A novelist on Pavlovsk and hunger

Elise Blackwell wrote a novel — Hunger — about the Siege of Leningrad and the people who starved at the Vavilov Research Institute rather than eat the seeds in their care. I haven’t read it, yet, although I have read interviews with the author. The Atlantic asked her to reflect on what is going on at the Pavlovsk Experiment Station. Very clever.

Genetic diversity is crucial to human survival and food is a central part of our history and heritage, but aesthetics matter too. In the place of an apple famed for its winter heartiness and a berry prized for its perfect sweetness will sit a commercial real estate development, the money earned off the bulldozed land going to those who successfully claimed in court that the Pavlovsk collection does not exist because it was never officially registered. Soon they will be accurate in more than legalistic terms: it won’t exist.

One thing puzzled me about her piece, though, and that was a reference to a bean she once grew, which she calls “the Tarahumara carpenteria,” italicized just like that, which suggests it could be a genus and species, but with a definite article, which suggests that if it is, Blackwell doesn’t know how to use a binomial. ((And why should she; I couldn’t write a novel.)) I know of the Tarahumara people, and I have grown one of their heirloom sunflowers. But I could find no trace of this bean either in the interwebs or in my copy of the 2010 Seed Savers Yearbook. Blackwell doesn’t indicate what kind of bean it might have been: bush or pole; common, runner, lima or tepary. I checked them all. It isn’t there. I checked the USDA. It isn’t there. I checked Native Seeds/SEARCH. It isn’t there. Please, someone, tell me I am wrong.

This is not to cast doubt on anything Elise Blackwell wrote. Really. It is to suggest two things. First, if anyone is still growing a bean called anything like Tarahumara carpenteria, would they please, please ensure that someone else has it too, and not just as memory-laden specimens for weighting down pie crusts. And secondly, as someone long ago once told me; “write it down, because the weakest ink lasts longer than the strongest memory.” ((Or did I read it somewhere? A self-referential footnote.))

8 Replies to “A novelist on Pavlovsk and hunger”

  1. This is a real tragedy. But what I don’t understand is why we are not getting together to safety duplicate this unique collection instead of fighting a political decision that is not likely to change? Unlike a sudden natural disaster, we did have time (may be not any more…) to see this one coming since this process started 2 years ago… Couldn’t the European and North American countries with similar climate an environment conditions mobilize efforts to collect cuttings and reproduce these species in field genebanks or better in vitro? What are we not talking about this? A field genebank that is not safety-duplicated is always at risk, regardless of government decisions to bulldoze it… What is stopping us doing this?

  2. Altieri (1985) Agroecology 2nd ed writes about the Tarahumara and their seasonal diets citing R.A. Bye (1981) Quelites—ethnoecology of edible greens. Ethnobiology 1:109-119.

    Dried red or black beans are listed as Tarahumara foods in the appendix of Daphne Miller (2008) The Jungle Effect, Harper Collins, NY. Chapter 5 is all about Copper Canyon, Mexico and its slow release food.

    My guess is that you are looking for a Phaseolus vulgaris cultivar.

  3. Fascinating, both of you, and thanks for doing the extra digging. I’m still puzzled though, and as far as I am concerned, this just bears out what I said about weak ink and strong memories.

    I’m not saying Elise Blackwell is wrong, only that I can’t make sense of what she writes. Dirk’s result is a cultivar, and so unlikely to be a traditional Tarahumara landrace of Lima bean. And Rhizowen shows us that the name Carpinteria (not Carpenteria) is historically associated with Lima beans. But we’re no nearer knowing which bean Blackwell grew to such effect.

  4. My apologies for a misspelling and using the genus and species format stupidly. (My botanist parents would be appalled.) I believe that this is the bean I grew: Tarahumara Carpintero. Striking
    black and white Jacob’s Cattle bean. Originally collected in
    central and southern Tarahumara country, Chihuahua.

    It’s a pole bean, and the excellent news is that it’s available through Native Seeds/Search. #PC40 in their catalog.

    Sorry for the confusion. I had less than a day to write that piece for The Atlantic, and I was slammed with other work, but I wanted to do it to help call attention to the Pavlovsk situation. I was working from memory, and probably have been calling that bean the wrong name for over a decade. Still, no excuse for not fact checking, and I apologize. The original Seeds Savers catalog it came from was from the early to mid 1990s.

    1. Thanks so much for taking the trouble to look out the correct name. I’ve done a little more digging using that information, but didn’t come up with much. Maybe I should send these posts to Gary Nabhan at NSS; he probably knows more.

      And isn’t it strange that Carpintereria is associated with Lima beans, which the Tarahumara also grew? A red herring, I know, but a delicious one.

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