- How to do interspecific crosses in Ipomoea.
- Proprietary blend of amaranth, buckwheat, teff, millet, quinoa, sorghum and cassava flour for gluten-free diets.
- Making food standards work for smallholders. Yeah, right.
- Rauvolfia vomitoria leaf tea good for diabetes. Bit worried about that epithet though.
- Mexican sage banned in another state. Pass the peyote then.
Depictions of sacred plants in Maya pottery investigated
Hot on the heels of the belated identification of the “penis pepper” depicted on Moche pottery comes more news of ethnobotanical detective work involving plant iconography. Natural historian and archaeologist Charles Zidar of the Missouri Botanical Garden and botanist Wayne Elisens of the University of Oklahoma looked at 2,500 images from southern lowland Maya (Belize, Guatemala and Mexico) ceramics dated to the Classical Period (AD 250 to 900). They focused on depictions of Bombacoideae, “which are easily identified morphologically and have culinary, medicinal, ceremonial, economic, and cosmological significance to the Maya.” Of the ten species present in the area, four or five were found represented on the ceramics.
“I was surprised that a variety of plants from this family were depicted,” says Zidar.
Among them is Ceiba pentandra:
Considered the “first tree”, or “world tree”, the ceiba was thought to stand at the centre of the Earth. Modern indigenous people still often leave the tree alone out of respect when harvesting forest wood.
The thorny trunks of the ceiba tree are represented by ceramic pots used as burial urns or incense holders, which are designed in a strikingly similar fashion.
Investigation of the plant images is continuing, and is being extended to animals. Here’s Zinder again:
By determining what plants were of importance to the ancient Maya, it is my hope that identified plants can be further studied for pharmaceutical, culinary, economic and ceremonial uses. More should be done to conserve large tracts of forest in order to properly study theses plants for their value to mankind.
LATER: By the way, there are some depictions of plants in Mayan art which have yet to be identified.
Drugs on the tube
I’ve been alerted to the existence of a new television series from the BBC of definite agrobiodiversity interest, called “Grow your own drugs.” It is presented by James Wong, a young ethnobotanist who trained at Kew and now lectures at Kent University. There’s a book that goes with the series. James “passionately believes that safe, natural remedies can be made from the everyday plants you find in hedgerows, the back garden or local garden centres.”
”Nowadays we think of plants as pretty objects, as soft furnishings in an outdoor room,” he says. “But just two generations ago they were your hardware store and chemist all rolled into one.” In Malaysia, where Wong grew up, everyone treated themselves with natural remedies. Food, too, was used as medicine – not only herbs, but ginger, chilli and garlic to ward off the symptoms of a cold. “My grandmother had a tiny patch of garden,” says Wong, “which to anyone else would just look like a bunch of flowers, but she could make soup, or a face pack, or something to treat insect bites, in a matter of minutes. It was magical – real Harry Potter stuff.”
Sounds intriguing. Has anyone seen it? Drop us a line. And thanks to Tom for the tip.
LATER: Of course, traditional medicine is going mainstream in some places.
Sardonic grin greets paper on sardonic grin
Damn you, agrobiodiversity. Every day something new. For example, did you know that a plant is behind the phrase “sardonic grin”? Well, apparently, the roots of the word “sardonic” go back to Homer, who adapted the ancient word for the Sardinians “because of the belief that the Punic people who settled Sardinia gave condemned men a potion that made them smile before dying”? That’s from an ANSA press release which goes on to describe some recent research which purports to nail down the active ingredient of the potion.
It turns out to be polyacetylenes from Oenanthe fistulosa, an umbel. They “cause facial muscles to contract and produce a grimace or rictus.” This species is not cultivated, I don’t think, but a congeneric is: O. javanica is used as a vegetable in parts of Asia. So O. fistulosa is a crop wild relative, sort of. Anyway, the ANSA release doesn’t give details of the paper, but I believe it might be a February article in Journal of Natural Products by a group of Italian and Polish researchers.
One of the authors, Mauro Ballero from the botany department of the Universita di Cagliari, which is in Sardinia, had this to say about the significance of the research, no doubt with a sardonic grin on his face:
The good news is that the molecule in this plant may be retooled by pharmaceutical companies to have the opposite effect.
So much, much more than a weed
According to self-described “cultivator” David Randall in The Independent, it’s going to be a bumper year for dandelions in the UK.
Yet not everyone is clapping their hands with glee. According to reports in less ecologically sensitive newspapers, keen gardeners and lawn obsessives see dandelions as trouble, blemishes to their idea of contrived perfection, the removal of whose deep taproots can rick the sturdiest of backs. To them, dandelions are the enemy, insurgent forces of nature, forever pushing aside the “real” garden flowers, and taking over. They are thus condemned, in that most loaded of horticultural terms, as “weeds”.
This word, to those of us who have been gardening with dandelions for years, is not only wrong, but hurtful. Taraxacum officinale, as we cultivators call it, is a much undervalued addition to any plot. Not only do its golden rosettes brighten the dingiest corner, but you can use it to construct a salad, make an acceptable table wine, or even, when it runs to seed, tell the time. And you can’t say that about all those bloody purple alliums of which Chelsea’s show gardeners are so fond.
Quite right. Dandelions have a long history of use in medicine, yes, but also food. Although they do take some preparation. And of course there’s wine too. All this, plus an interesting taxonomy, and an endangered endemic relative. What more can you ask for? Weed indeed.