[Terrapreta] Fwd: PHOTOS ABOUT CATTAIL

[Richard Haard]

Michael

It's a stretch on this list but Ben and I have Been discussing this  
for over a year in the context of biofuels utilizing the starch in the  
rhizomes and also reinventing agriculture  by utilizing land  
considered marginal for purposes of traditional farming and native  
plants that might become new crops with additional uses for food,  
fiber and economic endeavor for local farmers. We've been working over  
this topic on the gasification list but I suppose Ben posted here  
because we are more oriented to farming/growing plants.

For me the link to terra preta is the link to agriculture as is / was  
practiced by native peoples in different parts of the world. In my  
part of the world a well known ethnobotanist, Dr Nancy Turner, was  
editor for a book (conference proceedings) titled keeping it living    
in which the authors countered the popular supposition that the native  
peoples of the PNW  were simple hunter gathers and instead they were  
actively cultivating plants long before contact with the Europeans.

from the review

  Keeping It Living tells the story of traditional plant cultivation  
practices found from the Oregon coast to Southeast Alaska. It explores  
tobacco gardens among the Haida and Tlingit, managed camas plots among  
the Coast Salish of Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia, estuarine  
root gardens along the central coast of British Columbia, wapato  
maintenance on the Columbia and Fraser Rivers, and tended berry plots  
up and down the entire coast.

Especially interesting to me is the fact that the method of  
cultivation of these native peoples was passive in a natural  
environment and also that some of the early settlers respected the  
heritage of these original peoples and as they settled into their  
places, intermarried, took the effort to learn their methods and uses  
of native plants. A long time friend of mine now deceased was fourth  
generation descendant who had kept this knowledge alive. For some time  
I would interview her on this topic and one story she told me was  
about her childhood living on San Juan Island during the great  
depression years and it was their knowledge and use of native plants  
that kept them alive.

Perhaps , just like terra preta there is something here that may show  
us how we are going to be making our energy and food after the oil is  
gone.

Thanks for the link to NZ Typha species. There are 4 species in  
Argentina including the ubiquitous Typha latifolia of North America.

Rich
On May 18, 2008, at 2:24 AM, Michael Bailes wrote:

> http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Typha 
> ~orientalis
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattail
>
> Why is it important?
> m
>
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