ON VINES IN NATURE

I HAVE been preaching about the good side of vines in our garden for quite a while.  In our enclosed,  urban, concrete/asphalt  space, they perform their duties without complaint.  However, let the record show that only Bouganvilleas and a couple of Hibiscus  planted in  five holes dug in the concrete share the same air space.
They are one thing in nature, another in our residence.

They live happily ever after, helping each other hanging it there, creating a dense cool shade scaffold with little use of wires for support.  The botanical inventory is not necessary at this point since it is available in caribbeanbotanical review. Besides, most gardeners here or there do not keep vines in their installations for unknown reasons, even though
I speculate they could become cumbersome and scary, if you are prone to stiff views in terms of formal/informal, pruning and such. Or more probable, not living in a box like habitat, but open space in  four sides.

Before I get to that story,  I strongly suggest not to plant anything under/nearby Bouganvilleas like yuccas, agavaceas, lillys or any other plant with similar leave structure.  Their  flowers will accumulate and stick glue like on leaves, a messy picture.

The Once and Future Forest

Leslie Ann Sauer 

page 29 

The worst problems are usually caused by exotic vine growth.

Tangles of Japanese honeysuckle, multifora rose, porcelain berry, kudzu, oriental bittersweet, and certain other prolific climbers overwhelm the early growth stages of forest trees and sometimes even the canopy trees as well.  The description of these problems in Overton Park in Memphis by Guldin , Smith , and Thompson (1990) is an excellent example of an old-growth woodland in an urban park where honeysuckle, multiflora rose, and wisteria were blanketing gaps in the landscape and restricting the recruitment of almost all other species. 

The effect of invasive vines can be rather spectacular, but herbaceous plant competition by exotics such as knotweed,  gas mustard, and lesser cenaldine buttercup can also negatively affect recruitment.

If you wonder why I bother with this kind of information living in tropical Puerto Rico, it is simple, what goes on with nature in the country side or the urban side here is the same anywhere, same rules apply.  Only certain variables change: four seasons versus two, soil composition, altitude, wind, humidity and else.

Many of our 'forests' are covered by kudzu like vines, particularly in those areas near by highways that have been disturbed, one third of the country that you could observe without much effort while driving.. The amusing or pathetic thing is that  nojuan seems to notice, or the consequences in the long run. Having no sun light, covered with them vines,  the trees will pass away soon or later.

However, every other agency, group or individual too often talk/write about the environment as if some ideal Shangrila far away, unable to see the problems in front of their noses.

I recommend The Once and Future Forest to anyone in the practice.  Forest restoration is a complicated issue, requiring some research and careful observation. Yet going back to principles, fundamentals, once those are is understood, the rules are the same. In nature, divide and conquer is very true.  The deaf hogs dominant in Puerto Rico apparently never heard of it.  Alberto Areces Mallea, Phd, is one of them.

  

that is that 

  

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GRATITUDE POST

MOONS ago I decided to start a blog. However, none of the 'trends' I have set,  the concepts I have coined, the insults, love, humility and 'wisdom' I have spread  and shared would have been possible without the help of the following people.

ISABEL SANCHEZ AND MARIA CRISTINA SANCHEZ  

These two young women, sisters and nieces had the kindness to educate yours truly in everything that anyjuan who wish to have a blog needs to know in terms of this or that technically.

I was able to become the number one film auter, displacing Jacobo Morales, who now bites the dust, thanks to Maria Cristina, in youtube. There are over 140 video clips from your humble servant in those prairies denouncing all kinds of maladies making our urban concrete/asphalt existence miserable.

Some time in betweenies, I arrived to flickr, where at least ten of my photos are legend material, not  in the Avedon or Adams league but

getting there.

A weirdo from Trujillo Alto, I'm Reavel, was also significant during that early period, giving me advice in the photo/settings department.  The first person who ever left a comment, meaningful or not, in any of my blogs, Amilcar Garcia Tirado, from Savarona, in the country of Caguas. This gentleman is a lover of Dominican women in my former original barrio now occupied by the invaders.  

As time went by, the plant collection kept growing thank to the following relatives and friends, not in any particular order:
Gladys Munhiz with plants and  relevant  feedback for the installation.  She is the intellectual author of the north garden pavement design and color scheme.

Rengui my inlaw who has donated over twenty different plants,

Suncha her sister, tio Joveliano for propagating a couple of Brugmansias,

Nydia from Caimito City,

Donha Mary accross the street, donated by request,  that strange cactus

with identity crisis, grasping the wall as if some Hedera helix or Ficus, featured recently in caribbeanbotanicalreview.

Tito Collazo  and Don Miguel Yamin, my biggest fan, octogenarian and former jewelry store proprietor,

Myrta, the domestic assistant for Lucy Laborde, aka Blondie. 

Other people mostly, in this virtual world are also responsible for 
the existence of the many blogs past and present:
Fellow blogger friends and foes in the five continents who have
kept their own garden installations and pertinent views about the practice  you know who you are.  Friends in FB have also collaborated with feedback as those in Punto Hispano.

Visitors, commentators and those who have taken the first and fifth t amendment remaining silent. Those who keep aimless, ugly and polluting gardens are also part of the family, Bless thy heart! The Lord will forgive them.

THANKS 

Gardening is my vocation. One of my goals is to
remain the most humble there is.     

pd

Not all is peaches and 
cream lets not forget
the enemies of our 
environment, culprits
and accomlices 
below  

HALL OF SHAME

 Albertso Areces Mallea, Gabriela Ocampo, Luis Munhoz Marin Foundation, 007 Recursos Naturales, Parques Nacionales and Fideicomiso de Conservacion, all without exception are useles, ignorant fools.  More recently Universidad Sagrado Corazon and the riff raff next door, both are pond scum, noisy, polluting pain in the ass.

 

      

   

THE YEARS OF FAMINE

WATCHING the  BBC or RTV.ES  news it is difficult not to think about those less fortunate, fire, floods or drought destroy the land and  their means to feed themselves and/or their animals.  Hundred  of years ago plant diseases and insect pests created similar situations.      Here  an excerpt from:

FOOD IN HISTORY 

Reay Tannahill

STEIN AND DAY

Publishers New York

1973 

pages 116-118 

In the Rhine Valley, in  A.D. 857, came the first serious recorded outbreak of ergotism, in which thousands of people died, poisoned by their daily bread.  Rye is susceptible to a particularly virulent fungus, known as ergot, which contains twenty poisons including lysergic acid  diethylamide--the hallucinogen LSD.

If the rye is badly affected, eating bread made from it leads either to intense abdominal pain, delirium, gangrene and death, or to that acute inflammation of the skin which in the ninth century, drove sufferers to insanity and gave ergotism the common name of "Holy Fire."  In the hundred years following A.D. 857, Europe endured twenty "grieveous famines"--some of them lasting for three or four years of succession.

The south did not escape, any more than the north.  There had been wars there, too between  the all-conquering Arabs and the Byzantines, and in their triumphal progress along the Mediterranean the Arabs had carried with them a single small bush which was going to bring havoc to the agriculture of southern Europe.  Until the early Middle Ages, the deadly black stem rust which can lay a whole harvest to waste had been almost unknown in the west.  With the advent of the barberry bush, however, which plays host to the rust parasites during certain stages of their development, disease began to ravege the wheat fields.  As the barberry spread, valued for the curative potion which could be extracted from its stems and for the brilliant berries which made a refreshing conserve, so did wheat rust, flourishing wherever there were warm rains, fogs or heavy dews.  By the early part of  the tenth century Spain was suffering from appalling failures of the wheat harvest, which may well have been to rust, and which (notably in A.D. 915 and 929) brought famine in their wake. 

Where there was famine, there was also cannibalism.  What was said of  India a few centuries later, was probably equally true in tenth-century Europe.  "Life was offered for a loaf, but none would buy; rank was to be sold for a cake, but none cared for it...

Destitution at last reached such a pitch that men began to devour each other, and the flesh of a son was preferred to his love.  Demand produced supply.  In some of the more isolated regions of central Europe killer bands roamed the country side,  waylaying travelers, cooking their flesh, and selling it to the highest bidder.   

Purchasers may have been told the meat was pork (which cannibal communities of the modern world have said it resembles), or mutton--even "two legged mutton," which was what the Chinese called it when there was a famine in the northern provinces in the twelfth century.   Cannibalism was to persist in Bohemia, Silesia and Poland until the end of the Middle Ages, and actuality which helped to lend color to legends of werewolves and vampires.

Nevertheless, during these dark and often despairing years,

new developments in agriculture were taking place which were soon to have a revolutionary effect, no only upon the food of western Europe, but on the whole of society. 

I can say that having done some time in quite a few colleges in Puerto Rico, MA and NY , I do not remember having heard or read these stories once. 

However, the violent cultures  and sacrifices of Mayan and Aztecs to name two, were always repeated over and over.

This picture was portrayed in a film, "Soylent Green" with Charlton Heston.  If you care for a modern view on the subject check the trailer below or watch the whole movie:

  http://youtu.be/SVpN312hYgU

that is that