Following the annual meeting of the NY Nut Grower’s Association on October 17th, Carl Albers told me to check out the bottom of Lake Owasco since I was interested in shellbark hickory. Shellbark hickory is one of America’s very finest of nut trees.
Carl explained that in the bottoms along the inlet to Owasco Lake there were lots of shellbark hickories growing on the west as well as the east side. He described how there was a native settlement there for a long time and that it was archaeologically a very important area. The following morning I made my way over to the Owasco Flats Wildlife Management Area, as the area is known.
Wild plants have made up most of the focus of this blog. But what about “domesticated” plants, such as the annuals we grow in our gardens?
How can we treat them that they behave more like wild plants – vigorous, resilient, low-maintenance, and more fecund and feral – yet which continue to supply our needs for flavor, nutrition, and ease of access?
The answers, I believe, are found inside the genome of the seed where genetic diversity is found. I will explore the concept behind landrace gardening, which provides for many real-world examples of genetic diversity in action.
For as long as we’ve been a species, all across the world human beings have told stories. And in the stories told about origins and our place within the world, there is a theme that consistently reoccurs. In these stories, human beings are given a role as stewards or caretakers of the earth. They are taught to respect and value all other beings, knowing that there is no separation of humans from out of the web of nature, but that we are all related and interdependent on one another.
To use the language of science, we might say that Homo sapiens plays the ecological role of keystone species of the planet. A keystone species is understood as one which has such a large impact on its environment that its very presence structures and maintains the ecological community of which it is a part. And no one would deny that human beings have drastically reconfigured the planet’s landscape! Indeed, many today are coming into agreement that a new geological epoch has arisen, and it is to be called the Anthropocene: the Age of Man.
