Home / Resources and Writings / Weblog / January 2005
Shanghai Plans New Botanic Garden
Category(-ies): Other Botanical Gardens
Shanghai plans to build a new botanic garden in suburban Songjiang District. The current Shanghai Botanical Garden is surrounded by buildings and has no room for expansion. The new garden will cover 210 hectares, an area three and a half times that of the existing garden.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 5:31 PM
America’s Pistachio Collection
Category(-ies): Plant Conservation , Plants, Food and Medicine
More than 750 pistachio trees from ten different species and various hybrids are maintained by the Agricultural Research Service at America's official pistachio collection in Davis, California. Although less than a century old, California’s industry is the second largest producer of pistachios in the world.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 4:03 PM
The Barcode of Life
Category(-ies): Herbaria , Plant Discoveries
Dr. Paul D. N. Hebert, a population geneticist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, has come up with an idea that may help scientist identify species: match a section of DNA with a DNA database of known species. The Consortium for the Barcode of Life was formed to develop a DNA barcoding database that will link to identified specimens in the collections of natural history museums and herbariums. Field researchers could scan a sample of a specimen and compare it to the database via phone or internet.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 1:07 PM
Respecting the Knowledge of Healers
Category(-ies): Botanical Resources , Plant Conservation , Plant Legal News and Issues , Plants, Food and Medicine
The elders of the Haida Nation, like other indigenous peoples, have a wealth of knowledge about the plants in their environment. This knowledge has been passed down through generations, usually in oral form to specialists within the group. The benefit to the community is their incentive for preserving and administering the knowledge of healing plants.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 11:12 AM
UBC Scientists Work to Stop Deadly Fungal Infections
Category(-ies): Plant Discoveries , Plants, Food and Medicine
Researchers at the University of British Columbia and the BC Cancer Agency's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre in Vancouver have contributed genome mapping expertise to an international effort to develop treatments for fungal meningitis.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 11:42 AM
Invasive Plants in China
Category(-ies): Invasive Plants
Scientists from the South China Botanical Garden have recently identified a vine which has been troubling farm workers near Guangzhou for the past five years. Merremia boisiana, a rapidly growing vine in the morning glory family, can climb and smother ten-metre tall trees. The plant is native to tropical areas adjacent to Guangdong Province, but had not been seen in the region before.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 2:20 PM
Botanic Gardens Conservation International in Canada
Category(-ies): Plant Conservation
Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) is an organization that promotes the function of botanic gardens in the conservation of plants. In an increasingly urban world, botanic gardens and arboreta are an important resource for educating the public about natural heritage as they can engage the public with their repositories of threatened and endangered plant species.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 2:08 PM
Urban Plough
Category(-ies): Botanical Art
“In the 21st century, at the frontier, the urban and rural do not meet; they collide. My family has farmed the same land outside of Phoenix, Arizona for four generations and it will soon be developed. My art practice recounts my reactions to the changes in such landscapes, while also representing my attempts to reconcile the urban with the rural in times where many historical and cultural practices are in danger of being engulfed.”
So writes Matthew Moore, a modern American artist with an agricultural twist.
Link: Urban Plough, the art of Matthew Moore
Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 10:24 AM
Is Species Loss Unraveling the Web of Life?
Category(-ies): Plant Conservation
Life on Earth has been marked by extinction throughout its history, however scientific assessment of current levels of species loss seems to indicate extinction rates much higher than average. Is the Earth experiencing the sixth great wave of extinction? The World Conservation Union, which has assessed species conservation status for 40 years, estimates the current rate of extinction to be at least 100 times the normal rate.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 11:46 AM
Preventing Sunburn on Apples
Category(-ies): Plant Discoveries
Sunscald is a problem for apple growers attempting to produce unblemished fruit. Most growers currently mist their trees from dawn to dusk to use the evaporative cooling effect of water to lower fruit temperature. However, Robert G. Evans has proposed some improvements.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 11:32 AM
