Human Flower Project
Cooking
London, ENGLAND
Christchurch, NEW ZEALAND
Austin, Texas USA
Monday, September 28, 2009
A Legacy of Jamaican Fruits
Ackee and breadfruit send local ecologist Georgia Silvera Seamans up to the Jamaican highlands and three generations back in time. Thank you, Georgia and Yvonne.
Cacao on the branch in Jamaica; the seeds make cocoa and chocolate.
Photo: Yvonne Silvera
By Georgia Silvera Seamans
I never knew my mother’s maternal grandmother; Beatrice Baxter (“Auntie B”) died before I was born. My mother’s stories presented a picture of a generous woman, with her love, time, and her home. Though I was born and raised, until I was 13 years old, in Jamaica, I never saw my great-grandmother’s house. My mum was raised in “the country” of Clarendon Parish but raised her children in a suburban development in St. Catherine Parish. Perhaps she thought we could not make the hike up (or hoof it up like the goats) the hill to my grandmother’s house. (I should ask.)
Cooking • Culture & Society • Gardening & Landscape • Permalink
Friday, July 03, 2009
The Fruited Plain
Sometimes it takes a foreign visitor to open one’s eyes to the U.S.A. Allen Bush gets a heaping helping of Kansas and Nebraska flora, fruit, and pastry.
Pie-appreciation center (a.k.a. a Kansas diner)
Photo: Allen Bush
By Allen Bush
A car trip across Kansas, forty years ago, was an unending landscape of wheat stubble and Stuckey’s Pecan Shoppes—unavoidable if you were on a beeline to Denver or San Francisco. “Linger longer in Kansas,” the worn-out state tourism slogan, didn’t apply.
When Georg Uebelhart, my friend and Jelitto Perennial Seed colleague, came over from Germany for a visit in late May 1997, we did linger. Slivers of prairie remnants in Kansas and Nebraska had a peculiar appeal—more interesting, now, than the bright lights of the big western cities. Between us, we’ve traveled the Alps to the Altai and Andes poking around for plants. (Uebelhart, a native of Switzerland, has a sharp eye and an encyclopedic knowledge of plants – essential gifts for the best plant hunters.) It would be a stretch to call this work, but rarely does botanic obsession take on Indiana Jones-style intrigue, either. Occasional landslides and truck drivers, passing on blind curves, with perilous drop-offs and raging rivers hundreds of feet below have scared the wits out of us in a few far-flung places, but these aren’t worries in Kansas or Nebraska (though you should be careful for a speeding plantsman around Clarkson, Nebraska). The back roads in these parts are so desolate that an occasional passing car is more curious than death- threatening.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Kings, Queens and Mangosteens
As the mercury rises, the Local Ecologist unpacks an array of tropical fruit. Plug in the blender!
Inside a fresh mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana). Queenly? Try it and see.
Photo: Georgia Silvera Seamans
“So precise a balance of acid and sugar,” that’s how R.W. Apple decribes mangosteen, the southeast Asian fruit that “can’t get a visa.”
My friend L.I. sent me Apple’s story before I left for Singapore and Malaysia and Hong Kong. Busy as I was before the trip (my husband was graduating and families were in town), I did not read the article till my return. Now I can agree.
My husband fell in love with the “queen of fruit” in Malaysia and Singapore. (Singapore used to be a part of Malaysia.) The taste! But magosteen is interesting in other ways, too, most notably its inner math—the number of lobes on the bottom of each mangosteen corresponds to the number of segments in that particular fruit. My friend’s dad proudly disclosed this to us with several mangosteens.
Monday, March 16, 2009
HFQ #6: Fit for Foraging?
Georgia Silvera Seamans, local ecologist of Berkeley, California, writes:
Spotted this vine with fruit over the weekend. Reminds me of a mango but as an avid mango eater (we had two mango trees in our back yard in Jamaica) I know it’s not a mango (tree!). I am hoping it’s human-edible so I can forage to exchange with Forage Oakland.
Hanging fruit in Berkeley’s Elmwood neighborhood:
Photo: Georgia Silvera Seamans
No popping off on this Human Fruit Query, folks; Georgia’s considering not only eating this herself but helping her neighbors to some also, through this interesting Bay Area group. Seems that they come together around the usefulness of local plants, much like the amazing Scooter Cheatham and Lynn Marshall here in Austin. (In the past, Scooter and Lynn have hosted “weedfeeds”—potluck meals where all the dishes are made from wild plants).