Smart phones are being used to map invasive plants. Why not crop wild relatives? Or other agrobiodiversity for that matter.
Nibbles: Water buffalo, Distillation, Salmon, Banana, Stem rust, Red rice
- Great photo-essay on the water buffalo.
- A renaissance of gin production in London. Cheers!
- Not bad photo essay on the salmon migration.
- Special issue of Ethnobotany Research & Applications on banana domestication.
- Afghanistan readies for Ug99. Because it doesn’t have enough problems already.
- Saving red rice. Note comment from Bhuwon.
Nibbles: Fisheries, Mangroves, European bison, Dormouse, Eating & drinking heirlooms, Apios, Kombucha, Organic and health
- Donwload a guide to sustainable sushi.
- It was World Mangrove Day last Sunday. Who knew.
- Poland/Belarus’s Bialowieza Primeval Forest and its bison threatened by climate change, politics.
- Endangered dormouse found crossing highway, but is it the edible sort beloved of the Romans?
- “Endangered heritage breeds have one saving grace: They’re generally tasty.” Even in cocktails.
- Radix gets to grips with Apios americana. Good luck!
- Did someone say fermentation?
- Did someone say single-issue bores?
Nibbles: Crops for the Future, Fertile Crescent, Canadian First Nation
- A common collection of publications on neglected crops.
- Crescent, maybe, but fertile, not so much.
- “The beaches now are empty of herring roe, its harvest a lost art.”
Fire and crop wild relatives
As wildfires rage across much of southern Europe, causing death and destruction, it’s sometimes difficult to remember — and perhaps insensitive to mention — that this is in fact a common occurrence, even necessary for the maintenance of vegetation and biodiversity in the Mediterranean.
In the Mediterranean, as in the mediterraneoids, fire occurs where vegetation is flammable. Combustibility is not a misfortune but an adaptation: plants that burn do so because they are fire-adapted. They make fire-promoting resins and other chemicals, or they have structural adaptations, such as producing a loose, airy litter of dead leaves and twigs which dries out and burns. Their ecology involves catching fire from time to time and burning up competitors.
Still, one wonders whether this might be too much of a “good” thing, and whether we’re heading for even more with climate change. What will this mean for particular species, for example crop wild relatives? Do we know how many are fire-adapted? And do we know even for those that are so adapted whether beyond a certain frequency or intensity fire becomes a threat rather than a necessity?