- Breeding crop plants with deep roots: their role in sustainable carbon, nutrient and water sequestration. Good for soil structure, good for C sequestration, good for yields. What’s not to like?
- Ethnopharmacology, food production, nutrition and biodiversity conservation: Towards a sustainable future for indigenous peoples. Ethnopharmacologists need to think more generally about nutrition, and a lot more about conservation. And a view on the whole “wonder herb” thing from two botanical garden boffins who protest way too much as far as I’m concerned.
- Modelling predicts that heat stress, not drought, will increase vulnerability of wheat in Europe. It’s the heat, not the humidity. But maybe wild relatives can help.
- The Virtuous Manioc and the Horny Barbasco: Sublime and Grotesque Modes of Transformation in the Origin of Yanesha Plant Life. Maize is the result of a virgin birth, chili peppers of a fart. I’ll buy that.
- Is there a forest transition outside forests? Trajectories of farm trees and effects on ecosystem services in an agricultural landscape in Eastern Germany. Yes, but.
- Biodiversity and socioeconomic factors supporting farmers’ choice of wild edible trees in the agroforestry systems of Benin (West Africa). Those factors are: how important the trees are for food and medicine and how accessible they are. Still no cure for cancer. Anyway, here’s what ICRAF thinks should come next: domestication, natch.
- Pome fruit viruses at the Canadian Clonal Genebank and molecular characterization of Apple chlorotic leaf spot virus isolates. There’s a lot of them. Well that can’t be good, can it?
- A long-term view of rare plant reintroduction. A previous review is way too pessimistic.
Corn conspiracy
I too am back from my summer holidays, but with a somewhat smaller haul of goodies. Two items only, and this is the first.
Take a look at this carving, part of the arch around a window in Rosslyn Chapel outside Edinburgh, more formally known as the Collegiate Chapel of St Matthew.
Do those things in the wider arch look to you like ears of maize?
And how about this? Do those stylised, possibly spiky three-leaved things look like an aloe, or, as the Rosslyn Chapel Photographic CD would have it, a cactus?
If they did, that would be a mystery indeed, because the chapel was completed in 1484, eight years before Columbus sailed to the New World, source of cacti and maize. There is, of course, a simple explanation: Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney and grandfather of the Rosslyn Chapel’s founder, William Sinclair, sailed to North America in around 1398, brought back samples (or at least depictions) of maize and aloe (or cacti), which the chapel masons ((Hint, hint.)) incorporated into these carvings, all subsequent history of the incident being scrupulously hidden from history’s view.
Not having read or seen it, I was unaware that The Da Vinci Code makes much of Rosslyn Chapel and its Masonic and Templar associations, but frankly, I’m not in the least bit convinced that those carvings are what people say they are. And in that, I’m not alone. The BBC pours cold water on the idea too.
Undaunted, however, I’ll be scrutinizing the son-et-lumiere at Machu Pichu for evidence of neeps among the tatties.
Machu Picchu and maize up in lights
The pretty stunning light show put on in the main square in Cuzco for the 100th anniversary of the re-discovery of Machu Picchu includes something to do with maize at around 5 minutes in. I’ve taken a screen grab (right), but it’s really worth seeing the whole thing. Maybe some expert can tell us what the maize bit represents. Thanks, Charlotte.
Machu Picchu 100 Años from PROJEKTIL on Vimeo.
Nibbles: Drought, Babylonian gardens, Armenian flora, Urban veggies
- NASA says there has not been a drought-driven decline in plant productivity after all. Yeah but where’s my jet-pack, guys?
- Hanging Gardens of Babylon had date palms and tamarisk. At least.
- Edible wild Armenian plants.
- AVRDC on how to grow vegetables in all sorts of different containers.
Nibbles: CWR, Agroecology, Innovation, Tree domestication, Ancient pigs, La vida locavore
- Our friends at CIAT showcase our friend Colin showcasing crop wild relatives.
- The latest from Olivier De Schutter on agroecology.
- How to identify and nurture those elusive agricultural entrepreneurs.
- So that they can help you with tree domestication, for example?
- Pigs in ancient Egypt.
- Is the whole local food thing being taken too far?