who should we send to bolivia?

[Epiphyte]

I think if world events take a turn for the worse and we are all having to eke some form of subsistence level lifestyle I might give it a go. Going to be like eating asparagus, I assume, but maybe stringier. Otherwise I'll leave the plants alone and head to the supermarket for food.

heh, i love british humor. it just seems smarter. now i want to rewatch campus. if there was a show where you foraged for food i'd watch it. i think it would be very educational and entertaining.

i haven't foraged enough, mainly wild mustard greens. it grows all over the hills here. i was helping a friend attach orchids to his trees and afterwards i cut some of the mustard greens on his property to cook for him and his gf. they did not like the greens one bit. the problem was that i cooked the greens how i like them, very lightly sauteed so that they are exploding with strong flavor and jam packed with nutrients. if i had cooked them longer then they would have become more bland and palatable to the majority, aka the lowest common denominator. not to mention less nutritious.

i'd imagine that your hills have a much wider variety of edible greens than my hills.

[Meangreen94z]

did you try eating any ruscus yet?

how desirable is nolina beldingii? it's for sale.

Thank you for that. And he has another even higher elevation selection that survived 11°F.

ooo, i managed to make myself useful! you're welcome. it can take quite a bit of cold, but what about heat?

It’s from Baja California. I’m sure it can handle intense sunlight and some heat.

[Epiphyte]

from raindance seeds i recently ordered the following seeds for a public food forest i'm starting...

diospyros californica (baja chocolate persimmon/sapote)

passiflora palmeri

passiflora pentaschista (desert passionfruit)

prosopis pubescens (screwbean mesquite)

ziziphus parryi (desert jujube)

they are all from baja california, more or less, except for the mesquite.

recently a friend gave me a couple seeds of cyrtocarpa edulis, also from baja california. he said he'd root a male and female cutting for me.

not sure how much cold these plants can take but should be fine here in socal. socal? hmmm... "baja california" means lower california. so when i say "southern california"........ i mean somewhat lower california? ehhhhh.

strange that i haven't seen them being grown around here much. i know the huntington included cyrtocarpa edulis in one of their isi's.

now that i know what to look for, i see prunus salicifolia (capulin cherry) here and there. it's from mexico. i tried a few fruits that were overhanging a sidewalk and they were pretty decent. i think it should be more commonly grown here. last month i planted a fruiting size tree in the food forest. i also have 3 plants from 3 different sources in 5 gallon pots for the food forest.

luc's garcinia is also from mexico, and the fruit is supposed to taste great, so not sure why it's so rare here. maybe it doesn't help that it grows soooo slow.

i kinda want to blame the native americans for not doing a better job of spreading fruit seeds around. was this really their responsibility though? is it really anyone's responsibility to improve the distribution of plants?

The absence of [Dendrobium johannis var. semifuscum] from the mainland of the Northern Territory and its presence on Melville and Bathurst islands leads to the speculation that it might have been introduced to the islands by Macassamen (trepang fishermen) who were known to plant all manner of things on some of the places they visited during their travels. - A. W. Dockrill, Australian Indigenous Orchids

i had the hardest time refinding this quote, until i finally remembered that i put it in a google doc i created for quotes about carrying things. we're exceptionally good at simultaneously carrying multiple resources over great distances, is it a coincidence we're exceptionally smart? nope. imagine we all have spaceship equivalents of dugout canoes that we can use to colonize the solar system. individuals who make smarter carrying decisions are going to exert a greater influence on the gene pool. not sure how many plants it takes to make enough oxygen for a small spaceship...

it's my responsibility to improve the distribution of plants in the solar system. just like it was johnny appleseed's responsibility to improve the distribution of apples in north america.

[Meangreen94z]

Nice, it’s always interesting the varying degrees of hardiness of species within the same habitat. There is a number of Baja species that can barely take below freezing. Then there are species like Nolina beldengii and Brahea armata that can survive temperatures approaching 0°F.

[Epiphyte]

did you ever try the fruits of brahea armata? seems like the reviews are mixed.

[Meangreen94z]

did you ever try the fruits of brahea armata? seems like the reviews are mixed.

I haven’t. It seems Phoenix dactylifera and Cocos nucifera are the only species of palm that are worth eating fruit from.

[Epiphyte]

did you ever try the fruits of brahea armata? seems like the reviews are mixed.

I haven’t. It seems Phoenix dactylifera and Cocos nucifera are the only species of palm that are worth eating fruit from.

you forgot about the jelly palm! butia odorata fruit is tasty, but there's quite a bit of variation in quality. the palm itself is relatively hardy. ever tried growing it? i just planted a 5 gallon one in my public food forest.

[Paul S]

Also the seeds of Jubaea chilensis are like little coconuts.

[Epiphyte]

Also the seeds of Jubaea chilensis are like little coconuts.

same with jubaeopsis caffra. sadly i've never tasted either.

which is more likely to happen 1st?

x - jubaea chilensis with seeds the same size as coconuts
y - cocos nucifera in milder parts of the uk

[Epiphyte]

saw this city landscaping the other day and thought of you guys. nolinoideae? it's also on the other side of the bridge. would you have parked the car and taken pics? maybe tried to collect some seeds? i'm guessing that it's a common variety, but it's the 1st time i've ever seen a mass planting like that.

meangreen94z has been posting pics taken by adam black in uruguay. i've been following him on ig for a while. when he posted the pics of the butia paraguayensis, including one with ripe fruit, i asked how the fruit tasted compared to odorata. so far no response. heh.

make yourself useful!?

he already made himself useful by taking a pic of the palm and its fruit. so far the pics have received 217 hearts/likes on instagram. how many more hearts would the pics have gotten if he had shared a pic of opened fruit and a taste report? hard to say. he isn't followed by many rare fruit enthusiasts, but perhaps i would have posted a link on the tropical fruit forum.

the other day i was at a nursery with a big pereskia with relatively large yellow green fruit on the plant and on the ground. i picked one from the tree, that was kinda yellow, and a bit sunburned. i opened it up and thought to myself, all cactus fruit are edible, right? i took a small nibble and regretted it for the next 3 or so hours. my throat was extremely scratchy and uncomfortable. i want to say that the fruit wasn't ripe enough, but the seeds were black and big. they looked perfectly viable. or maybe the sunburn had some effect. afterwards i did some googling and am guessing it's pereskia grandifolia. no obvious information about edibility.

take one for the team!?

from google, "willingly undertake an unpleasant task or make a personal sacrifice for the collective benefit of one's friends or colleagues."

how to measure collective benefit? 217 people clicked a like button? 100,000 people voted for a city council member? therefore their landscaping decisions must be very beneficial.

if we use our donations to rank forum categories, then, and only then, will we learn the relative importance and collective benefit of the nolinoideae and the arecaceae. this information will invariably influence our decisions, for the better.