Newsletter 1 July 2010

Green Deane’s Newsletter
July 2011

July is past and it means many different things to foragers depending upon your location on the rotation. In a particular latitudinal belt around the world it means the Pindo Palms are in fruit — my favorite after coconut. And don’t think Pindo Palms are just a warm region plant. They grow as far north as Washington DC and elsewhere in under protection.

Also call the Jelly Palm, they were standard landscaping for every southern home because you can make a jelly from the fruit without having to add any pectin or sugar. However, just as year-to-year production of herbal medicinals change with the weather so does the quality of the pindo jelly. It has vintages. Some years you will have to add a little sugar, other years some pectin. But most years it is just right. I also like to eat the fruit right off the palm. I enjoy the pulp and spit out the fiber. Some folks just eat all the fiber and pulp. The seed kernel even has a good cooking oil in it. Pindo wine is always cloudy, though, because of the pectin, but after 14 glasses you don’t notice.

Folks also think cactus, like palms, are warm weather residents. In fact, cactus are native to 46 of the 50 US states and naturalized in one of those four (Hawaii.) The only states they are not native are Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont — the farthest away from their origin in central America. That said, I knew where there were some surviving cactus behind an old homestead in Maine.  They looked quite ratty every spring but somehow managed to survive. Cactus have been naturalized in many parts of the world. Malta comes to mind where they are living fences and a “traditional” source of wine and spirits even though they are native to Mexico and south.

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One of my pet peeves is botanists who describe something a twining clockwise or counter clockwise. Why? Because I have two books describing the same vine, one says it twists clockwise, and the other says it twists counter clockwise. Oddly they are both right even though they are also wrong.

When a clock is on the wall, clockwise and counter clockwise is pretty easy to see. But when a vine grows up a tree it becomes a different matter. Why? Lets go back to that wall clock. What if it were a clear plastic clock on a glass wall. A person standing behind the clock would totally reverse what is clockwise or counter clockwise. In a phrase, clockwise or counter clockwise is a matter of perspective.

If you look down at a vine it looks to climb one way. If you look up at the same vine, it appears to climb the other way. That is why I describe climbing vines at eye level, either lower left to upper right, or lower right to upper left.

That would just be a bit of a blip in botanical minutia except it often seems that vines that climb lower left to upper right often have edible parts, and vines that climb lower right to upper left, do not. That’s an informal observation, not a rule or low.

One genus that is exactly that way is Dioscorea, the yams. To my knowledge the LL to UR species in that genus have edible parts while the LR to UL species in that genus do not. I also have an issue with the genus name.

The Latin would have it DIE-oh…DIO-oh-score-ree-ah. But when you take into consideration the Greek physician it is named for (Dioscorides) would be THEE-oh-score-ree-ah, not DIE-oh. If that’s not confusing enough there are at least three versions of Latin pronunciation. Roman, British, and American. Pines are in the genus Pinus, said PINE-us on this side of the pond. Penis, on the other side… And since I am on language…

ZEFF. Z-E-F-F. Like the name JEFF but with a Z. That is how Greeks say their ancient god Zeus. Zeff got mangle into Zeus via Latin which couldn’t handle the Greek letter Y, or gamma. Depending on which letters it is paired with it can have an “f” sound or a “v” sound. The Romans ignore that and said things the way they wanted to. “Auto” comes to mind. In Greek it is “AF-toe.) An automobile is an afto-KIN-nee-toe, self-moving. Mangled and half borrowed in English it becomes automobile.

If you have watched a few of my video you know I am not keen on correct Latin pronunciations. Linnaeus chose Latin for when he was naming plants precisely because it was a dead language, read not evolving. (Then again Greek has changed less in 3,000 years than English in 300.) Still, a static language suited Linnaeus but has been a pain to the rest of us.

The foraging world got by quite nicely for a very long time not knowing the Latin names of edible plants, or toxic ones for that matter. The most important thing is to identify a plant. The name is secondary unless you want to communicate with someone else far away.

The scientific names of plants assure us that when we are discussing a plant we are talking about the same plant. There are 18 or so “Pig Weeds” in North America, some edible, some toxic. That’s where the scientific name becomes important, even if it is in Latin.

Indeed, Latin and Greek still haunt us: We say “limb”  as in tree limb. But when we scale something we say “climb”  short to long I. Why not say climb like we say limb. Maybe it was a past tense at one time. Yesterday I clim the tree…  And why do limb and climb and lamb have silent B’s. It has to go back somehow to Greek which has an “mb/mp” sound combination.

Dr. Daniel Austin in his 1,000 page book Florida Ethnobotany spends a lot of time on the native names of plants and their inclusion and change through various European languages. Looking at the language is worth the effort, particularly local names, because it often tells us how the plant was used.
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Drum roll please: According to the New England Journal of Medicine the worse food in the world is regarding putting on weight is: The Potato Chip. And the food that promotes the least weight gain? Plain yogurt. Not much competition there. The conclusion of the study was it is the quality of the food that’s more important than quantity. We foragers go for quality. Wild plants tend to pack more nutrition than their cultivated relatives.
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If you are allergic to bananas you are also probably allergic to birch trees, and vice versa. No, no one really knows why. Seven other species for different reasons often cause an allergic reaction in the same person because they are closely related. They are: Poison Ivy, Poison Sumac, Brazilian Pepper, Mangos, Sumac, Cashews, and Pistachio. A close Poison Ivy/Mangos allergy is quite common.
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Lastly, I would like to know why land fills are called land fills. I was driving down through the middle of the state, which is dead level flat like most of Florida. I passed several land fills. They were typical, one to two hundred feet high, terraced, and dotted with pipes to vent this and that gas. While I won’t debate the concept of burying our garbage like that I think they are misnamed. They should be land hills!