, a bitter-tasting compound found in the bark of the cinchona tree, and typically sweetened with sugar or corn syrup. Quinine was once used to treat and prevent malaria; the gin and tonic cocktail originated when British soldiers in India were attempting to make their anti-malarial more palatable.

For more interesting uses for sparkling water, Anton Nocito provides recipes for homemade soda and cocktails made with syrup and sparkling water in Make Your Own Soda, available for borrowing at the Newton Falls Public Library or as an ebook.

When did scarecrows first come about?

According to Thom Sokoloski and Jenny McCowan at thomasandguinevere.com, Cindy Murphy’s article for Grit and Lori Rotenberk’s article for Modern Farmer, scarecrows have been around as long as people have grown crops, but they haven’t always looked like the ones you might be familiar with. The early Egyptian scarecrows, constructed along the Nile River, didn't look like people at all. Egyptian farmers had a problem with wild quail, so they built wooden frames with nets and had people herd the quail into them. Famers in pre-feudal Japan sometimes used a scarecrow called a kakashi. A kakashi consists of old rags and other bad-smelling items mounted on a pole with bells and other noisemakers and set afire. The smell and smoke would keep birds away.

Ancient Greek and Roman scarecrows were more humanoid. They built statues of their fertility god in their gardens and fields to protect against birds and other thieves. In Britain during the Middle Ages, actual children would work in the fields as “crow-scarers,” knocking together blocks of wood to scare away the birds. Some Native American tribes and early settlers also employed the human bird-scarer technique. With population fluctuations and a need for more farmers to be working the field, this job was passed on from actual people to stuffed sacks gourds for heads, the precursors to scarecrows as we know them today.

Today, farmers can use high-tech gadgets to scare away birds, such as chemicals or ultrasonic waves, but the old-fashioned scarecrow is iconic. In America it is used as a symbol of the autumn, particularly of Halloween, and many towns have festivals celebrating scarecrows of all shapes and sizes. Scarecrows can be used to frighten and to entertain, but they will always be associated with the harvest.

Where do stinkbugs lay their eggs?

Now that fall’s here, stinkbugs are starting to appear inside again. A patron called asking about their lifecycle and reproduction, hoping to catch them before they hatched.

Brown marmorated stinkbugs only arrived in the U.S. in the late 1990s, but they’re a widespread pest now. We found a lot of information online, such as the Washington Post livechat with University of Maryland entomologist Michael Raupp, and pest control websites like AssuredEnvironments.com and Terminix.com.

Stinkbugs like to come inside to stay warm through the winter, but they don’t eat or reproduce until they go back outside in the springtime again. Once the weather gets warm and the days get longer (usually in April or May), you’ll see them appear again as they make their way outside to feed for a few weeks and then mate. A female will be ready to lay eggs as early as five days after mating, according to AssuredEnvironments.com, and she can lay from 100 to 400 in her lifetime. (We found different figures – it probably depends on the climate of the state where she’s found. A stinkbug in warmer climes will be outside eating and reproducing longer.)

The stinkbugs will only lay their eggs on the underside of leaves. The eggs are barrel-shaped and about a millimeter in diameter. The female lays twenty to thirty at a time and they take four to seven days to hatch. It takes a little over a month for the baby bugs (or nymphs) to grow into full adults – they go through five stages (or instars) before they’re fully grown, each lasting about a week. When they first hatch, they don’t look much like the adult bug. First instar stinkbug nymphs are rounder, resembling ticks, and black and orange in color.

If you come across these eggs or nymphs underneath a leaf, you can scrape them off and drown them in soapy water. (This also works on the adult bugs and keeps them from releasing their smell.) Scientists in New York and Oregon, where the bugs cause a lot of agricultural damage, are experimenting with biological control in the form of samurai wasps. These tiny parasitic wasps lay their eggs inside stinkbug eggs, killing them before they can hatch.

If nothing else, you can take comfort in knowing that stinkbugs only live for about six to eight months, and the bugs bothering you this fall won’t be back next year – but their children might.

What makes tomatoes go from green to red?

We checked several of our gardening and food science books to no avail, although we did learn from Lynn Coulter’s Gardening with Heirloom Seeds that tomatoes, native to South America and members of the nightshade family, took a while to catch on among Europeans.

However, Brian McMahon at MentalFloss, Mandy Kendrick at Scientific American, and the University of Cambridge’s IntoBiology website all had the answer to our question. Chlorophyll makes the tomatoes green and, as they ripen, the chlorophyll begins to dissolve. Lycopene, a chemical in the tomato that has a red color, shows through as the chlorophyll dissolves. As this happens, the tomato will also become sweeter, softer, less acidic, and ready to eat.

Fruits produce a chemical called ethylene in certain conditions, including as they ripen, and other fruit will respond to it. According to Jeremy Dore at GrowVeg and McMahon at Mental Floss, a green tomato in a paper bag with a ripe banana will respond to the ethylene given off by the banana, and it will begin to ripen itself.

Did the eclipse have any effects on the wildlife?

Newton Falls wasn’t in the path of totality for the solar eclipse on Monday, August 21 (though it will be in 2024), so things didn’t go completely dark. The moon only covered about 80% of the sun. However, in parts of Georgia, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon, Kansas, Wyoming, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, the moon covered the entire sun and it briefly appeared to be night.

The moon is simply following its normal path, but when everything suddenly gets dark, some animals are confused into beginning their twilight rituals, according to John Dvorak in his book Mask of the Sun. Frogs and crickets may begin to sing. Chickens will roost, cows will head back to the barn, and bees will return to the hive. Plankton will rise toward the top of the water and trout will head toward the bottom, just as they do at twilight. Once the eclipse is over, the animals resume their normal daylight behavior. Dogs, cats, horses, and deer are among the animals that did not appear to notice the eclipse.

How do you treat a chigger bite? What causes it?

It turns out that there is no one creature called a chigger – the word actually refers to the larval stage of a trombiculid mite. The mites are usually reddish in color and are also known as red bugs, harvest mites, and berry bugs.

One of our patrons had heard that chiggers burrowed into the skin or laid eggs in the flesh. While this is true of certain parasites (ticks and botflies, respectively), it isn’t a problem with chiggers. What they’re actually doing is drilling tiny holes in the skin with their specialized mouthparts and injecting a fluid that breaks down skin cells and allows the chigger to digest them. The itchy red bump accompanying a chigger bite is the skin’s adverse reaction to all this abuse.

Often, several chiggers will bite at once, causing a rash of red welts. They typically bite in folds of skin or where clothing is tight against the body (like waistbands or the tops of socks). Wear insect or tick repellent to minimize the chance of bites. Healthline recommends trying not to brush against vegetation, but that may not be feasible. Since chiggers usually take about an hour to attach to the skin, showering after spending time in wooded areas might be enough to avoid bites. If you have been bitten, it can take anyway from one to three weeks for the bites to heal. While chiggers don’t carry diseases, the bites can get infected if they’re scratched too much. Keep them clean and relieve this itch with ice, hydrocortisone cream, calamine lotion, or a baking soda and water paste.

We found our information on boyslife.org, healthline.com and in The Complete Guide to Camping and Wilderness Survival by Vin T. Sparano. While it didn’t have anything on chiggers, Wilderness Medicine by William Forgey includes information on how to treat snake bites, stingray stings, and scorpion stings.

How long do fireflies live and where are they during the day?

One of our younger patrons wondered where fireflies spent most of their time, if she only saw them at night. The National Audubon Society Field Guide to Insects and Spiders told us that fireflies are nocturnal and enjoy moist places, with some living under bark, decaying plants, or other debris. The website www.firefly.org added that they also like long grass: it hides them during the day, but at night, they can climb up and get a good vantage point to signal with their lights.

They mainly use their lights to attract mates, though the writers at firefly.org hypothesize that they may also use them to warn away predators. Different species have different flashing patterns. Some female fireflies will mimic the patterns of other species to lure the males, which they will eat. However, some species of adult fireflies have not been observed eating at all – they likely only live long enough to lay eggs.

According to the basic lifecycle on firefly.org, a firefly spends more of its life in the larva stage – about one to two years. The larvae are carnivorous, feeding on snails and worms, and also often light up. They spend three weeks as pupas before maturing into adult fireflies, which only live for about a month. If they’re successful, the fireflies lay eggs which take approximately three weeks to hatch.

Is there anything I can do for my cracking fingernails?

Although we are not dermatologists here at the library, we found some tips in the book A Complete Guide to Manicure and Pedicure by Leigh Toselli and the Globe and Mail article “Why do my fingernails peel and crack?” by Dr. Sheila Wijayasinghe that our patron may be able to use.

Both sources suggest protecting nails from water and harsh chemicals – wearing gloves while cleaning and washing the dishes, for instance, and using a non-acetone nail polish remover when necessary. Commercial nail oils and strengthening formulas are available, but we cannot vouch for their efficacy.  Toseli also suggests using almond oil or even just a regular hand cream or lotion to keep nails moisturized.

According to Toseli and Wijayasinghe, calcium and vitamins A, D, and B12 are important for healthy nails. Calcium can be found in bitter greens, tofu, dairy, and nuts; vitamin A is in fish, liver, egg yolk, milk, and many vegetables; vitamin B12 is also in eggs and dairy, and vitamin D can be absorbed from a few minutes of sunlight or found in fish, liver, and milk.

Nails grow slowly, so it may take up to six months for them to show significant improvement. 

Why are my plants rotting?

“I keep potted succulents indoors, and a few of them that I’ve had for years suddenly got mushy and rotted away. What’s wrong and how do I keep it from spreading?”

According to Succulents Simplified by Debra Lee Baldwin and The Idiot’s Guide to Succulents by Cassidy Tuttle, root rot is a common malady affecting succulents. Caused by overwatering, root rot causes the roots to have a mushy texture and is often fatal. If it’s the suspected culprit, our patron can try to remove the infected roots, let their plant dry out, and repot it in clean soil, but this may or may not save it.

If our patron does not believe that they have been overwatering their plants, or if the roots still seem healthy, diseases that could be causing the problem. We couldn’t get an exact diagnosis since the symptoms were so similar, but all of our sources suggested the same basic treatment: cut away the infected tissue if possible, and then repot the plant in new soil in a sterilized container, and throw away the old soil. It also would be a good idea to quarantine the plant to lower the risk of it infecting its fellows. If the disease hasn’t gotten into the roots, the prognosis is better, but it still may not be salvageable. 

Fortunately, we found that succulents are some of the easiest plants to propagate, so our patron may be able to produce a clone of their plant if healthy leaves remain. Though the method of propagation depends on the plant, many succulents will grow from leaves or cuttings.

How are essential oils made?

Aromatherapy and natural beauty have been popular recently, and so have essential oils, leading some of our patrons to wonder: where do they come from, exactly?

Essential oils come from different plants, and there are several methods of extracting them, according to Essential Oils: Natural Remedies which is published by Althea Press. The method used can depend on the plant. Citrus oils are cold-pressed, which means the rind is put in a press at 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ginger, frankincense, and myrrh are some of the oils typically extracted through CO₂ distillation. There are two methods of CO₂ distillation: cold and supercritical. Both involve passing carbon dioxide through the plant matter, but in cold distillation, the CO₂ is cooled to between 35-55 degrees Fahrenheit, and in supercritical, it’s heated to 87 degrees Fahrenheit.

Steam distillation is a common method and involves passing steam through the plant to collect the oils and then condensing the steam and separating the oil from the water. The water left over from this process is called hydrosol and can be used in scents and beauty products.

Chemicals such as methylene chloride (which can also be used as a paint stripper, degreaser, and component in drinking bird toys and bubble lights, among other things) can be used in place of water or CO_2. After the oil has been extracted, the remaining solvents are removed, but tiny traces may remain.

Finally, there’s the very old method of enfleurage. Plants (typically flowers, as suggested by the name) rest in a bath of warm fat or fatty oil. The fatty oil absorbs the essential oils from the flowers. Once it’s saturated, alcohol is added, which absorbs the essential oils from the fat or fatty oil and then evaporates, leaving only the essential oils behind. Like hydrosol, the fat remains scented and can be used in other products.

For more information on aromatherapy and essential oils, Complete Aromatherapy Handbook by Susanne Fischer-Rizzi and The Complete Illustrated Guide to Aromatherapy by Julia Lawless are both available at the Newton Falls Public Library for checkout.