Bloody biodiversity. Don’t you hate it? Just when you think you’ve got half an idea of what’s going on, you find there are a whole load of other things you had no idea about.
Oh, I feel your pain, Simon, I really do.
Scientia pro publica
GrrlScientist launched Scientia pro Publica a couple of weeks ago, and yesterday saw the second edition. SPP, to save digits, is a carnival of general science blogging that goes some way to replacing Tangled Bank, which seems to have gone extinct in a burst of random inactivity. As its title proclaims, SPP is Science for the People, and as GrrlScientist, who I guess felt the lack of Tangled Bank more acutely than the rest of us slobs, says, it exists to celebrate and “to promote the value of communicating science, nature and medicine with the public”.
There’s not a whole heap of agricultural stuff in there, apart from our recent post on heirloom tomatoes. I’m not going to whinge about that, as I now realize that we’ve got your all day, every day carnival of agricultural biodiversity right here. That said, there are a couple of posts that interested me. There’s Kelsey’s post on what happens to cigarette butts, ideal fodder for quiet moments in an awkward conversation. And there’s Tim’s post on triage in conservation which — wouldn’t you know it? — has nary a word on agriculture or crop wild relatives. (Oh dear, I seem to have whinged.)
Little cemetery on the prairie
Also in The Economist, news that a little patch of prairie has turned up in the middle of urban St Louis, Missouri. It’s in a graveyard in the north of the city.
There could be some crop wild relatives in this 25-acre remnant, I suppose: wild sunflowers, maybe? No word on whether there are any bison there, or whether they will be re-introduced as part of the management plan, which at the moment involves controlled burning and weeding.
Pass the soy sauce
How did an obscure Chinese concoction made by fermenting soybeans become one of the world’s favourite all-purpose seasonings? Read about it in The Economist, it’s fascinating. Or listen. I had no idea there were so many different types of the stuff.
A geographer on crop wild relatives and lots of other things
Our friend and occasional contributor Andy Jarvis was interviewed recently in Nairobi on the occasion of the first Africa Agriculture Geospatial Week. Read all about why he is so “promiscuous.”