Sennufer lived in the 1600 years ago and took care of the fields and vineyards of two Egyptian Pharaohs. Among his many titles were Chancellor to Amenhotep II, Overseer of the Granaries of Amen, and even High Priest of Amen in Menisut. He also created one of the first gardens, and left one of the first garden plans. Now comes news that Egypt might just be considering re-creating Sennufer’s garden on the east bank of the Nile at Luxor. Why mention it here? Because Sennufer, like all sensible gardeners, drew no great distinctions between the purely ornamental and the purely useful, and mixed flowers, vegetables, fruit trees and vines in a very modern fashion. Via.
Reading at the table
Pisco punched
A blog post at Alcademics.com precipitated a very educational bit of surfing yesterday. I found out about the existence of E Clampus Vitus, a fraternal organization dedicated to the study and preservation of the heritage of the Old West, which of course includes its drinks. I found out that there’s a drink called pisco punch, which I now desperately want to taste. I found out that there’s a dispute between Chile and Peru over the name “pisco.” And I found out that the deadly Pisco earthquake of 2007 destroyed most wineries in the area, though the vineyards (the grape used to make pisco is mainly muscat, but there are other varieties as well) themselves largely survived. What I haven’t been able to find out is how the rebuilding is going. A year ago the news was not good. You can still find pisco on the shelves, so I guess the wineries are back in action. Or is it mainly the Chilean stuff?
Nibbles: Soy, Horse, Terroir, Sorghum, Ensete
- The joy of soy.
- Earliest known domestic horses.
- More than anyone could possibly want to know about biochar and biodiversity (Part III).
- Sorghum difference yield map, see how they grow.
- Mathilda on ensete in highland Ethiopia.
Nibbles: Databases, Hell squared, Genebanks, Goats, Olives, Safe movement, Pouteria, Roman wine
- iSPOT to map common names to Latin names. Jeremy says “Good luck with that.”
- International Conference on Biodiversity Informatics. Jeremy says “Good luck with that too.”
- Online discussion forums for the ICBI, above. Agriculture! Forestry! Fisheries!
- Uganda joins the rush to Svalbard global genebank.
- Scientists to clone pashmina goat. Er … why?
- Adopt-an-Italian-olive-tree.
- International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) meets so we can eats.
- Inverted root grafting of canistel at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.
- In vino veritas.