Thanks to a genetic mutation thousands of years ago, modern domesticated sweet almonds are delicious and safe to eat.St. Basil's Hexaemeron, a Christian text from around the fourth century, contains a curious botanical instruction: Pierce an almond tree in the trunk near its roots, stick a "fat plug of pine" into its center — and its almond seeds will undergo a remarkable change."Thus the ... bitter almonds ... lose the acidity of their juice, and become delicious fruits," the text reads. "Let not the sinner then despair of himself. ... If agriculture can change the juices of plants, the efforts of the soul to arrive at virtue, can certainly triumph over all infirmities." The cause of this change, scientists later theorized, was stress: Jamming pine wood into the almond tree's core may have halted production of the toxins.We don't need pine wood to turn almonds sweet anymore. Mo
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