Article 1669 of bionet.plants:
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From: mark_hov@antdiv.gov.au (Mark Hovenden)
Newsgroups: bionet.plants
Subject: re: Request for info.
Message-ID: <9309090043.AA09491@net.bio.net>
Date: 9 Sep 93 00:40:12 GMT
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Jim Ryan (jimryan@cats.ucsc.edu) writes...
>I am participating in a plant gathering "expedition" in Yunnan,
>China
>next month.  The Chinese college sponsoring it has requested I
>gather
>some information.  I'd appreciate any information on the following
>be
>emailed to "jimryan@cats.ucsc.edu".  Thanks.
>          
>1. Is anyone doing, or know someone who is doing, research on or
>using
>bamboo?
>          
>2. Can anyone recommend a good English language botanical
>dictionary? 
>Especially interested in botanical Latin,composition of plant
>botanical names.

I use the everyday run of the mill Penguin Dictionary of Botany
which is pretty good and for Latin I use Stearn's excellent
"Botanical Latin" which is old (1973) but Latin hasn't been
changing much in the last two decades so it is still reasonably up
to date.

As for Bamboo, why don't you go and have a look in Bio Abstracts? 
Or do a WAIS if you're not keen on libraries.

Stearn, William T. 1973. Botanical Latin. David & Charles, Newton
Abbot, Devon.


Mark J. Hovenden        	       	    	Ph:     	002 323441
Land Based Biology      	       	     FAX:    	002 323351
Australian Antarctic Division   	     mark_hov@antdiv.gov.au
Channel Hwy Kingston TAS 7050
Australia








Article 1670 of bionet.plants:
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From: dist49@carson.u.washington.edu (dist)
Newsgroups: bionet.plants
Subject: Re: Does anyone have Lat/long distribution data for entire genera?
Date: 9 Sep 1993 03:53:43 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 31
Sender: Jonathan Kochmer
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In article <268qkpINNeda@no-names.nerdc.ufl.edu>,
 <stinger@pine.circa.ufl.edu> wrote:

>I am looking for researchers with lat/long distribution
>data in ASCII format.  I am interested in any clade of plants
>for which all "known" populations are mapped...

You should consider getting ahold of a copy of the book _Areography_ by
Eduardo Rappaport (full citation below) for some intersting ideas, but
more directly relevant, doing a citations index search for articles in the
botanical literature that have cited him: they are very likely to have
collected the sorts of data in which you are interested...

Rappaport was very interested in geographic range, and, loosely speaking,
range "geometry", as a taxonomic property, and used many examples from the
floras and faunas of South America. 

good luck!

jonathan kochmer
unixversity of washington
seattle, wa


ME   Rapoport, Eduardo.
DT   Areography : geographical strategies of species / Eduardo
     H. Rapoport ; translated by Barbara Drausal.
ED   1st English ed., rev. and enl.
PI   Oxford [Oxfordshire] ; New York : Published on behalf of
     the Fundacion Bariloche by Pergamon Press, 1982.
AE   Rapoport, Eduardo. Areography.


Article 22431 of rec.gardens:
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From: judith@mermaid.larc.nasa.gov
Newsgroups: rec.gardens
Subject: Re: good book on greenhouse?
Date: 8 Sep 1993 20:56:39 GMT
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In article <25slq2$6ab@news.ysu.edu> al401@yfn.ysu.edu (David R. Smith)
writes:
>
>any recommendations for good book on growing vegetables, fruits
>etc. (not flowers or other non edibles) in a greenhouse
>situation?
>I am looking for a pretty detailed book with light and
>temperature requirements, if possible and I understand
>some vegetables and greens are more susceptible to problems
>in greenhouses and some really are not worth trying at
>all.
>thanks for any info on source material.
>David Smith
>

'Be Your Own Greenhouse Expert' by Dr. D. G. Hessayon has just the
information you want. It's a slim paperback from England.  I believe I got
mine from Storey's Books or some such.

Judith Moore
judith@mermaid.larc.nasa.gov




Article 22333 of rec.gardens:
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From: bae@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Beverly Erlebacher)
Subject: Re: heirloom seeds
Message-ID: <CCzqHH.6Hu@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <1993Sep2.160445.1@pearl.tufts.edu> <265se2INN3j9@charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu> <STNGIAM.93Sep4180737@carbonara.mit.edu>
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1993 15:46:28 GMT
Lines: 97

In article <STNGIAM.93Sep4180737@carbonara.mit.edu>,
Shih-Tung Ngiam <stngiam@athena.mit.edu> wrote:
>
>Suppose I grow an "Early Girl" tomato and let the fruit drop to the
>ground, and suppose further that the seeds survive the winter and
>germinate in Spring. And that this cycle goes on year after year.  I'll
>accept that the descendant plants may not mature as early or may produce
>fruits that don't taste as good (to humans) as true "Early Girls", but
>they will still be tomatoes, nonetheless.  Why should the genes of these
>descendants be considered inferior to those of "heirloom varieties" ? 

[First, some suggested reading:  "Breeding Your Own Vegetable Varieties"
a recent book by Carol Deppe.   Explains plant breeding objectives and
methods used by professional breeders and how to adapt them to backyard
projects.  Easy to understand, and very inspiring, makes you want to get
out in the garden and do some crosses!]

The offspring of hybrids are quite variable.  If you select and inbreed
for several generations you can create new varieties with the properties
you like, assuming they occur in the genes of the hybrid you started with,
or arise from mutation.  Early Girl would be a poor choice of starting
material if you wanted to produce yellow cherry tomatoes, but you could
select for several generations and get a new open-pollinated variety that
resembles Early Girl quite closely, but breeds true.

If you just let tomatoes fall, rot and germinate their seeds in the spring,
you will be selecting for plants that are productive of seeds under these
conditions, which may not be very good eating tomatoes.  For millenia, long
before the principles of genetics were discovered, people have been saving
seed from their best plants, and now we have domesticated crops which are
 very different from their wild ancestors.

Assuming 100% inbreeding, which is common in modern tomatoes, and ignoring
mutation for now, your self-sown population will have only the genes found
in Early Girl.  If Early Girl has no genes for e.g. yellow colour, enormous
size, stripes, intense tomato flavour, resistance to disease X, these traits
will not show up in any offspring, no matter how hard you select.

>  But these seeds must have been themselves the products of deliberate
>or accidental hybridization, too.  Since seed companies employ plant
>breeders who are all the time creating new varieties, it hardly seems
>fair to blame them for reducing genetic diversity. 

In the 'good old days' people saved seed from plants that produced the
way they liked, under their local conditions.  The old small regional
seed companies, most of which are gone now, also developed locally adapted
varieties.  Modern large seed companies are interested in creating varieties
that produce adequately under widely varying conditions, so they can sell
them across the continent.  Heirlooms often do extremely well under the
conditions in which they were developed, but sometimes poorly under
different conditions.  This isn't always the case:  some tomatoes developed
for cold, short-season climates do very well in hot deserts - the ability
to set fruit under cold conditions appears to really be an ability to set
fruit under generally adverse conditions including heat and dryness.

>>   When seed companies began to sell to consumers, they found that if they
>>   developed hybrid seed (purported to be better) and sold this to their
>>   customers, one of the "benefits" to them (the companies) was repeat 
>>   business, because the seed could not be saved. Because of this practise,
>>   we have lost many valuable plants that cannot be recovered, as there 
>>   is no seed for that particular varilety left on the planet! 
>
>   There must have been some reason for farmers to have switched to
>hydrid varieties from heirloom varieties, though.  After all, why would
>past generations of farmers have paid good money for seed when they
>could have kept their own seeds for the price of lost production ?

There are some plants, like corn, that are strongly outbreeding by nature.
These plants develop 'inbreeding depression', and hybrids really tend to
be superior to open pollinated varieties, unless a large and variable
population is maintained for seed year after year.  Other plants, including
tomatoes, are natural inbreeders.  Hybrid tomato varieties are not necessarily
superior to open-pollinated ones.  Even Dr. Ernie Kerr, who has been a 
professional tomato breeder, for the Ontario government until retirement
and then for Stokes Seeds (maybe 50 years total experience), says so.

The seed companies incorporate their advances into hybrids, because it
is of advantage to sell something that has to be bought again next year.
You can use these "hot new genes" to create your own varieties that have
the properties you like.  You can combine the disease-resistance and other
new developments with the desirable home garden traits of heirlooms.

Farmers generally want different properties in a crop than home gardeners
do.  In the case of tomatoes, someone raising acres of them wants a variety
that will ripen all at once, so the pickers (or picking machine) need only
go over the field once or twice.  The fruit should be cosmetically perfect,
smooth, symmetrical, red, uniform size and shape, no cracks or other defects,
hard enough to survive a lot of handling and shipping.  Resistance to
herbicides is a big plus, flavour is low priority.  When I grow tomatoes in
my garden, I am willing to put up with cosmetic imperfections, the fruit
doesn't get any rough handling, flavour is important to me, I don't mind
staking and weeding, I want them to ripen over a period of weeks or months,
I like to grow varieties that have various colours and shapes and sizes. 
Most plant breeders are breeding for the big producer who buys most of the
seed, and/or the home gardener who wants to grow stuff that looks like what
they sell in the supermarket.



Article 22198 of rec.gardens:
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From: tomm@cup.hp.com (Tom McNeal)
Subject: Re: heirloom seeds
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Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1993 15:59:25 GMT
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klier@cobra.uni.edu wrote:

: One place to start reading about heirlooms is Carolyn Jab's _Heirloom
: Gardener_ (approximate title) -- about mid 1980's publication date,
: if I recall.

Another good reference (which you can order through the SSE) is 
"Seed to Seed", by , um, uh, I used to have it here somewhere.  Anyway,
it is a good reference on techniques required for harvesting and 
storing seeds.  

Tom

-------------------------------------------------------------------
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Article 22202 of rec.gardens:
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From: dak@gandalf.rutgers.edu (Dorothy Klein)
Newsgroups: rec.gardens
Subject: Correction:  Heirloom Gardener book
Keywords: oops, author, date
Message-ID: <Sep.3.12.47.56.1993.26840@gandalf.rutgers.edu>
Date: 3 Sep 93 16:47:56 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 17


	I misremembered the author of the book I mentioned.
	The correct information is:  _The Heirloom Gardener_ 
by Carolyn JABS, 1984, Sierra Club Books, 2034 Filmore Street, 
San Francisco, CA 94115 USA  268pp + bibliography, appendices and index
= 310pp total.

ISBN 0-87156-803-9.  Cover Price for the hardcover is $17.95
(on clearance at Borders book Shop for $3.98).

A good discount read, IMHO.  The information on seed companies, organizations,
membership fees, and federal seed repositories is all outdated, but 
still useful for generalities.  It also gets a bit repetitive at times,
especially WRT the federal seed storage program.

Mind like a 2mm-mesh sieve,
Dorothy Klein


Article 22450 of rec.gardens:
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From: allyn@u.washington.edu (Allyn Weaks)
Newsgroups: rec.gardens
Subject: Heritage fruit trees?
Followup-To: rec.gardens
Date: 9 Sep 1993 06:52:06 GMT
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At long last I have a house with a miniscule yard (average by seattle
standards, but I'm from the midwest where 1/2 acres are more common than
10th acres...).  The time has come to start looking at trees to plant.  I
have room along the west side of the house for about three semi-dwarf sized
fruit trees (15' spread, 15-20' tall), and I'd like to get at least one
started this fall.  They probably won't get much morning sun until they
grow up enough to peak over the eaves, but they should get plenty in the
afternoons (as much as you ever get here, anyway.)

I'd rather not get standard modern hybrids.  I remember reading about a
book from the 1930s that listed over 3000 varieties of apple trees
available at the time, many with wonderful properties (taste! texture!)
that don't necessarily include easy mass harvest or long storage times. 
Are there any suppliers of some of these?  I'd like to find a really good
tart hard apple that doesn't turn to mush when cooked.  Hopefully self
pollinating, since I'd rather have three completely different kinds of
fruit than two out of three trees be apples.  Disease, pest, and
maintenance-free a plus :-)

I'd also like to look into old varieties of cherries, plums, pears, or
other things that would do well here (the growing season is really too
short for peaches).  Small nut trees may also apply for space.  (A hazelnut
bush is already in the planning stages for the back yard. Know any good
ones?  I'd kind of like to go with the northwest native, but the nuts are
teensy.)

Do the old varieties of fruit trees come in smallish sizes, or are the
dwarf/semi-dwarfs only a product of the hybridization era?  I vaguely know
how grafting and hybridization work and what they're for, but I have no
grasp of the history involved of when various techniques started being
used.  It wouldn't actually surprise me to find out that grafting is
medieval or older.

I've had a look in several bookstores, and haven't been able to find
anything much about fruit trees at all, let alone old or uncommon ones. 
Any good references?

Many thanks.
-- 
Allyn Weaks
allyn@u.washington.edu


