- American farming family gets tour of organic research farm and genebank in India, is impressed.
- The International Agricultural Show is on, just outside Paris. Pres. Sarkozy available for comment.
- A rapid run-through the history of chocolate, courtesy of Smithsonian.
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:
I guess the cereal is barley, but why the poppy seed capsule? And this one is supposed to be Egypt:
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.
Wild pomegranates threatened?
Having visited when it was still very difficult to get there, and to get around once you got there, I found myself ambivalent about news of road development on Socotra. The people there could certainly do with a couple of decent roads: there were none at all when I was there in the late 1980s, and I remember a couple of really heavy walks, carrying herbarium presses to boot. The place is beautiful, and should attract tourists, but they’re going to need roads too. On the other hand, it sounds like the road system and other development may not be as well planned as it might. The only wild relative of the pomegranate is endemic to the island, but I doubt any road is going to go anywhere near the few populations left. As I remember, they were (and hopefully still are) in really inaccessible places.
Yet more potato salad
And part 38. “La papa es peruana.” Chileans unavailable for comment.
Iriomote cat threatened
Not that close a relative of the domesticated cat, but still interesting, and in trouble.