smell as sweet
Israeli scientists have learned to enhance the smell of flowers.
Vainstein said his team had enhanced the scents of some flowers by a factor of 10 and caused them to give off their fragrance day and night.
The intensity of a flower’s scent usually depends on a range of natural factors, including the time of day, the plant’s age, and the weather.
The patented process could have several applications, not only for the production of flowers but also fruits and vegetables, with Vainstein pointing out that aroma is a key component in the taste of food.
Sunday Morning Harvest
Bamboo bicycle from Calfee Design
Dear Clusterflock
What do you grow that you eat? (Besides fingernails)
Anole in Sunflower Shade
Load-a-Month Club
You know, what I would really like for father’s day is a dump truck load of compost. And maybe a load of lava sand, a load of gravel, a load of composted cow manure. Load of cypress mulch and a load of edging stone blocks…. Oh–and each load should come with a squad of well paid day laborers who also like to take breaks and drink beer in the shade.
it’s only — a year — a-way!
Y’all. We’re a year away from clusterflockstock.
On Non-Ironic Carhartts
A curmudgeon I know holds forth:
Commentary on the state of farming can be found in the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times. ‘Twas ever thus: The Egg and I, the farming stories of S. J. Perelman, and, of course, Green Acres. Young folks find their way back to the garden, learn about life, cold hard economics, early mornings in freezing rain, etc.
But it’s in the styles section, along with the wedding announcements and stories on relationships, probably for a good reason: this “trend” amounts to a few anecdotes and will only affect the finances of a few. In some ways it’s a typical fashion story, one that gets as irritating as all the ones I’ve read in the past forty years.
Benefits of Bamboo Bikes?
While I think this is an interesting idea in theory, I’m not sure about the practicality of it.
Would they be cheaper and easier to build? And even if they are eco-friendly (which I would question), are they missing the important need which is providing cheap, reliable transportation that can be sustained (fixed by people on the ground in countries where they are used).
Gimicky attraction or destraction?
vine wreath
Twisted together out of wild bits and pieces this fall, it presides over the drifts of shoes, backpacks, permission slips, and odd mittens which mark the changing season.
What Do the Ginkgo Tree and Discarded Computers Have in Common?
So by now it’s apparent what the ginkgo and the discarded computer have in common: they each fuel a Chinese scavenger economy. That said, these two economies couldn’t be much more different. One is accidental, efficient, and benign (except for the nasty smell). The other is none of those things, although it probably does produce a smell all its own.
Diviner’s Sage
Diviner’s sage contains a powerful hallucinogen that may someday inspire a new class of depression, pain, and addiction medications. After using some of the “Mexican-mint” sage from a mail order catalog, a woman managed to rid herself of depression. Tests on animals have shown that the herb can control pain. However, no large pharmaceutical company would dare invest millions of dollars to win FDA approval for a drug that they can’t patent and sell exclusively. To add insult to injury, it could someday be classified as a narcotic.
hemorrhage plant
The leaves of Aspilia africana, a plant used in African traditional medicine, can stop bleeding, block infection and speed wound healing, a new study from Nigeria confirms.
Mexican volcano a test for trees on Mars
Scientists are using the pine-forested slopes of a Mexican volcano as a test bed to see if trees could grow on a heated-up Mars, part of a vision of making the chilly and barren red planet habitable for humans one day.
The Circle of Life
A mushroom found embedded in a 100-million-year-old piece of amber is about 20 million years older than other known mushroom fossils, an Oregon scientist says.
The ancient mushroom is especially interesting because it contains two parasites, one feeding on the mushroom and the other feeding on its fellow parasite.
“I was amazed enough with the mushroom,” said George Poinar, a retired entomology professor in Corvallis. “But then seeing the parasites was astonishing. No one has ever seen this three-tier association before.”
From the Comments
Daryl Scroggins:
One of the most interesting things regarding pomegranates I have ever seen involved paper wasps. I once left a very large fruit on the tree because it was up so high I would need a ladder to get it, and I could see that a squirrel had gnawed a hole in the side of it anyway. It dried out eventually, and then I saw that wasps were visiting it regularly. When the wind finally brought it down I saw that a paper nest had been built in it. The nest was hanging like a chandelier of cells, and all the seeds had flown away.
Jatropha
In an overgrown corner of Moolchand Sethia’s plantation, runty and unloved, stands what could be the next revolution in the world’s search for renewable fuel.
From China to Brazil, countries have begun setting aside tens of thousands of acres for the cultivation of jatropha – a plant many experts say is the most promising source for biodiesel. At the same time, companies from Europe and India have begun buying up land throughout Africa to establish jatropha plantations.
As American farmers plan to plant the most corn since World War II to cash in on ethanol, which is added to gasoline, much of the rest of the world is turning to jatropha, which is used as a substitute for diesel fuel.
The two are not competitors, since neither can be used in the other type of fuel. But jatropha is fast emerging as a candidate for the ideal biofuel. It is grown in wastelands, needs relatively little care or refinement, and is inedible – meaning it will not take food from the poor for the gas tanks of the rich.
dogwood
Blossoms and shadows on a sunny day.
remnants
Frost-blasted magnolia petals litter the sidewalk. April. No sign of lilacs out of the dead land.
gardener
I went to the park to draw the magnolias in bloom, and saw this woman, weeding.
Space Potatoes
Slightly sweet and purple in color, the potatoes, named Purple Orchid Three, are bred from seeds that mutated while being carried aboard a Chinese spacecraft, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported Monday.
Grower Haikou Purple Orchid Co. Ltd. is promoting them as a unique food option, and restaurants in the city are offering them for Valentine’s Day dinners, served crispy fried, or in salads, desserts and even iced drinks, the newspaper said.
China’s space program claims to have produced numerous mutated fruits and vegetables by exposing seeds to space radiation, capsule pressure and weightlessness.
Chinese agricultural experts say plants grown from such seeds can be hardier, more nutritious and produce higher yields, although many scientists say similar effects could be achieved in ordinary laboratories.
Leave it to the experts
Rumours that olive leaves cure cancer cause a national frenzy, from fratricide to the latest twist on the frappe…
Soon enough, the humble olive leaf was to be found on sale at food markets up and down the country for up to 60 euros a kilo, far outstripping the price of the fruit and oil from the same tree.
Such was the fervour that in Messinia, in the southern Peloponnese, a man knifed his brother in an argument over whether to administer the juice to a third brother suffering from cancer. The stabbed victim died.
Cribsheet #7: Extinction
Scientific issues and innovations seem to creep into everyday conversation more than ever before. Recognizing that we could all use some expertise in hot science topics, Seed offers its Cribsheet.
The language of dirt
Hank muses on the value of knowing the Latin names for plants:
There are plenty of good, practical reasons not to rely upon common garden names. But I won’t get into those here because that’s the wrong way to look at the situation. It is backward. The common names aren’t bad. And we shouldn’t be evaluating reasons why or why not to use the colloquialisms when the fact is that the common names ALONG WITH the scientific language of the garden is just more exciting and interesting. In short, the scientific language adds another layer of enjoyment. That right, my position is that the “Latin” names make things more exciting. And I’m right.
In my little gardens, which boast only a very small collection of specimens, there are stories of war, adultery, conquest, fire, sex, rape, religion and the stars. There is also the most diverse menagerie of animals that one could imagine: Wolfs, Rhinos, Pelicans, Dolphins and more. There are humorous stories of clerical mistakes and bureaucracy. There are tales of adventure and discovery. Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas are all here. Roman Legions, Prussian Cavalry and Cossacks live here too. And, of course, there is the tremendous beauty of the flowers. You see, when I walk through my garden, not only do I get to take in the natural beauty of the plants and scenery; I also get to walk through the history of the world. And the reason I can do so is because I am listening to the language of the dirt.
Be warned: reading this man’s blog is addictive.
The Billion Tree Initiative
A Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner called on people around the world to plant 1 billion trees in the next year, saying Wednesday the effort is a way ordinary citizens can fight global warming.