- How can you do Eggplant’s Rich History and not wonder why this generally huge, generally purple thing is called an eggplant?
- Domestication of the Gray Ghost Organ Pipe cactus; exceedingly complex. Oh and there’s a cool photo here.
- How berries protect the brain from age-related malfunction. Are you listening, Dmitry?
- Protect medicinal plants, says letter-writer.
- The world doesn’t understand drought tolerance, says another letter-writer.
- Agrobiodiversity in Mesoamerica conference.
- Chaffey’s Plant Cuttings from Annals of Botany. Must-read stuff.
- A wild relative contributes trait for early morning flowering to rice, allowing it to escape sterility induced by high temperatures.
- The Cornelian Cherry and the Baobab explained.
- Voice of America devotes Special English report to Pavlovsk. If that ain’t viral, what is?
- Genebanks on a roll in China. In Australia, not so much.
- Dam dataset online. Let the mashups proliferate.
Pavlovsk update
The Associated Press had a big round-up on the threatened Russian genebank at Pavlovsk late last week. We’re linking to the version that appeared at the National Public Radio website because they used lots of photographs, many of which give the lie to statements that the land is not being used. Kudos to AP for doing some fresh reporting. Kudos also to Science magazine, for a report from a correspondent in Moscow. The article is behind a paywall.
We’re still not getting much news out of Russia herself. What exactly is going on, officially? And is anyone there blogging about it or otherwise commenting? If you know, please let us know.
Nibbles: Coral genebank, Seeds, PROTA
- A new frozen genebank — for corals.
- CAS-IP blogs about the launch and success of MASA, the Malawi Seed Alliance.
- Promising new plants for Africa from the PROTA database; a book. So many promises …
Nibbles: Agretti, Pavlovsk, Nutrition, Turkeys
- The Ethicurean digs into agretti (Salsola soda).
- Pavlovsk in the St Petersburg Times …
- … and in the Sydney Morning Herald.
- Conference in November: Nutrition Security in the Developing World ABD?.
- CIAT’s library showcases nutrition.
- More on turkey domestication.
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.))