Indian betel nut farmers beaten down.
Gone fishing
Rwandan farmers diversify into fish. Again.
Up in smoke
A paper in Forest Ecology and Management describes how high-quality “briar root” smoking pipes are made from the lignotuber — a starchy swelling on underground stems or roots — of the tree heath, Erica arborea. The best lignotubers, and therefore the best pipes, come from the Peloritani Mountains of NE Sicily. Unfortunately, current management practices — which discourage “grub-felling” and use for pipe-making and charcoal production — have ironically resulted in an increasing frequency and severity of fires. The authors suggest that the cultural and environmental roles of tree heath in Sicily need to be seen as two sides of the same coin and not as being in opposition. What’s happening with cork is another example of the same thing.
The Breadfruit Story
That’s the title of just one of the sections of an exhibition of botanical watercolours, books and prints about the Caribbean called “Paradise in Print,” currently on at the New York Botanical Garden. The story it refers to, of course, is that of Captain Bligh, Fletcher Christian and the Bounty.
For an update on the story of the breadfruit’s global journey, go to VOA News. You’ll find an interview with — and a cooking demonstration by — my friend and world breadfruit expert Diane Ragone, director of the Breadfruit Institute at the National Tropical Botanical Gardens in Hawaii (both text and video).
The Breadfruit Institute maintains the world’s largest and most complete breadfruit germplasm collection. Diane has dedicated her life to the breadfruit, and in particular the idea that it can make a much greater contribution to the alleviation of hunger around the world. She and her research partners have been working on a tissue culture technique for the mass propagation and safe transfer of germplasm.
Up a gum tree
Eucalypts decoded and hybridized.