It seems that Usain’s Bolt’s Olympic success is down to yams. That would be sweet potatoes?
Later: Nope, the yams in question are, in fact, yams. See comments.
Masanobu Fukuoka R.I.P.
Masanobu Fukuoka, the author of The One Straw Revolution, and a pioneer of “natural” or no-till farming, has passed away at 95.
Nibbles for the road: Baobab, Breeding, Gardening, Earthworms, Taro, Pollinators, Llama, Trees, Chili peppers
- More on how the baobab is coming to Europe.
- Review of breeding for nutritionally improved crops.
- Book on the origins of British gardening.
- Earthworms “modulate the competition between grasses and legumes.”
- ACIAR publishes book on taro pests in the Pacific.
- UNEP launches global pollinator conservation initiative.
- Unusual use for livestock fetuses.
- “And she grows more than 100 types of trees…“
- “Along the equator, without access to refrigeration, you could be dead pretty quickly unless you can find a way to protect yourself against the microbes you ingest every day.”
Tules to the rescue
Not particularly inspiring at first glance, but then I googled “tule,” a word I hand’t come across before. I figured cattails would be some kind of Thypha. Tules turn out to be types of sedges, although some people seem to use the words interchangeably, or indeed together. Anyway, tules have an interesting ethnobotany in the American Southwest, along with other geophytes.
Paean to singular agricultures
A puff piece in EurekAlert alerted me to what looks to be a very interesting book about the wonderful world of traditional agriculture:
These forms of agriculture are often highly idiosyncratic and take up only a tiny portion of the Earth’s total cultivated surface. Yet they stand out owing to their ability to adapt to a constantly changing natural environment and to the diversity of farming practices they adopt.
Problem is, no details on the book are given: no title, no authors. Fortunately, this led me to the original IRD release, in French. Which led me to the book itself, though again details on the book are at a premium, I must say.