Home / Resources and Writings / Weblog / May 2007
Climate Change and Gardening
Category(-ies): Climate Change , Plant Conservation , Plants in the Landscape
What will be impact of climate change on gardening? A New York Times article addresses both the good and the bad. The good: different plant choices due to warmer weather & a longer growing season and raising awareness about environmental issues. The bad: increased pests and new weedy invaders, a changing native flora (and for some US states, the potential extirpation of state flowers and trees), and all of the associated cultural and biological consequences.
Feeling Warmth, Subtropical Plants Move North via the New York Times
Gardener's Guide to Global Warming (US-based) from the US National Wildlife Federation
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 9:47 AM
Bamboo, Rats and Famine
Category(-ies): Plants, Food and Medicine
Flowering of a ubiquitous bamboo, Melocanna baccifera, in the Indian state of Mizoram occurs in roughly fifty year cycles. This mass flowering event results in the production of innumerable bamboo seeds and, subsequently, a boom in the population of rats. The mass population of rats eat more than the bamboo seeds, however — food crops are devastated causing famine and political unrest.
Bracing for a famine caused by rats via the BBC (April 2007)
Bamboo puts India on famine alert via the BBC (October, 2004)
Indian farmers braced for rat plague via the Telegraph (May, 2007)
Bamboo in Mizoram via the Bamboo Development Agency
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 9:47 AM
