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Berry Go Round #23: The Janus Edition

The cleverest carnival hosts seem to be able to weave the submissions they receive into a single themed ribbon of discovery. Not me. I knew when I volunteered to host the January edition that it would be a squeeze between returning from the festivities across six time zones and showing up for work bright-eyed and bushy tailed. I did not know I’d have to contend with extra delays en route. But hey, I have to stay up anyway, so here goes nothing.

A seasonal start, with Elizabeth over at The Natural Capitol sharing some of the lore surrounding holly. I didn’t know that Romans celebrated Saturnalia with holly; that’s one to revive.

Dave Ingram at his Natural History Blog has a dreadful punning title about the good things he discovered while cleaning up a lilac that had snapped under the weight of a snowfall. Lichens! Not the easiest things to identify; Dave’s photographs give an insight into the diversity of these strange plants.

John at KindofCurious has also been out and about with his camera, and posts a stunnning feast of flowers from the Christmas Display at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania. (I always thought it was in Delaware.) Not very Christmassy — if you were expecting holly, ivy and red poinsettias — but pretty for all that.

The sole species of the sole genus of the family Tetracarpaeaceae is native to Tasmania. No wonder Dave at Tasmanian Plants is excited about the Delicate Laurel Tetracarpaea tasmannica, Tasmania’s iconic orphan.

Now, what’s the oldest living tree specimen in the world? I’d have got that simple question wrong; it isn’t a bristelcone pine, as I used to think, but a specimen of Palmer’s Oak (Quercus palmeri) in Southern California that is 13,000 years old, give or take. Thanks to Greg Laden for the information.

Just when I feared that there would be nothing about agricultural biodiversity, a couple of posts from Laurent at Seeds Aside, the founder of the Berry go Round Carnival. His first is about a wonderful member of the melon family, the kiwano or horned melon, Cucumis metulliferus. He pulls out three interesting factoids about kiwano, and the one that surprised me most (but really shouldn’t have) is that the leaves are extremely rich in micronutrients and could make a valuable contribution to a diverse and nutritious diet.

As for Laurent’s other post — OMGs GMOs — I am going to say absolutely nothing. It hinges on a video about GMOs as a “solution” to climate change. Watch it and join the debate at Seeds Aside or over at YouTube where, astonishingly, the video has attracted not one single comment.

Continuing the its-not-all-lovely-dovey-in-the-world-of-botany notion, Sally at Foothills Fancies documents her one-woman war on a ghastly invasive, Dalmatian Toadflax “(variously Linaria dalmatica, Linaria genistifolia ssp. dalmatica, etc.)” Did she win? Read the post and find out.

As host, I exercise my privilege to draw attention to a few things I’ve noticed. One has to be the 2009 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, an institution if ever there was one. In 2009 Professor Sue Hartley discussed “the epic 300-million-year war between plants and animals, and how that conflict has shaped us and the world we live in”. And if you think that because the lectures are for kids there’s nothing there for you, think again. Then there’s the sumptuous Love Plant Life blog, new to me, and thanks to Anna for asking us to link to it. And Patrick at Bifurcated Carrots has a guide to buying and growing “heirloom/OP seeds” that could be of interest.

If you’re a follower of the Paleo (or palaeo) Diet, you might want to check out what our ancestors in Mozambique were eating 100,000 years ago. (Hint: sorghum.) And with a special hat tip to the Phytophactor, if you come across any further examples of the Inappropriate Use of Agricultural Images or any other pseudo-scientific nonsense, please send it to us.

And finally, if you’re into the whole turn over a new leaf because it’s the new year thing, here are some gardening New Year resolutions, from the PhytoPhactor.

Thanks everyone. Not sure who is hosting next time around.

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Featured: Purported fraud

Anastasia says predictions of a food crisis in 2010 are built on sand:

[T]here are simply too many crop scientists and too many farmers who would notice if the numbers were off, so even if the USDA wanted to falsify the numbers, they couldn’t do it without being caught.

That’s the beauty of conspiracies; they don’t need reason.

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Takin’ a break

Such a great sense of humour.
Such a great sense of humour.

As those of us in the northern hemisphere celebrate the imminent arrival of spring, and commiserate with our brethren and sistern in the south, and as those of us lolling around on or about the equator prepare to suck up another Tusker, baridi sana, The Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog wishes all of you a happy holiday, thanks you for your attention and contributions over the past year, and hopes to be back with more goodies on or around 5 January 2010, when we’ll be hoping to stick some agro into the International Year of Biodiversity.

Have fun.

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Seed Savers Exchange under new management

George DeVault has resigned as Executive Director and President of Seed Savers Exchange, the Iowa-based non-profit dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds.

Speaking for the Board of Directors, Chair Amy P. Goldman said, “We were saddened to learn of George’s resignation, but we understand his reasons for leaving. George was a boon to Seed Savers Exchange, and we are deeply appreciative. In just a short period of time, George managed to endow Seed Savers Exchange with new energy and vitality; he has set new standards of excellence; and he was respected and admired not only by the members, staff and Board of SSE, but by the wider community as well.”

DeVault and his wife are moving back to their own farm in Pennsylvania, and he will continue to work with Seed Savers Exchange on future projects. He is handing over to Aaron Whaley, son of Kent Whealy and Dianne Ott Whealy, the co-founders of Seed Savers Exchange.

The Board of Directors has appointed Whaley Acting Executive Director and President. Board Chair Goldman said “Aaron is uniquely qualified for this job and the Board has full confidence that he can advance his family’s legacy at Seed Savers Exchange in this new and challenging role.”

Whaley has worked at the organization in a full-time professional capacity since 1996, primarily as head of the commercial seed sales operation. He has degrees in Biology and Public Communications.

Seed Savers Exchange’s full press release can be downloaded as PDF file.

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Eating grass seeds is much older than we thought

ResearchBlogging.org An astonishing paper has just been published in Science. Under the title Mozambican Grass Seed Consumption During the Middle Stone Age, 1 Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, informs us that:

A large assemblage of starch granules has been retrieved from the surfaces of Middle Stone Age tools from Mozambique, showing that early Homo sapiens relied on grass seeds starting at least 105,000 years ago, including those of sorghum grasses.

From a broad selection of stone tools, Mercader retrieved 2369 starch granules, 2112 (89%) of which were from a Sorghum species. There were granules from other edible species too, including beans, mallows, and even the African false banana Ensete ventricosum and the African wild potato Hypoxis hemerocallidea. He also found some evidence that granules had been altered in ways suggestive of “culinary-induced modifications” but conclusive proof that the people were cooking the foods they gathered will require a different kind of research.

The standard litany for the diet of early people is that

“[s]eed collecting is conventionally perceived to have been an irrelevant activity among the Pleistocene foragers of southern Africa, on the grounds of both technological difficulty in the processing of grains and the belief that roots, fruits, and nuts, not cereals, were the basis for subsistence for the past 100,000 years and further back in time”.

Mercader concludes from his data

“that early Homo sapiens from southern Africa consumed not just underground plant staples but above-ground resources too”.

I’ll wait to see what people better versed in archaeological methods have to say about the paper. For now, I’m too gobsmacked to think of anything except to wonder whether they were cultivating those grasses as well as harvesting them.