By Carina Magyar in Roots — Apr 8, 2023

IX: Radish

Move over mushrooms, Mario eats radishes.

Fresh radishes. Photo by Jo Lanta / Unsplash

Good morning. Today is nonidi, the 19th of Germinal, Year CCXXXI. We celebrate les radis, little red peppery root vegetables.

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Whether you like the taste of radishes or not, they're growing everywhere. In fact, they were one of the first Eurasian plants introduced to the Americas in the Columbian Exchange, despite being nearly non-caloric and nobody's idea of a main course. This is because radishes are wizards in the garden at dealing with pests. Their pungency underground repels many pests and insects, and their leafy greens attract many species of caterpillar and the hungry teeth of bunnies, meaning they're magnets that repel and attract pests in just the right way to keep cucumber and tomato plants safe.

When Super Mario Bros. 2 was released, everyone of my generation was ecstatic. Finally a follow-up to the best game of all time! We settled in to play, expecting more side-scrolling levels and bizarre enemies, and we got it, just ... in a very weird way.

It was cool that there were four characters instead of two – Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and Toad – and that each had unique abilities (except Mario, who was just generically good at stuff), but what was with the Arabian landscaping? Why couldn't you jump on enemies? Why did throwing a radish at someone kill them? Mario was a mushroom guy! You know, for pizzas! Radishes? Really?

The answer was that Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. 2, as it was released in Japan, was deemed "too difficult" for North American kids, so instead they slapped new Mario designs on an easier, completely unrelated game, and shipped that instead.

IX: Radish

VIII: Hemlock

X: Apiary

VIII: Hemlock

X: Apiary

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