History

July 14, 2011July 14, 2011

Katherine’s monkey’s peanut

In the original the monkey is being offered a peanut.

Really? Well, it’s an innocent enough statement in most circumstances. But a little problematic if the monkey is being held by Katherine of Aragon in a portrait from the 1530s. Were there really peanuts, a South American crop, so easily available at Henry VIII’s court in England only forty years after Columbus? ¹ It’s not inconceivable, but really?

Ok, so how did we get here? It all started with a podcast from the BBC History Magazine which came out in April 2009. ² In it, Brett Dolman, the Curator of Collections at Hampton Court makes the peanut comment in an interview with the magazine’s editor about an exhibition of portraits of Henry’s wives that was on at the time, and which was featured in the magazine. You can hear it at about 8:40 minutes into the podcast.

What Dolman says is that the portrait of Katherine of Aragon they had in the exhibition, which I take to be the one on the Hampton Court website, ³ is a copy of an earlier painting. It is in the original that the monkey is being offered a peanut by the queen. In the copy, it is being offered a coin, but instead reaches for the crucifix at her neck. That’s apparently symbolic of Katherine’s belief in the sanctity of her marriage to Henry, and her refusal to accept money for a divorce.

Whatever. What we’re really interested is the original. The one with the peanut, remember? Well, I can’t be sure without too much more research than I can devote to this at the moment, but I think that original is probably “Katharine of Aragon with a monkey” (c1525) by Lucas Horenbout/Horenbolte, who was an official court painter. And here it is.

So is it a peanut? It’s difficult to tell, but I’m inclined to doubt it. The first European image of a peanut appears to come from a century later:

Another description of the Katherine portrait refers to “a scrap of food.” All in all, I’d go with that. And art historians of the world, I’m available for consultancies.

July 14, 2011

Feeding Pacific voyagers

A rainbow appeared in the sky, its end grounded firmly in the wharekai (food tent) set up and run by the wonderful people here. Small specks of the late afternoon sun drifted around us, light golden rain, as the skippers sat in counsel. “Basically,” Magnus was saying, “we go north for a while and then turn right.” Highly technical stuff only grasped fully by the trained mind. “Umm…yeah, okay.” We all agreed.

“Here” is Kaua’i, oldest of the Hawaiian islands, and the skippers and their crews of Pacific islanders are “sailing across the Pacific to renew our ties to the sea and its life-sustaining strength.” But they also needed something a little more solid in the way of sustenance, of course, hence the wharekai. And here’s what that looks like.

The photo comes from Angela Tillson of the Breadfruit Institute. I’ll let her tell the story.

Yes, the Breadfruit Institute donated about 20 breadfruit of different varieties for their voyage back to S.F. When they landed on Kauai, they were asking for breadfruit to eat and take with them. They were very happy since there were really no Hawaiian breadfruit fruiting this time of the year here. I took it down to their base camp on Hanalei Bay and as a Thank you for it, they let me go for a sail on the Samoan Canoe with the rest of the Hawaiian Helpers. What an honor and dream come true that was for me…!

You have no idea what a “HIGH” & “Bliss” state I’ve been since Sunday, with that mind blowing experience of leisurely talking to different
key crew members of the Vakas about their experiences, reasons, and
visions for this world crossing educational voyaging… And than finding out we could go sailing for Helping out with Breadfruit… We all 50 locals had a Blast time on such a perfect day… We were all in Heaven on Earth just like in ancient times, with only the basics… Seeing adults & kids faces light up in awe once boarding the canoes, watching everything the sailing crew did and listening to the incredible stories. WOW…

July 13, 2011July 14, 2011

Nibbles: Cuba, India, Kansas, Amazonia, Rice, Fonio, Rare breed

A Cuban tells us what he thinks is wrong with Cuban agriculture.
Rahul Goswami has two long, thoughtful articles, on how India’s next five year plan is not realistic about either food or urbanisation.
And what’s worse in the US today, drought, or heat? Do we have to choose?
Less than 1% of Amazonia is made of Terra Preta. Is that enough? I dunno, how about you?
Wanna buy some rice? I wonder if African rice, heirlooms and endophytes will get a look-in.
Better bread from minor African grains. Digitaria, that is.
Dairy Shorthorn in trouble in the UK.

July 12, 2011July 12, 2011

Nibbles: Food Deserts, Garlics, Communication, Bee breeding, Millets, Sweet potatoes, Visualizing herbaria, Medieval beer

The Economist discovers food deserts. Money quote: “some Americans simply do not care to eat a balanced diet, while others, increasingly, cannot afford to”.
William Woys Weaver on garlics, and America, and garlic in America.
Agricultural Communication for Development conference. Sure. But 12 days long?
Breeding a better bee. And why not?
Kenya Agricultural research Institute to release three new high-yielding finger millets.
Too many sweet potato seedlings. What’s a poor breeder to do?
A visual history of California botanizing.
Ah, to have lived at a time when a man got most of his calories from beer! No, wait…

July 10, 2011July 9, 2011

Amazonian ethnobotany from the beginning

The main rubber tree, which the British took to Malaysia, was the basis of all plantations. There are nine other plants in that same group from which the Indians once got rubber. But the plantations had started to supply the world with better and cheaper rubber than the Indians had been producing under terrible — almost slave — conditions. So the Indians had three or four generations when they hadn’t tapped wild rubber, and we were sent into the various countries to try to stimulate this for the war effort. I had been in the Amazon of Colombia, so I went right back among my Indians, and I worked on that during the war.

That’s the Father of Modern Ethnobotany, Richard Schultes, in part of a long interview he gave in 1990 for something called the Academy of Achievement. You can read it, listen to it, or watch videos of it. Fascinating.