Here are a few more selections that you might find interesting from American Perceptions of Immigrant and Invasive Species: Strangers on the Land, by Peter Coates, published in 2006.
Before Columbus brought seeds and cuttings along on his second voyage to the West Indies, North America was home to less than 1 percent of the world’s total complement of cereals, starches, fruits, and vegetables.
Today, the only crops of significant commercial value native to the territory that became the United States are cranberry, blueberry, pecan nut, sugar maple, sunflower, and tobacco–a fact that offers eloquent testimony to the great service that has been duly rendered by a sting of public-spirited Americans…
No American public servant since [Thomas] Jefferson deserves more credit for transforming the foreign into the common than David G. Fairchild. In his capacity as agricultural explorer in charge at the Section for Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction from 1898 until 1928, Fairchild brought the navel orange to Florida and California from Brazil and oversaw the introduction of Italy’s seedless grape and China’s dry land pistachio. His most notable contributions, however, were in the introduction of the Chinese soybean and…the tree that became an essential prop of Washington, D.C.‘s monumental landscape, adorning the Tidal Basin: the Japanese flowering cherry tree.
Fairchild’s encounters with the infamous vine that “ate the South”…left him somewhat chastened. He first came across kudzu about 1900 while touring Japan, where this wild, semiwoody perennial was fed to livestock. In his autobiography he recalled a visit to a “kudzu enthusiast” in Chipley, Florida, who was renowned for singing its praises as a forage crop in the early 1900s, despite his neighbors’ distrust. “Whenever I think of that night’s talk with the kudzu pioneer,” recalled Fairchild, “I have a special feeling of pride in what might be called our American willingness to try something new, whether it be a new forage crop, a new food, or any one of a thousand new, machine-made gadgets.” Fairchild, who confessed that “perhaps I have an undue passion for the new,” retained his faith in kudzu for quite some time, despite its proclivity to spread at will. By the late 1930s, however he was expressing his growing reservations in print. The seeds he brought back from Japan and planted on his property in Florida “‘took’ with a vengeance, smothering everything they got onto, and pretty soon we became alarmed. Feeling that the kudzu was too much for us, we began to cut it out.”
Fairchild finally returned home, so to speak, in 1946, when invited to make his selection for the “My Favorite Tree” guest column in the journal of the American Forestry Association (the nation’s oldest conservation organization, founded in 1875). After mentioning a string of exotic also-rans, but discarding them as unsatisfactory, he recalled that he had seen his first grove of California coastal redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) fairly late in life, at a time when he was still besotted with exotic Asiatic promise: “A feeling of utter paralysis overtook me and the passion for planting trees, my puny little trees, anywhere, became distasteful.”
The stories in the book are great, and the social commentary is compelling. Unfortunately, every now and then a botanical clinker drops into the book’s pages, such as the one that follows the quote on redwoods immediately above, where the author waxes, “Though the redwood is only really found in California (there is a tiny patch in the most southwesterly corner of Oregon), it is arguably more American than any other tree in the United States insofar as it has no relatives, near or distant, in any other country.” Like, um, what about the Chinese dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides)?
Okay, this isn’t a book you read for the botany, but it’s a worthy and thoughtful work on plants and the human condition, perfect for late winter reading as you contemplate the impending blooming of your cherry trees.
Although it’s primarily about biological immigrants to North America, Peter Coates points occasionally out that the immigrant-carrying boats sailed both directions:
The native oaks of Britain and the United States were greatly admired by J.C. Loudon, a leading British horticulturist of the mid-nineteenth century. He pronounced them “the most beautiful of trees.” Yet exotic trees had already become a mandatory ingredient of the “polite” British landscape enclosed within private estates. Loudon himself was one of the trendsetters who insisted that, notwithstanding the oak’s charms, “no residence in the modern style can have a claim to be considered as laid out in good taste, in which all the trees and shrubs employed are not either foreign ones, or improved varieties of indigenous ones.
The most sought-after of these arboreal exotics were hardy North Americans. Britons were ruthlessly condescending toward American artistic achievements at this time. “In the four quarters of the globe,” Sydney Smith famously inquired [in 1820], “who reads an American book?” or goes to an American play” or looks at an American picture or statue?” Yet no one asked “who plants an American tree?”
February 10 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape • landscape design • quotes | Tags: Add new tag • agriculture • books • David G. Fairchild • exotics • invasive plants • kudzu • native plants • Peter Coates • trees | 3 Comments »
If you read it on the internet it must be true, right? I’ve had some questions about a recent post that relayed some information on farmers in Iraq being prohibited from saving seeds. After doing more detailed research it looks like some of the exact facts need to be scrutinized a little more critically. But your conclusions on the situation may not change much.
All the bluster revolves around Order 81, a directive on plant variety protection that Paul Bremer, the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority administrator, pushed pushed into effect (at the behest of Monsanto, according to a 2008 interview with F. William Engdahl). The press release from Focus on the Global South and GRAIN that got the firestorm of opinion going declares that, “while historically the Iraqi constitution prohibited private ownership of biological resources, the new US-imposed patent law introduces a system of monopoly rights over seeds.” If you look at the current version of the release you’ll see that it’s all marked up with corrections and clarifications, with a piece of emphatic clarification at the beginning of the release:
The law does not prohibit Iraqi farmers from using or saving “traditional” seeds. It prohibits them from reusing seeds of “new” plant varieties registered under the law. In practical terms, this means they cannot save those seeds for re-use either.
So is Focus on the Global South and GRAIN thinking the law is benign and just? Their press release may be contrite about the confusion they might have caused, but in the current rewritten version still goes on to decry the order as a slap in the face against food sovereignty at the same time it drives big agribusiness into the traditional ways of traditional peoples.
It’s all fascinating reading that gives more nuance and background to the conclusions that people were coming to. In the end it’s not only a case about people’s ways of life being destroyed, nor is it a simple case of protecting intellectual property. Here are a few samples of what’s out there:
Iraq’s new patent law: A declaration of war against farmers (the original press release, 2004–5)
Iraq and Washington’s ‘seeds of democracy’ by William F. Engdahl (2005)
Why Iraqi Farmers Might Prefer Death to Paul Bremer’s Order 81 by Nancy Scola (2007)
And if you’re brave, here’s the order itself, 2004, with Paul Bremmer’s signature: COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY ORDER NUMBER 81: PATENT, INDUSTRIAL DESIGN, UNDISCLOSED INFORMATION, INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND PLANT VARIETY LAW
I really would like to see a contemporary analysis of the situation. Was all this bluster? Or has the situation played out as many feared? Based on stories of the social and environmental costs of reliance on Monsanto crops has created in some parts of India, for instance, I suspect things can’t be going well in Iraq.
January 14 2009 | Categories: gardening | Tags: agriculture • Iraq • Monsanto • Order 81 • politics • saving seeds | 3 Comments »
Yesterday’s BBC News had a commentary by Peter Baker taking an economist’s view of food production. It sounds like an excellent argument for growing your own food. Here’s an interesting excerpt:
The orderliness required to plant, grow, harvest, process, pack, store, monitor, administer, transport, display and sell the produce in a supermarket is simply staggering, and the expended energy intense.
As an example, tomato production in the US consumes four times as many calories as the calorific value of the tomatoes created…
Even before its sea voyage, the calorific value of US wheat is only twice the amount of calories expended to produce it. Compare this with cassava production in Tanzania where 23 times the calorific value is gained for each calorie of human energy input.
Of course, you can’t derive nutritional benefit from drinking diesel fuel or some of the other power inputs necessary to produce food in the industrial American agricultural system. But that would be fuel that could be devoted to something more important–or kept out of the atmosphere entirely.
(The statistic on farmed tomatoes has shades of the title of William Alexander’s book, The $64 Tomato, a book I haven’t read yet. It’s on my list…)
August 12 2008 | Categories: gardening | Tags: agriculture • economics • food | 1 Comment »
Although this is not a political blog, it’s a space that acknowledges that you can’t escape the world, even nested within the walled confines of your privategarden spaces. An event that crept into my mental garden is the 20th anniversary of the 8.8.88 popular uprising in Burma (a country whose military rulers have decided should be called Myanmar). I thought I’d mark the occasion with pictures from a trip I took there with my father in 1998, shortly after the tenth anniversary of the attempted revolution.
But first, a quick recap in case you’re not familiar with the events: On August 8, 1988 student protesters led a popular uprising against the ruling military junta, leading in the course of several weeks to the downfall of General Ne Win. For the first time since 1962, when the general seized power, the country sensed that democracy might be possible once again. But the military panicked and installed martial law, leading to a crackdown that very likely resulted in far more casualties than China’s notorious and better known Tiananmen Square incident which would take place less than a year later.
The incident in China was immortalized in that famous photograph of the lone protester facing off with a tank. Fragile flesh meets hardened steel; youthful idealism confronts bureaucratic power. How can anyone forget that picture?
But with a government more secretive and repressive than even China’s, there were no similarly indelible images to make it out of the Burma, and the events of 8.8.88 live primarily through stories handed down from those who were there. In retelling the story I hope to keep its memory alive. [Read more on Burmese democracy efforts.]
Fast-forward ten years to October 1998, the end of the monsoon season, and two months after a small band of students had staged a protest in front of Sule Pagoda in downtown Rangoon. The students were no match and the government won this time.
Things were “stable” when we arrived, though an Orwellian smog hung in the air everywhere we went. Soldiers with rifles guarded key locations in Rangoon. Checkpoints with armed guards slowed down travel outside of the capital. (The US State Department still had a travel advisory in place.)
Orwellian sign
Our plan was to touch base with family in the Rangoon area for a week, travel for two weeks around what parts of the country the military allowed anyone to visit, and then return for a final week to Rangoon. That last week was time I’d set aside to “do photography” beyond my tourist snapshots. The malaria I contracted in up-state Burma gave me a week of fevered delirium to end my trip instead, so all these photos were snapped during the first part of the trip. Out of a few hundred slides, I’ve scanned a few of botanical interest, a few of my father’s home village, some zoo pictures, plus a few that show some of the textures of how people live under one the most repressive regimes in the world.
The flat tire
To get to my father’s village we drove to the city where the good dirt road ended and the bad dirt road began. There we rented a Jeep to take us as far we could get on road surfaces that were still part-liquid, part-goo from the monsoons that were just concluding. In Burma’s poor economy, even the relatively prosperous who could afford a vehicle couldn’t necessarily afford tires or the bribes necessary to get you in the good graces of the officials who would have access to foreign-made tires in the first place. After we couldn’t go any farther in the Jeep, we hired a bullock cart to take us the last couple of miles to the village.
Village catch basin
One of my father’s friends who also emigrated to the United States from this village sent money back to his relatives. Some of the funds helped the family get by. Some went to build a small pagoda outside the village. And some went to building this catch basin that helps provide the villagers with water through the eight months of the year that see almost no rainfall. This is generally how projects get financed. The government does virtually nothing unless the rulers can derive some kind of benefit from the transaction.
Blooming cotton
A flowering cotton plant in the village. Although I wear a lot of cotton, I’d never thought much about where it came from until I saw this plant. Looking at the flowers you can tell right away that it’s a mallow, first cousin to hollyhocks, okra and hibiscus.
Lily/Weed
Farmers in the village cotton fields, like farmers and gardeners everywhere else, have problems with weeds. Here’s one of their undesirables, an Asiatic lily. (If all my weeds could be so attractive I wouldn’t have any need for “good” plants!)
Bicycle mechanic’s shop
The village bicycle mechanic’s “garage.” The mechanic, like many adults that you encountered, automatically went into this stiff, at-attention pose whenever you’d point a camera at him, maybe something to do with cameras loaded with slow film… My father has the same posing issues, even with a camcorder. (You can imagine how compelling videos of him just standing there are.)
A village party
The last night we were in the village we hired a band and threw a party. Most of the village showed up. Two of the musicians are shown with split-bamboo percussion clappers called
wallecotes (however you spell it…).
Village school
After we left the village we passed through another, more prosperous settlement. Here’s a class at their school.
Agitated elephant, Rangoon Zoo
An agitated elephant at the Rangoon zoo. I am
not a fan of zoos, and a visit to an old-school zoo like this one shows some of the reasons. The legs of the elephants stay chained to the posts all day long. Even at the thoroughly modern San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park, the elephants were kept chained to their stalls at night until the practice was discontinued in the 1990s in response to a well-publicized and particularly egregious case of neglect.
Caged Rangoon Zoo monkey
Caged monkey at the Rangoon zoo.
Caged leopard, Rangoon Zoo
This leopard and a neighboring lion got to spend their days pacing twelve-foot-square cages of steel and concrete.
Roadside staghorn and orchid
A couple of roadside epiphytic plants: a staghorn fern on the left and on the right an orchid in the vanda/phalaensopsis (Sarcanthinae) subtribe. Between cities, you can park your car and often see exotic plantlife like this.
Here are a couple good sites if you’d like to do a little more reading on the country. The second in particular has some actions that you can do to help bring democracy back to Burma, everything from switching off the Olympics to donating your many billions.
Irrawady.com
US Campaign for Burma
August 08 2008 | Categories: landscape • places • rambles | Tags: 8888 • agriculture • Burma • China • dictatorships • vacations • weeds | No Comments »
Problem: The rice paddy in your backyard vegetable garden is just plain blah. You need to spice it up.
Solution:
Unlike the grass art I posted last Friday, which was made with varying the amount of light given to the grass, this pattern is made with planting different kinds of rice to make the pattern. The technique may be more conventional, but the result is still pretty cool…
Image spotted on the Gamil Design blog [ source ]
July 24 2008 | Categories: art • places | Tags: agriculture • Japan • rice • rice paddies | 3 Comments »
