- Host a volunteer school food gardener (in the US).
- M.S. Swaminathan’s menu for food security in India. Burp.
- Purmina Menon’s menu for food security in India takes us beyond food. Pardon me.
- Anyone for edible orchids? Anissa Helou on salep.
- Wasp flies in hot pursuit of cassava mealybugs.
- Melinda ♡ breastfeeding. The basis for sound nutrition.
- Humped conch got bigger as a result of human activities — despite being hunted. Complex.
- “Africa to become world’s breadbasket.” Makes a change from being the world’s basketcase.
Nibbles: Sustainability, Market gardens, Tomato history, Millennium Seed Bank
- What’s behind “the environmentalist’s paradox“?
- Growing vegetables in the Sahel. What could possibly go wrong?
- And for the EurekAlert trifecta: the history of the pomodoro in Italy.
- Kew Magazine looks at seeds, big time.
Nibbles: Pavlovsk, Maize, Papaver somniferum, Organics, Zulu gardens, Feasts, Female farmers, Transhumance, Dogs
- Bioversity International and UNEP jointly pile on the pressure to preserve Pavlovsk …
- … as do plant professors from University of Wisonsin.
- Mexican maize farmers using CIMMYT genebank materials to adapt their varieties. Why not in Africa, then?
- High praise for a novel on opium.
- Mat Kinase takes Time to task over lacklustre organics article.
- King Goodwill Zwelithini calls for One Home One Garden campaign to support food-growing and nutrition.
- Feasts predate agriculture. Well, yeah.
- Female farmers … a bloke writes.
- Great pic on the joys of modern transhumance.
- Resurrecting the Maize King. And why not?
- More than anyone has a right to know about dogs in the ancient world.
Nibbles: Wild tomatoes, Brachiaria, Agroforestry, Syrian drought, Vegetable seeds, Durian
- How cool is it that a descendant of Charles Darwin is working on wild tomatoes on the Galapagos?
- More on the Brazilian “Economic Miracle.”
- Let my people plant trees on farmland!
- Trouble for Syrian agriculture.
- “The D. Landreth Seed Company has sold seeds to every president from George Washington to FDR.” And Obama?
- Views on the durian.
Those Tarahumaran beans, again
Thanks to Elise Blackwell’s gracious comment on the true identity of the bean she once grew and that offered her such a strong connection with what was happening at the Pavlovsk Experiment Station, I was able to go and look for more information about Tarahumara Carpintero. A pole bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), it was originally collected by Native Seeds/SEARCH, and here’s what the NSS catalogue says about it:
Striking black and white Jacob’s Cattle bean. Originally collected in central and southern Tarahumara country, Chihuahua. This pole bean is prolific with a little shade in Tucson.
More is almost impossible to find, given that Googling “bean carpintero” results largely in information about Mr Bean and people who work with wood. “Carpintero Tarahumara” is not much more helpful. It will take you to Native Seeds/SEARCH and a couple of other places that are interested in the bean itself. One Canadian site declares that it is Apparently Extinct, which kind of ignores the fact that it is still available in the NSS 2010 catalogue (and which is where I got the image).
As for Jacob’s Cattle, there are masses of varieties, and masses of information. Some people say that Jacob’s Cattle beans are originally from Germany. Others that “it was a gift from Maine’s Passamaquoddy Indians to Joseph Clark, the first white child born in Lubec, Maine”. Most don’t bother to explain why the name fits, perhaps assuming that everyone is familiar with Genesis 30 (not the surrogate mother bit) and Jacob’s early experiments with epigenetics.
And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.
The stories that varieties tell can be every bit as fascinating as their other qualities; names are often the portal into the stories. That’s why they matter.