Indigo in the Americas

I knew a bit about indigo — but not that in addition to the Old World’s Indigofera tinctoria there’s a separate species in the same genus that was used in ancient America for making dye. I found out because of some interesting detective work on the Maya pigment. I figured that the indigo plant mentioned in the research was something completely different, but it turns out to be I. suffruticosa. Although there do seem to be other genera that produce the colour.

Weekly helping of potatoes

The Economist seems to have a thing about potatoes this week. There’s a story about how Peru is trying to cash in on its spud heritage. (Note to editor: the olluco is not a type of potato.) There’s a book review, of John Reader’s Propitious Esculent. And there’s even an editorial explaining how the humble tuber is at the root — as it were — of globalization. The International Year of the Potato cannot be over too quickly.

Roman agrobiodiversity on show

So I was at the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme to catch the Rosso Pompeiano exhibition, which was fine, and which I may blog about later, but details of two statues caught my eye among the permanent stuff on show — representing agrobiodiversity, of course. The statues are meant to symbolize different provinces of the empire. This one is supposed to be Thrace:

barley.JPG

I guess the cereal is barley, but why the poppy seed capsule? And this one is supposed to be Egypt:

pomegranate.JPG

Now, the caption said this is a pomegranate, and I can see why that should be, but isn’t there something wrong with the top of the fruit? Shouldn’t the remains of the sepals be sort of more upright? Check out various other representations of the fruit to see what I mean. Anyway, I can’t imagine what else it might be. Except perhaps an opium poppy, especially when you compare it with the obviously more weedy poppy in the other statue. But both capsule and seed are too big. Of course, the “poppy” held by the representation of Thrace could in fact be a small pomegranate. In any case, I don’t understand why barley should somehow represent Thrace and pomegranates Egypt. I’ll look into it. Someone somewhere is bound to have written a thesis on botanical symbolism in Roman art.