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Photographs of Old Hawaii and its taros see light of day

John Cho — he of the leaf blight-tolerant hybrids — has just posted some wonderful archive photographs of old Hawaiian taro culture to his Facebook page. He kindly agreed to us featuring one of them.

Here’s the backstory.

The images are from photographs archived in the State Archives that I selected and had them scanned by a third party. Sure would have been nice and less costly if the Archives digitized all the images that they have and allow the public to download them. But that is not the case and I had to hire a professional photographer contracted by the Archives to photograph then scan black and white negative images of taro photos that I had selected from the collection. I had planned to eventually put together a taro publication summarizing taro production and culture in Old Hawaii but have not quite gotten off the ground as yet. I decided to at least share some of the images on Facebook for the public to see and hopefully some day I would get off my duff and put the publication together. I also have several scans of taro culture from the Bishop Museum but require their permission to post their images on Facebook.

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Bill Gates on genebanks and their databases

From Bill Gates’ annual letter on the work of his foundation:

There are three things that modern agrotechnology brings to this seed improvement process. The first is simply the ability to gather plant samples from all over the world and use databases to keep track of thousands of plants grown under different conditions.

The second is sequencing and the third is transgenics, in case you were wondering. One of these days, I’d like to take Mr Gates down into Genebank Database Hell. But hey, we’re working on it. And the Foundation is helping.

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How they breed Belgian Blue cattle

Swanning around the intertubes, as one does while waiting for bread to rise, I happened upon a clip from a National Geographic film called Extreme Genes. The clip gives an insight into one of the “double muscled” breeds of cattle, the Belgian Blue. You’ll note that everyone involved is at pains to point out how natural all this selection is, which is very reassuring.

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Keeping up to date with taxonomy made easier

Yesterday I was invited to submit one of my photos to the Flickr pool on Systematic Botany. Yes, I know. The media ought to be alerted. But I point this out less to draw attention to my photographic prowess than to highlight the fact that there is in fact a Flickr pool on Systematic Botany, and that it is a lot of fun. Exploring the discussion forum led me to an old news item about staff at the National Museum Cardiff and Kew naming a whole bunch of new Sorbus species, and not from some isolated corner of the world either, but England and Wales.

Some of these trees have probably developed recently and are examples of on-going evolution of new species. Others are older types which have been known for some time but are only now described as ‘species’ thanks to modern DNA methods.

Some Sorbus species have economic uses, and the taxonomy is made horrendously complicated by rampant hybridization and apomixis.

Coincidentally, IIALD had a piece on a new scheme “supporting and promoting the development of persistent and openly accessible digital taxonomic literature.” I wonder whether making photographs of plants available through Flickr or some other image sharing site might contribute to this worthy cause.