Category: Medicinal plants

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Kutch’s wild ass and Important Plant Areas

I blogged about some recent additions to the list of World Heritage Sites a couple of days back, and now I’ve come across a potential new candidate, which should get in on the strength of its name alone: the Wild Ass Sanctuary in the Rann of Kutch. The wild ass in question is Equus hemionus khur, the Indian wild ass, a subspecies of the onager, the Asiatic wild ass. The khur’s habitat does sound fascinating:

The Rann, the last habitat of the wild ass (Equus hemionus khur) covering an area of 4954 sq. km is one of the most remarkable and unique landscapes of its kind in the world, which is considered as a transitional area between marine and terrestrial ecosystems. During the monsoons, while the entire area gets inundated, as many as 74 elevated plateaus stand out in the area. The sanctuary also houses 253 flowering plant species, 93 species of invertebrates and 33 species of mammals including the Khur sub-species of wild ass.

It would be great to have a protected area which is so strongly focused on the conservation of a wild relative of a domesticated animal. Wish there were more of them on the crop wild relative side. We’ve just heard that the international network of protected areas needs to do a better job of covering crop centres of origin and diversity. Now, Britain is hardly a centre of agrobiodiversity, but it does have a few crop wild relatives, so I wonder whether the British boffins who wrote the WWF report on protected areas and crop wild relatives had any input in selecting the just-announced Important Plant Areas (IPA) of the UK. I expect they tried their best, and the selection criteria do mention crop wild relatives, but it seems as if they were pretty much an afterthought:

The IPA project was conceived in Europe in response to the increasing rate of loss of the irreplaceable wealth of Europe’s wild flowers and habitats through rapid economic development, urbanisation, and habitat destruction. The IPA programme is a means of identifying and protecting the most important sites for wild plant and habitats in Europe. In addition to the protection this will offer to threatened habitats and species (higher, lower plants and fungi), IPAs will also offer protection to a wide range of species including medicinal plants, relatives of crop plants, veteran trees and many common but declining species.

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Summer-grass winter-worm

We went to the opening of a new exhibit at the Bioparco di Roma called Bioversitalia last night. The exhibit was fine, although as usual agricultural biodiversity got short-changed a bit, and so was the food on offer. The introductory talk, however, was a thorough disappointment. Not at all inspiring. What the boffins on display should have talked about, perhaps, is things like Cordyceps sinensis, aka དབྱར་རྩྭ་དགུན་འབུ་, aka the “summer-grass winter-worm.”

The summer-grass winter-worm is a parasitic fungus from Tibet which attacks and takes over the bodies of moth larvae living in the soil. Livestock really like to eat the resulting worm-like mummies, which are also used in traditional medicine. They’re a really valuable commodity: what alerted me to their existence was a newspaper piece today about a fatal gun battle that exploded when neighbouring villages clashed over access to this resource.

Now, it is stories such as this one of the medicinal moth-mummifying fungus of Tibet that would really have got people excited in the Bioparco last night about the wonder and importance of biodiversity!

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Kava makeover

Kava (a drink made from the roots of Piper methysticum) has a bad rep in some quarters. When I was in the South Pacific I blogged about it several times, and even did a little photo essay about it. It is an important part of traditional life in places live Vanuatu, Tonga and Fiji, as well as a source of income to many smallholders, and can make for a relaxing evening with friends. It does have a definite downside if you overindulge. But then so do most things, I guess. There have been health scares about it in Europe, but they are pretty much unfounded. Anyway, there’s a piece on the BBC today (and thanks to Hannes for pointing it out to me) which tells of efforts in Vanuatu to defend the drink. It quotes Vincent Lebot, kava expert, and friend.