Luigi Guarino

April 13, 2011April 13, 2011

Featured: The cosmopolitan coconut

Hugh has a question for Roland:

Or is the Rangiroa Red Dwarf the impostor?

And ends his exploration of that question with a paen to the coconut:

Coconuts, like people, are cosmopolitan; free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudices, or attachments; at home all over the world.

Well, I wish.

April 12, 2011April 12, 2011

A coconut impostor unmasked

Are you one of those that gets upset when a film-maker, say, tries to get one part of the world to stand in for another without giving a thought to the possibility that the respective floras might be entirely different? I’m afraid I am, and many a movie supposedly set in Africa, for example, has been spoiled for me when I realized, by looking at the plants, that it was filmed in Hawaii or Costa Rica.

Roland Bourdeix has the same problem, if the recent exchange on the Cococnut Google Group is anything to go by.

Roland received the following postcard from Guadeloupe.

Fair enough for most people, but being the coconut expert he is, Roland immediately realized that the photograph depicted Tahiti Red Dwarf (also called Rangiroa Red Dwarf or Haari Papua). Problem is, that variety is not recorded from Guadeloupe. So, either it has been very recently introduced, or, more probably, according to Roland, the postcard company simply used a picture of a coconut from another country, perhaps French Polynesia, and passed it off as being from Guadeloupe. And nearly got away with it…

April 12, 2011April 12, 2011

Nibbles: Desert legumes, BiH, Seedbombs, Workshops on food security, Mandrake, Productivity, Peppers, Cockles, Cassava

Desert seeds go to Svalbard.
“Two young engineers, Fuad Gasi and Idin Fazlic, are in charge of the bank, which is staffed by volunteers.”
Seedbombs: recipes and legal niceties.
Achieving food security sustainably. Report of a PAR/FAO workshop.
On the other hand, here’s what Australia’s leaders heard about A Food Secure World.
How much do you really need to know about mandrake?
Do rich countries produce more per hectare? h/t GOOD
Pocket guides to chili farming. Might have a wider audience than originally intended.
Collecting cockles is women’s work, at least in Ecuador.
Why would anyone want to eat it when they could use cassava for biofuel instead?

April 12, 2011April 11, 2011

The wonder of chocolate

There’s a lot of fascinating stuff, mostly about processing, in this fascinating video. But they had me at “[s]mall daily doses of chocolate can actually improve vascular function.” Via.

April 11, 2011April 11, 2011

Onions of the Southwest

There may be a chili in the photograph which goes along with the NY Times piece on Gary Nabhan’s new book “Chasing Chiles: Hot Spots Along the Pepper Trail,” but I have it from a reliable authority ¹ that most of the plants are i’itoi onions. Which have a fascinating story of their own.

Its journey to the Southwest began in the late 1600’s when Jesuit missionaries coming from Spain shepherded the onion across the ocean. It adapted wonderfully to the arid environment and was soon a valuable food source and also used for medicinal and ceremonial purposes. The first harvest was completed on the soil rich “bajadas” or slopes of the Baboquivari Mountain. This mountain was considered the birthplace of the Hohokam people, the ancestors of today’s Tohono O’odham (The Desert People). I’itoi,or Elder Brother, was the creator of the desert people and still resides watching over his people high up in the mountain in a cave where few can ever visit.