Subject: N-fixing references (was Re: Sources for books needed)
From: [email-masked] (Toby Hemenway)
Date: 10 Jan 2000 01:08:05 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.permaculture

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
(Lawrence F. London, Jr.) wrote:

> With your background in molecular biology can you recommend
> any up-to-date literature on nitrogen fixation, technical and layman's
> publications welcome.

Here are a few references on N-fixation and N-fixing plants. I use a lot
of them, shrubs and trees especially, for pioneer species. Stick eleaegnus
or caragana in the same hole as a fruit tree and stand back; the tree
grows much faster.

"The Leguminosae," by O.N. Allen (Univ. Wisconsin Press). This is thick
volume listing every known genus and mosts species of legume, its use, and
whether it has N-fixing nodules. Technical in spots, but it¹s got lots of
species I¹ve never heard of and want to use. So many Acacias! I got it
cheap from Edward R. Hamilton, a remainderer.
<http://hamiltonbook.com/index.html> His website has most of what he
carries, but order the daunting catalog; it¹s more complete and carries
the latest. I don¹t know if he¹s still got the book; his stuff comes and
goes.

There¹s a brief but good article on temperate N-fixers by Robert Fairchild
in Permaculture Activist #31 p.29.

Technical books, tough sledding but you can ferret out the relevant bits: 

Quispel, A: ³The Biology of Nitrogen Fixation² (Cambridge).
Newton, W.E. ³Proceedings of the 1st International Symposium on Nitrogen
Fixation.² (Washington State Univ Press). Pretty heavy going, but some of
the articles are general enough to be useful for Pc people.
Nutman, P.S. ³Symbiotic Nitrogen Fixation in Plants.²

Journals that have useful articles regularly on N-fixers are Agroforestry
Systems, Agroforestry News, and Economic Botany.

Somewhere I've got a list of websites that are relevant; when I dig it up
I'll post it.

Toby

-- 
Toby Hemenway
[email-masked]