ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE BOTANICAL INVENTORY l

O ne of those memorable books in Spanish,( universal may write the average arrogant academician), when half the population on earth does not read/write nor has water/electricity or sanitary service.

In many novels authors create worlds with rules and customs of their own, often similar to reality.  I have never read anything closer to nature, except some of Horacio Quiroga's short stories. Men/women working with it, trying to tame it or just living along nature,  integral part of it.


The items  appear in the order  they do in the novel,  Spanish edition. If you think Harry Potter is cool, you should  check the Gregory Rabassa translation, as fun as the original, believe it or not, in my humble opinion. 

The first is a bird, Paces domesticus or gorrion. As a result of this research, I know for sure what this bird is and look like, finally. In the future, I will probably include birds plus plants in the same post. Now, let the vegetation be.

BOTANICAL INVENTORY

One Hundred Years of Solitude

by 

Gabriel Garcia Marques

Editorial La Oveja Negra Ltda

1978

Solanum melongena

Musa paradisiaca

Xanthosoma Saggitifolium

Manhihot Esculenta

Dioscorea spp

Cucurbita maxima

Occimun basilicum

All the above are in the edible department.

Now one has to be careful with common names in the Americas given to all things in nature from the conquerors. One example will do.

What is named castanho in the novel is not, Castanea sativa Miller but Aesculus hippocastanum.  

If you go to search with these names you will see why, one of the two, does not grow over here in the tropics. That is one of the problems of using common names...However, let the record show the novel is not a botanical treatise. 

 

That is that.

I have had lots of fun with this project, just started.