Nature – Page 14 – the heart thrills

A PAPAL ENCYCLICAL

Bangkok, 2 July 2015

There’s been quite a bit of brouhaha in the press about the new Encyclical which Pope Francis brought out on 18 June, with the title “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home”. Normally, I would just read what the press has to say and move on. Although I come out of the Catholic tradition, I fell off the Straight- and-Narrow decades ago and it never occurred to me to read any of the Encyclicals brought out by Paul VI or John-Paul II, and certainly none by Benedict XVI, who always struck me as a complete dinosaur. I remember my father reading the Encyclicals, in the original Latin no less (his was probably the last generation of Europeans who were given a serious education in classics; he read Latin and Greek at University). But me, no way, I wasn’t going to read these letters by old, white, celibate men, most of whose views were diametrically opposite mine.

But this Encyclical was different. It was about avoiding a planetary ecological disaster, brought about by climate change and other environmental catastrophes, something which I’ve been wrestling with all my professional life. And it was different from the kind of work I do, which is technical and scientific. It was bringing ethics to bear on the problem, which have been sadly lacking. So I decided that it was time for me to try this rather special form of literature.

Here’s how the Encyclical starts:

“Laudato si’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs”.
This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.

Whoa! Stirring words, pretty different from the stuff I normally read. Thoroughly intrigued, I settled down to read the whole document, all 246 paragraphs of it. Allow me to rapidly summarize its contents for any of my readers who might be too busy or distracted by other things to read it (by the way, the Encyclical has a message for them: “true wisdom, as the fruit of self-examination, dialogue and generous encounter between persons, is not acquired by a mere accumulation of data which eventually leads to overload and confusion, a sort of mental pollution”).

After a review of the state of the planetary environment, whose conclusion can be summed up in this other punchy quote, “the earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth”, the Pope reminds us that our inability to look after our Earth is reflected in our inability to look after our poor: “we should be particularly indignant at the enormous inequalities in our midst, whereby we continue to tolerate some considering themselves more worthy than others. We fail to see that some are mired in desperate and degrading poverty, with no way out, while others have not the faintest idea of what to do with their possessions, vainly showing off their supposed superiority and leaving behind them so much waste which, if it were the case everywhere, would destroy the planet”, to conclude that “a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”

His main conclusion is that both the environmental ills of the planet as well as the ills which bedevil our societies have their roots in excessive consumption by the better-off amongst us.

“We all know that it is not possible to sustain the present level of consumption in developed countries and wealthier sectors of society, where the habit of wasting and discarding has reached unprecedented levels.”
“To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues. It is an attempt to legitimize the present model of distribution, where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption.”
“… poor countries … need to acknowledge the scandalous level of consumption in some privileged sectors of their population and to combat corruption more effectively.”
“We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth. The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes, such as those which even now periodically occur in different areas of the world.”
“.. given the insatiable and irresponsible growth produced over many decades, we need also to think of containing growth by setting some reasonable limits and even retracing our steps before it is too late.”
“… a world of exacerbated consumption is at the same time a world which mistreats life in all its forms.”

All music to my ears! For ten years now, I’ve seen that excessive consumption is the key to all our most intractable environmental problems and have been wrestling with what to do about it. We have to do something to reduce the levels of consumption in the richest countries, or more specifically among the world’s richest people (because as the Pope pointed out even the poor countries have hideously rich people).

But to have this happen is a huge, huge political problem. To explain why, let me borrow a photo or two from the photographer Peter Menzel and others who have copied him. Mr. Menzel went around the world photographing families outside their homes with all their stuff piled up around them (anyone wanting to see the whole series should dip into his book “Material World: A Global Family Portrait”). His idea proved so popular that others copied him. This photo, which is of a family in Inner Mongolia

shows a level of stuff-ownership which is typical of millions, if not billions, of families around the world. These families want a materially better life. And why not? There is no reason they should not have it. But if the goal of every family in the world is to end up like this one

– well, it’s simply not possible, because a lifestyle like this for everyone requires a level of consumption of the world’s resources that would need 4 or more Earths to sustain

and, except for those of us who live in a parallel universe, we all know that there is but one planet.

But it’s also not possible to have a world where a few families can live like kings while everyone else has to live like the huddled masses or else the planet goes into meltdown. Somehow, those who currently are over-consuming have to accept to reduce their consumption.

What kind of material sacrifice would be required of these over-consumers? To answer this question, let me use myself as an example. A little while back, curious to see how large my personal environmental footprint might be, I used a footprint calculator offered by the Environmental Protection Agency of the State of Victoria in Australia (there are a number of such calculators on-line; I chose this one because it’s easy to use and I reckon that Southern Australia’s climate is quite similar to Italy’s where I intend to retire – I couldn’t find a good Italian footprint calculator). With an eye to my upcoming retirement, I entered data for myself and my wife on our eating habits, on the home we will live in, and the modes of transport we will be using. To put it in a nutshell, the two of us will live in a 120 sq. metre apartment in an apartment block, whose electricity will partially come from renewable energy. We’ll be having several servings a day of dairy, eggs, fish, or meat products, and a quarter of the food that we’ll eat will be either processed, packaged, or imported. Since we’ll be recycling a lot we’ll throw away less than one 30 litre bin-bag of waste a week. We’ll be using a lot of public transportation, but we’ll still have a small car to potter around town a bit, while twice a year we’ll fly to see the kids in the States. I pushed the last button, and the answer came back … “If everyone lived like you, we would need 3.9 planets” Aarrgh!!!! I was one of those guys greedily overusing the Earth’s resources! I could NOT believe it! I had worked in the environmental field all my professional life, and yet here I was devouring the planet! O-M-G!!

Once the shock wore off, I started doing what scientists call sensitivity analysis: I changed my answers one at a time, to see which changes would give me the biggest reductions. That would give me a menu of changes to our lifestyles which we could adopt, with the goal of bringing that horrible figure of 3.9 down to 1.0 – I think it’s OK to have a lifestyle which, were everyone to have it, would use only 1 planet’s worth of resources.

I won’t weary my readers with a full summary of the results, let me just give the highlights. The biggest reduction in my levels of planetary destruction comes from changes in diet. Having only a few servings a week of dairy, eggs, fish, or meat products, instead of several a day, cuts 1 full planet out of my footprint. That’s great, I knew that meat-eating especially is terribly harmful to the environment. I think we can switch to a strongly vegetarian diet without too much difficulty.

So that’s already 1.0 planet’s worth of reduction.

The other big reduction, though, 1.1 planets’ worth, comes from basically cutting out air travel. No, no, this is not possible, we cannot stop visiting our children! And we can’t just tell the kids to come instead, that would be foisting onto them part of our footprint! What to do? I suppose we could cut our trips to once a year … Alright, let’s say that, so that’s half a planet’s worth of reduction.

That gives us a running total of 1.5 planets’ worth of reduction.

The next biggest reduction, 0.7 planet’s worth, would come if we switched from living in a multi-storey apartment building to a free-standing house without running water. OK, we’re not going to cut off our water, but my take-away here is that saving water has a significant impact on the size of my footprint. We can’t stop drinking, but we’ll ruthlessly chop at our three other big water uses, hot showers, clothes washing, and toilet flushing. We’ll simply shower less, wash our clothes less often, and (ugh!) flush less often. Let’s clock that in at 0.35 planet’s worth.

So, the running total is now 1.85 planets’ worth of reduction.

Next on my list is to switch to a green design residence, which would give me half a planet’s worth of reduction. Well, we can’t change apartments at this point. But we can do things to make the apartment more energy efficient: compact fluorescent bulbs (although they will look totally hideous in the chandelier we have in the living room), double-glazed windows everywhere (more costs …), if possible more insulation on that wall in our bedroom, … I don’t know, there must be other things we can do. Let’s just assume that there are and clock this in at 0.25 planet’s worth.

That gives me a running total of 2.1 planets’ worth of reduction.

What else?

Well, next on the list is simply to cut off the electricity to the apartment, which would give me another half a planet’s worth of reduction. Well, that ain’t gonna happen … But we could reduce our consumption of electricity. The CFLs I’ve already decided to install will help here, as will the reductions in the use of the washing machine. We can mostly wash our dishes by hand, which will reduce the use of the dishwasher (which will also help reduce water use). We could unplug all those gadgets with pilot lights so they aren’t on all the time. I promise not to leave the lights on after leaving a room (a bad habit I have). We could climb the stairs rather than use the elevator (which will be good exercise anyway). I don’t know if they offer this in Italy, but if they do I could ask to have all my electricity booked as coming from renewable energy…. OK, let’s assume 0.25 planet’s worth for all this.

Running total: 2.35 planets’ worth of reduction.

I’m running out of options here, and I still need to chop 0.55 planet’s worth out of our lifestyle!

OK, we can switch to riding bicycles around town and walking even more, so as to reduce our use of public transportation (I have us hardly using a car). Maybe we could squeeze another 0.2 planet’s worth out of our lifestyle in this way.

Running total: 2.55 planets’ worth of reduction.

Let me see, what else? … I’m really scraping the bottom of the barrel here … Well, we could have a third person come and live with us. I choose this option with extreme reluctance. One of the kids would be ideal, but they probably have no desire to come and live with their parents. And anyway, they would need a job in Italy, which in this economic climate is not at all a given. Maybe we could take in a student, preferably one who is studying environmental sciences and who would enthusiastically join in the hunt for things to do to reduce our footprint. One more person in the apartment would give us 0.3 planet’s worth of reduction.

That gives us a grand total of 2.85 planets’ worth of reduction, close enough to the goal of 2.9.

That was hard, really hard! I’m making big sacrifices here. I don’t think eating much more greens will be that bad, but not being able to see the children more than once a year, that will be tough. And having to share the apartment with a stranger does not fill me with joy at all.

And therein lies the huge political problem. This all sounds like an intense diet, and as we all know diets are not greeted with joy but with mournful suffering. Who wants to do them? We need to flip this, we need to make people like me feel happy as they merrily throw out of their lives the mountain of stuff that surrounds them.

This is where the rest of Pope Francis’s Encyclical comes in. In the case of Catholics, it’s easy. He’s telling them that it is their moral duty to change their lifestyles, and he strongly suggests this to other Christians too. But to the others amongst us who are not Christians? I can do no better than quote another chunk of text:

We need to take up an ancient lesson, found in different religious traditions and also in the Bible. It is the conviction that “less is more”. A constant flood of new consumer goods can baffle the heart and prevent us from cherishing each thing and each moment. To be serenely present to each reality, however small it may be, opens us to much greater horizons of understanding and personal fulfilment. Christian spirituality proposes a growth marked by moderation and the capacity to be happy with little. It is a return to that simplicity which allows us to stop and appreciate the small things, to be grateful for the opportunities which life affords us, to be spiritually detached from what we possess, and not to succumb to sadness for what we lack. This implies avoiding the dynamic of dominion and the mere accumulation of pleasures.

Such sobriety, when lived freely and consciously, is liberating. It is not a lesser life or one lived with less intensity. On the contrary, it is a way of living life to the full. In reality, those who enjoy more and live better each moment are those who have given up dipping here and there, always on the look-out for what they do not have. They experience what it means to appreciate each person and each thing, learning familiarity with the simplest things and how to enjoy them. So they are able to shed unsatisfied needs, reducing their obsessiveness and weariness. Even living on little, they can live a lot, above all when they cultivate other pleasures and find satisfaction in fraternal encounters, in service, in developing their gifts, in music and art, in contact with nature, in prayer. Happiness means knowing how to limit some needs which only diminish us, and being open to the many different possibilities which life can offer.

We need to start a huge campaign to persuade people of the rightness of the message “less is more”, and to have them actively wanting to drastically reduce their material needs, of feeling bad, almost sick, if they start accumulating too much. If we don’t change this basic mindset we are doomed. As the Encyclical so rightly says, there is no technical solution to climate change and other severe global environmental problems, there is only an ethical choice.

I hope this piece can be one small part of this campaign.

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Inner Mongolian family: http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/146/188097-500-400.jpg
Developed country family’s stuff: http://akkermanlc.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/7/5/12751216/4773841_orig.png (in http://akkermanlc.weebly.com/quality-of-life-project.html)
Four planets: http://image.slidesharecdn.com/foodinasustainablematerialfootprint-131011032957-phpapp01/95/food-in-sustainable-consumption-2-638.jpg?cb=1381463878 (in http://www.slideshare.net/lettenmeier/food-in-sustainable-consumption)

PRICKLY PEAR AND THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

Bangkok, 23 January, 2015

One of the most far-reaching effects of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the Americas was the so-called Columbian Exchange, the exchange of plants and animals (and bacteria and viruses) between the Americas and the rest of the world. This map shows some of the major crops and livestock which made the journey in either direction between the Americas and Europe.

We see, for instance, that the tomato crossed to Europe from the Americas, along with the turkey and corn (and possibly syphilis), while the cow, the horse, and the onion, went the other way, along with smallpox, measles, typhus, and a whole series of other diseases (the diseases nearly wiping out the Amerindian populations).

But I want to focus on a plant which normally doesn’t get mentioned in discussions of the Columbian Exchange: the prickly pear, a plant whose history is very much centered on Mexico. Here, we have an exemplar standing guard, as it were, at the site of Teotihuacan.

In fact, the prickly pear is so centered on Mexico that it graces the Mexican flag as part of the latter’s central emblem (for those with “mature” eyesight like mine, it’s what the eagle is grasping with its talons at the same time as it grasps that snake in its beak).

Maybe the prickly pear’s low profile in Columbian Exchange discussions is because it’s such a nasty, spiny plant, which really doesn’t endear itself to anyone.

Or maybe because it’s not much of a commercial crop; the Food and Agricultural Organization, which collects global statistics on some 160 crops, collects no statistics on the prickly pear, for instance.

Whatever the reason, I wish to right this injustice and pay tribute to the prickly pear and its role in the great Columbian Exchange. It may perhaps have played a modest economic role, but it helped to fill many an empty stomach, and it sure as hell has played an important ecological role, sometimes wreaking havoc in the ecosystems into which it was thoughtlessly thrust.

I first met our prickly friend in the country of my birth, Eritrea. Here, you see a specimen in front of the delightful little train which runs from Asmara down to the seaport of Masawa on the Red Sea.

I have a vivid memory of taking that train to go down to the coast for a holiday on the beach.

It was the Italians who, as colonial masters

introduced the prickly pear (please note the plant waving at us from behind the colonial troops and their Italian officer). The Italian colonialists brought it from the mother country, of course, where it grows in profusion in the more arid southern regions of the country. We have here an example gracing the ruins of Agrigento in Sicily.

But southern Italy was just a later stop on the prickly pear’s journey out of Mexico. It must surely have reached Italy from Spain, which was the first port of call for many of the biological journeys out of the Americas. Here we have a Spanish prickly pear, nudging its way into a photo of Sagunto castle in the province of Valencia.

In truth, I have chosen pictures which show off the prickly pear to advantage, but normally the plant is much more unprepossessing. This photo of a ragged, messy patch of prickly pear in a village of Ethiopia is much more typical of how the plant presents itself

especially when its population levels begin to explode out of control in some foreign ecosystem which has no natural biological defenses against it. The Global Invasive Species Database lists several countries where the prickly pear is now considered an invasive species. Eritrea is one of them, along with the neighboring countries of Ethiopia and Somalia – the Italians, who colonized all three countries had little idea of the damage they were wreaking. But South Africa also considers it an invasive species (here is a picture of prickly pear invading the Kruger national park).

And Australia had a catastrophic invasion. The prickly pear was initially introduced as an ornamental plant for gardens. Then some bright spark thought of using the plant as natural fencing (sensibly enough, cattle and other animals desist from pushing through breaks of prickly pear because of the nasty spines, and they don’t eat them for the same reason) and to start a cochineal dye industry (the little beasties from which the dye is extracted munch the prickly pear’s pads). But the prickly pear went crazy. It eventually converted some 260,000 square kilometers of farmland (which for those readers, who like me don’t think in square kilometers, is more or less equivalent to a square 500 km by 500 km) into an impenetrable green jungle. Farmers were driven off their land by this “green hell” and their abandoned homes were crushed under the cactus growth.

The authorities finally managed to get the plague under control in the 1920s by introducing a South American moth, the Cactoblastis cactorum, whose larvae feast on prickly pear. This led to a crash in prickly pear populations, and while the plant has not been eradicated from Australia it has been brought under control (the Australians were lucky, by the way; there is always a risk in this kind of biological control that the agent will find another native plant much more to its liking and wipe that out instead, or once it’s dealt with the original pest will turn its hungry eye on to something else and become an invasive species in its own right).

Why did some Spaniard ever bring the prickly pear back to Europe in the first place? Because, as far as I can tell, he thought he could brighten up a Spanish garden somewhere. But it cannot have been because of the beauty of the plant itself. More likely it was the flowers, for indeed the web is full of pictures of the flower of the prickly pear. Here are a few of the more pleasing examples.

At some point, though, people, especially the poor with bellies to fill, began to also focus on the fruit, the “figs” of the prickly pear

These had been enjoyed by the Mesoamericans for millennia before Hernan Cortes and his conquistadores arrived and have been enjoyed by the Mexicans ever since.

I add here a close-up of the fruit

first because it’s a nice photo, but second because the sharp-eyed reader will notice the hair-thin spines which nestle lovingly around the crown of the fruit. Their scientific name is glochids. They are the nastiest little buggers imaginable. They come off easily and lodge under the skin of the unwary picker, where they cause exquisite and unending agony as the said picker tries and tries and tries again to extract them, always in vain. Bloody little bastards … Readers may have gathered from this little burst of ill humour that I have personally experienced this exceedingly painful trial. It was in Eritrea as a matter of fact, where as a young and foolish lad I tried picking the fruit. I then ran to my Mummy to get the horrible little things out, which she eventually did after much wailing on my part and cross admonitions on her part for me to keep still. I had tried picking the fruit because my mother had earlier bought some, perhaps from a lady like this

and I had liked them – a little too many seeds perhaps but nicely fresh and sweet.

Personally, while I like the taste, that early brush with glochids has always made me wary of the fruit. The pain in the hands was bad enough but the thought of those things getting stuck in your tongue or gums because the fruit was badly cleaned is dreadful. And the thought of them getting stuck in your throat is simply too horrible to contemplate.

But others around the world consume the fruit without a second thought, especially around the Mediterranean rim. Here, we have some cheerful young lads selling the fruit in Egypt

While here we have a more solemn Moroccan doing the same

And here a smiling Sicilian ditto

As readers can imagine, over the centuries people in the countries where the prickly pear was introduced eventually got around to putting the fruit into alcoholic drinks – at least in those countries where such drinks are tolerated. Thus, we have a prickly pear-flavoured liqueur called “Ficodi” in Sicily, we have a prickly-pear flavored herbal liqueur called “bajtra” in Malta (another country, by the way, where the prickly pear has been declared an invasive species), out in the lonelier reaches of the Atlantic, on the island of St. Helena (where Napoleon Bonaparte was banished), the potent “Tungi Spirit” is produced with the fruit, while prickly pear fruit is the main ingredient of a popular Christmas beverage in the British Virgin Islands called “Miss Blyden”. Looking at how all these various drinks are made, I think I would plump for Miss Blyden: prickly pear steeped in rum and sweetened with sugar. Mmm, sounds good …Yohoho, and a bottle of Miss Blyden, is what I say.

But actually, these drinks are all derivative, if I can put it that way: you just plunk prickly pear fruit in an alcoholic medium; it could actually be any fruit that is plunked. The Mesoamericans, on the other hand, came up millennia ago with colonche, an alcoholic drink using just the juice of the prickly pear fruit, fermenting it over a number of days. I have read that it is a sweet, fizzy, red beverage. Here’s a photo of a glass of colonche, together with the fruit from which it is derived.

I regret to say that I did not try the drink while I was in Mexico. However, I have asked my son to try it and report back. If the feedback is good, we can discuss about getting into the business of exporting it!

What I will not promote, through export or otherwise, is the eating of the pads (that is to say the fleshy leaves) of the prickly pear. They eat them in Mexico – and in New Mexico too (and perhaps some of the other southwestern States of the US). The original peoples of Mexico were eating them when Cortes burst in on the scene, and it’s still quite popular. I saw them sold in the supermarket around the corner from where we were staying in Mexico City and took a photo, but I prefer this more sympathetic photo of a Mexican lady on the street selling them.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had tried the pads, cooked and with melted cheese, in a taco. I also tried them, with cheese but without the taco. It didn’t change the taste much.

I’m all for trying things once (with the exception of insects). But not necessarily more than once. Pads of the prickly pear fall into the latter category.

But who knows? As the Mediterranean countries slowly go down the economic drain, and more generally as we 99 percenters slowly get poorer, perhaps we will join our Mesoamerican friends and start eating prickly pear pads – as the poor of the Mediterranean lands turned to the fruits of the prickly pear some three hundred years ago to fill their empty stomachs.

_______________
Columbian exchange: http://globerove.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Columbian-Exchange.jpg (in http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/cbgobble/columbian-v-triangle)
Prickly pear in Teotihuacan: https://farm1.staticflickr.com/214/444712763_0a91a8353e.jpg (in https://www.flickr.com/photos/eternal_sunshine_of_the_spotless_mind/444712763/
Mexican flag: http://www.freepressers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/mexican-flag-640.jpg (in http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2011/k1302_10_21.asp)
Prickly pear: https://seekraz.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/prickly-pear-cacti-in-tucson-desert.jpg (in https://seekraz.wordpress.com/tag/prickly-pear-cactus/)
Prickly pear by Asmara-Masawa railway: https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8633/16089064905_44b9e68e48_b.jpg (in https://www.flickr.com/photos/dave-hill/16089064905/)
Italian colonial masters: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/it/6/6c/Ascari_penne_di_falco.jpg (in http://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regio_corpo_truppe_coloniali_d’Eritrea)
Prickly pear in Sicily: https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8299/7826141194_33f0e36a8d_b.jpg (in https://www.flickr.com/photos/mari-mora/7826141194/)
Prickly pear in Spain: https://themostbeautifulplacesineurope.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/dsc_0048.jpg (in https://themostbeautifulplacesineurope.wordpress.com/tag/castle/)
Prickly pear in Ethiopian village: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YutF1G9Qjbo/Up44cIZUf_I/AAAAAAAAMPA/fydBOTfLCNY/s1600/00041775.jpg (in http://jhodgesagame.blogspot.com)
Prickly pear in Kruger National Park: http://academic.sun.ac.za/cib/news/images/20120611_opuntia_stricta_impacts_fig1.jpg (in http://academic.sun.ac.za/cib/news/20120611_opuntia_stricta_impacts.htm)
Prickly pear in Australia – the green hell: http://chinchillalibrary.chinchilla.org.au/Images/Local%20History/johnty%20turner’s.jpg (in http://chinchillalibrary.chinchilla.org.au/HTML/HeritagePricklyPear.html)
Prickly pear in flower-1: http://www.fotothing.com/photos/4aa/4aa38f6709881bcb9b0dc2f7bce87dea.jpg (in http://www.fotothing.com/AzViper/photo/4aa38f6709881bcb9b0dc2f7bce87dea/)
Prickly pear in flower-2: http://photosbygarth.com/travels/DesertGardens4-23-11/prickly_pear_cactus_flowers_0887.jpg (in http://photosbygarth.com/wordpress/)
Prickly pear in flower-3: http://www.summitpost.org/prickly-pear-cactus-flower/294673
Prickly pear fruit-1: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_NFH_ZhWJCU/T1kjB-HTOWI/AAAAAAAAA84/rBf30_8f5qg/s1600/5.jpg (in http://docsfitnesstips.blogspot.com/2012/03/prickley-pear.html)
Mexicans selling prickly pear fruit:
http://i.gonoma.net/i/destinations/1106/zacatecas-images/prickly.jpg (in http://gonomad.com/destinations-xxx/3205-zacatecas-mexico-rsquo-s-overlooked-colonial-gem)
Prickly pear fruit-2: http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000O2m8f8jI.vU/s/600/600/PPCA-021548.jpg (in http://rolfnussbaumer.photoshelter.com/image/I0000O2m8f8jI.vU)
Ethiopian lady selling prickly pear: http://jamminglobal.com/2012/05/ethiopia-part-6-historical-axum-and-mountainous-twisties.html
Prickly pear seller Egypt: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/Media/NewsMedia/2013/7/16/2013-635095893366005272-600_resized.jpg (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/News/3357/25/The-fruit-beneath-the-thorns.aspx)
Prickly pear seller Morocco: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Prickly_pear_seller.jpg (in http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opuntia_ficus-indica)
Prickly pear seller Italy: http://www.fotografieitalia.it/foto/3126/3126-08-20-44-1557.jpg (in http://www.fotografieitalia.it/foto.cfm?idfoto=65383&idfotografo=3126&crono=1)
Colonche: http://173.236.14.43/fotos/nota/2014/9/18/4d68094af571428.jpg (in http://www.am.com.mx/aguascalientes/especiales/espiritus-de-la-republica-144117.html)
Seller of cactus pads: http://holeinthedonut.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Nopal_Cactus_Seller_Mercado_Hidalgo_Guanajuato.jpg (in http://holeinthedonut.com/2010/06/01/mexico-food-nopal-cactus/)

Cactus pad and cheese: http://s3.amazonaws.com/foodspotting-ec2/reviews/846163/thumb_600.jpg?1315336866 (in http://www.foodspotting.com/150802-amandahugnkiss)/)

MEXICO: BOUGAINVILLEA

Mexico City, 25 December, 2014

My wife and I are spending Christmas in Mexico City. Parental love is what draws us to Mexico. Our son has his business here, and this year it is his turn to hold the fort over the busy Christmas period. As the Turkish saying goes, “Dağ sana gelmezse, sen dağa gideceksin”, “If the mountain won’t come to you, you must go to the mountain”. These last few days, together with our daughter (she has been able to escape from her job in New York, but at the price of being often on FaceTime and email with her colleagues), we have been roaming the city and appreciating its delights, both visual and gastronomic. Yesterday, for instance, we visited Frida Kahlo’s house, La Casa Azul, which presents a compact collection of her paintings (including one which I’ve mentioned in a previous post) as well as of paintings by her husband Diego Rivera. And while we stood in the long, long line to get in, we tucked into an assortment of delicious tacos, including one where the filling was a mix of cheese and cactus pads. Cactus pads! That was a first for me.

Everywhere we have been in the city, we have been delighted with great clouds of bougainvillea, mauve

red

orange

white

clawing their way over roofs, snaking along balconies, tumbling over walls, strangling trees, or simply sculpted into staid bushes.

I’m very fond of bougainvillea. It’s an old friend which I’ve run into in various parts of the world, always places with the sunny, warm climates which I feel very comfortable in, like Eritrea where I was born

or Liguria which my wife introduced me to nearly 40 years ago and to which we return again and again

or Thailand where we live at the moment.

This latest meeting with bougainvillea in Mexico has moved me to use my free time during this holiday period, between visits to the sites and shopping for Christmas lunch and dinner, to explore this beautiful plant’s history. I had always known that its rather fancy name came from the French Admiral Louis Antoine, Comte de Bougainville.

France’s response to Britain’s James Cook, Bougainville was the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the globe, in the late 1760s, and it was during this trip that bougainvillea was discovered (by Europeans; the locals knew it already of course). It was actually Bougainville’s on-board botanist, Philibert Commerson, who discovered it.

The discovery occurred during an enforced stopover in the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, where Bougainville had decided to regroup and carry out urgent repairs to his two ships. Like most European botanists of the time, Commerson was dazzled by the huge biological diversity he found in Brazil: “this country is the most beautiful in the world”, he wrote home. Something of what he found before him can be gathered from this more-or-less contemporary painting.

Commerson took advantage of the stop in Rio to go out botanizing along the coast and islets of the bay. As he reported to a friend in a letter home, one day he stumbled on this vine, “a wonderful plant with big flowers of a sumptuous violet colour”. He decided to honour Bougainville by naming the plant after him (Bougainville also gave his name to a couple of islands, a couple of straits between islands, and a town in the Falkland Islands). Commerson’s dried sample eventually made it back to France, where it can still be viewed, faded but nevertheless recognizable.

We can leave the story of bougainvillea there; suffice to say that the first period of globalization which came with European colonialism spread the pretty plant far and wide. But its discovery in the Bay of Rio de Janeiro gives me pause. That wonderful botanical diversity which so took Commerson’s breath away has been sadly depleted. Before the arrival of the Europeans, the bay of Rio de Janeiro was enveloped by the Mata Atlântica, the Atlantic Forest. This mighty forest stretched unbroken from north-east Brazil all the way down the Atlantic coastline as far as Uruguay, and spread into north-eastern Argentina and eastern Paraguay. It once covered some one and a half million square kilometres, but three hundred years of deforestation for logging and farming have seen it become the second most threatened biome in the world, after Madagascar. Today, less than a tenth of the original forest area remains.

There is some light in all the gloom. Despite all the loss and habitat fragmentation, the region is still ranked in the top five of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. It is particularly remarkable for its bird species. In 2001, wanting to preserve what was left if not reverse some of the damage (to which his own ancestors had contributed), a farsighted owner of farmland at the base of the mountains, in the valley of the Guapiaçu river, some 80 kilometres north-east of Rio, established an ecological Reserve, the Reserva Ecológica de Guapiaçu (REGUA). REGUA’s objective is to protect the remaining forest and biodiversity from deforestation, hunting, and over-extraction of natural resources. With funds from the World Land Trust and others, REGUA has bought land to consolidate and extend the Reserve. Over 100,000 trees, all native species, have been planted, wetlands have been recreated, some animal species have been reintroduced, hunters have been turned into guides, and visitors are encouraged to come and share in this wonderful effort. If I know all this, it is because my wife and I financially supported the planting of a modest number of trees and stayed at the Reserve’s lodge for several days, going out on a birding expedition, inspecting our tree seedlings and the-then nascent wetlands, and just generally enjoying ourselves.

We hope to go back there one day, to see how our trees are doing. And maybe we’ll spot some bougainvillea in its natural state, ruthlessly climbing over some unfortunate tree, choking the life out of it.

_______________________________
Mauve bougainvillea: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Starr_030418-0058_Bougainvillea_spectabilis.jpg (in http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bougainvillea_spectabilis)
Red bougainvillea: http://www.boethingtreeland.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/1440x/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/B/o/Bougainvillea-Temple-Fire.jpg (in http://www.boethingtreeland.com/bougainvillea-temple-fire.html)
Orange bougainvillea: http://pics.davesgarden.com/pics/2007/02/01/htop/a25dea.jpg (in http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/139848/#b)
White bougainvillea: http://www.phytoimages.siu.edu/users/paraman1/7_13_09/Upload13July09A/BougainvilleaWhite1.jpg (in http://www.phytoimages.siu.edu/imgs/paraman1/r/Nyctaginaceae_Bougainvillea_spectabilis_16879.html)
Eritrean highlands: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_iNSpfNcQ0Sg/SmH-m6Qdw7I/AAAAAAAABk0/m6818sz2DR8/s1600-h/asmara+114.jpg (in http://www.concretegardener.com/2009/07/glimpse-of-massawa-eritrea.html)
Liguria: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Vernazza.JPG (in http://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vernazza.JPG)
Thailand: http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwtravel/624_330/images/live/p0/15/w6/p015w6lz.jpg (in http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20130304-the-perfect-trip-thailand)
Bougainville: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Antoine_de_Bougainville#/image/File:Louis_Antoine_de_Bougainville_-_Portrait_par_Jean-Pierre_Franquel.jpg (in http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Antoine_de_Bougainville)
Commerson: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philibert_Commerçon#/image/File:Commerson_Philibert_1727-1773.png (in http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philibert_Commerçon)
Brazilian jungle: http://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philibert_Commerson#/image/Fichier:Rugendas_-_Embouchure_de_la_riviere_Caxoera.jpg
Commerson’s dried sample: http://dsiphoto.mnhn.fr/sonnera2/LAPI/scanG/G20090518/P00169376_a.jpg
REGUA: http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/06/3f/61/18/regua-reserva-ecologica.jpg (in http://www.tripadvisor.com.au/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g954096-d2557905-i104816920-REGUA_Reserva_Ecologica_de_Guapiacu-Cachoeiras_de_Macacu_State_of_Rio_de.html)

BUTTERFLIES

Bangkok, 8 November 2014

We were up in the north of Thailand two weekends ago, very close to the border with Myanmar, up in the high hills (or low mountains?) behind the town of Mae Hong Son. Lovely, really lovely … We stayed in the small village of Mok Cham Pae, perched on a hillside overlooking a small river and its bottom lands. In the UK they would have been turned into hay meadows. Here, they had become a patchwork of rice paddies.

Around Mae Hong Son, the rice was already ripening. But up in Mok Cham Pae it was relatively cooler, so the rice was still green, that intense green which you only get with rice paddies.

But rice paddies, for all their beauty, are a monoculture, where all other species are kept at bay. After walking around the edge of the paddy fields, seeing only some banana trees marking the edge of “rice country”

and some very smelly pigs (which turned out to be owned by our hostess), we ventured out along a dirt road which wound its way up the river valley.

The paddies narrowed down to a strip along the water, for a while vegetables took their place, and then finally what was left of the forest straggled down to the road’s edge.

We saw no elephants browsing in the forest, or tigers moving in for the kill (my memories of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli are getting the better of me). But what we did see in profusion were butterflies, fluttering in and out of the bedraggled forest, chasing each other around, or settling on the road close to water. On that walk, which was no more than two hours long, I swear we saw at least 20 different species of butterfly. In Europe now, you’re lucky if you see three different species in a whole day. There were never that many species to begin with, and intensive ploughing, pesticides, and the tearing up of hedgerows have put paid to the few there were. I’ve had a look at various web sites dedicated to Thai butterflies to identify the ones we saw, but it’s hopeless. Did we see a Common Grass Yellow or a Tree Yellow? Was that one by the bush a Gram Blue or a Plains Cupid? Or maybe a Forget-me-not?? In the end, who cares? They were just lovely. I invite readers to visit the following flickr site to get a taste of what awaits you in this part of the world, butterfly-wise.

And I choose just two to represent the class

I chose these two very deliberately, because they each bring back to me two distinct butterfly-related memories.

The first is from Mexico. It was some 35 years ago, my wife and I – and mother-in-law – were travelling around the country. We mostly took buses and the occasional train. But in Yucatan, we decided to hire a car. We got a Volkswagen beetle – I remember it well, they had recently been phased out in Europe – and drove from one Mayan temple to the next. And along the road we drove through these clouds, these drifts, of green-yellow butterflies. I was in agony at the butterfly holocaust I was causing, but what could I do? They were just sitting there on the road, sunning themselves.

I feel particularly bad about killing butterflies because – and this brings us to the second photo – I have a very vivid memory of when I was a child – six years old, I would guess – in our garden in Africa. It was full of butterflies, and like all children I liked chasing them. But this time, one, of about the color in the photo, had settled on the ground and was sunning itself. I crouched down, picked it up, and slowly – pulled – its – wings – off. Yes, I did that. Even as I write about it, I feel a strong sense of guilt at such a casual act of gratuitous cruelty. Perhaps the rest of my life as an environmental engineer has been an act of atonement for it.

___________
Tree yellow: http://www.vireos.com/Thailand/html/photoFrameset.html
Orange lacewing: http://www.pbase.com/glazemaker/image/130569578

all other photos: ours

RUBBING ALONG TOGETHER

Bangkok, 1 November 2014

I think it must be a scientific law that the closer you get to the equator, the more species you will find per square metre (or foot, if you wish) looking for their space in the sun. All that steamy heat seems to lead to a sustained biological ebullience. Certainly, in a totally unscientific survey, my wife and I have agreed that the number of species wishing to share with us our hot and steamy Bangkok apartment is considerably higher than it was in Beijing. There, over a period of five years, we catalogued a few, relatively small, cockroaches making a frantic getaway over the floor and that was it (although the rare cockroach sighting led to apoplectic calls to the front desk and demands for a thorough chemical spraying). Here, in just one month and a bit, we have seen:

– A little lizard, very pale, almost albino, which we first sighted peeping out from under the dining table, then from behind a column that we have in the living room, then in the cupboard under the kitchen sink. He looked very similar to this little fellow.

I have had a soft spot for lizards ever since I used to chase them as a boy across the walls of my grandmother’s garden in France, so I was pleased to see it. But my wife is not a lizardophile and demanded that I get rid of it. I rather reluctantly chased it around a bit and was secretly pleased when it disappeared of its own accord.
– A horribly large cockroach, which luckily was flat on its scaly back, dead, in the shower. But I have seen them horribly alive, skittering ahead of me across the pavements, always in the darker corners of the neighborhood. Disgusting creatures, I refuse to grace them with a picture ….
– A number of wonderfully large moths, which flutter in at night from out over the river and settle down for a rest. They are really beautiful, nothing like the dreary little things we have in Europe, so I’d be pleased to share my living space with them.

But my wife is having none of it, so with a sigh I shoo them out, using the pasta drainer to catch them and carry them out.
– Several species of bird which use the balcony railing as a favorite stopping place. There are those pesky pigeons which crowd our squares in Europe. But there has also been a beautiful bird, which I think is also a type of pigeon although my wife disagrees.

Cheeky little sparrows also hop on and off the railings, beadily eyeing any crumbs which might have fallen off the table that we carry out onto the balcony for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
– swallows, which my wife says she found early one morning twittering around on the living room parquet (we had left the windows open). Imagine that! I see them dive and swoop over the river

as I have seen them dive and swoop over summer fields in Europe. But I have never seen them stand still.

All this in the few square meters (or feet, if you wish) of our apartment. Expanding out a little, we’ve seen beautiful little birds, black with white tufts on their wings, fluttering silently on and off the clumps of water hyacinth which drift past us on the river. They have recently been joined by a lovely white egret.

And then there’s the Asian koel bird which I’ve mentioned before. I keep on hearing it, but I’ve never managed to see it. In the dirty, oh so very dirty, canal which runs behind the office, I’ve seen what I think is a monitor lizard swimming lazily (or sickly?) in the watery gook: the water is greyer than in this photo.

The same canal teams with fish, which some enterprising (or mad?) people fish from time to time. And we have a couple of next-door fishermen who put out their nets in the river while we are having breakfast, well out of the way of the busy river traffic. I’ve sometimes caught a gleam of silvery scales in the bottom of their shallow little boats.

But I presume that the number of species we can stumble across in the concrete jungle of Bangkok would be nothing compared to what is present in the real jungle – or what is left of it in Thailand. That pleasure awaits us still.

_______________
Lizard: http://naturestudent.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/20130121-162953.jpg (in http://naturestudent.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/lovely-lizards/)
Moth: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R3HpNI3L0lM/TzdPTJ13xQI/AAAAAAAAAD8/TiXKoEuS1go/s1600/Samia+canningii.JPG (in http://norfolkbirderinthailand.blogspot.com/2012/02/thailand-moths-part-two.html)
Bird on the balcony railing: my wife’s picture
Flying swallow: https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8164/7244597922_bd666a00e8_z.jpg (in https://www.flickr.com/photos/clicks_1000/7244597922/)
Egret: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Little_Egret_flying_-_Thailand.jpg (in http://c
ommons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Little_Egret_flying_-_Thailand.jpg)
Monitor lizard: http://cdn2.vtourist.com/4/6079856-Monitor_lizard_swims_khlong_Bangkok.jpg?version=2 (in http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Asia/Thailand/Central_Eastern_Thailand/Bangkok-1445238/Off_the_Beaten_Path-Bangkok-Khlongs_Canals-BR-1.html)

PERAMBULATING PARQUETS

Bangkok, 26 October 2014

My wife has been busy getting to know Bangkok in her usual favorite way, taking the bus (with me joining her on the weekends). When she told the very nice Thai couple whom we have befriended in the building that she takes the bus to get around, they stared at her and finally managed to ask, “the aircon buses?” When she said no, no, the normal buses, they tittered nervously. When pressed, they confessed to have not taken a bus in twenty years. (This reminds me of a scene early in our marriage. It was downtown Baltimore, 1978 or 9. We wanted to get somewhere, I forget where, so we approached a nice young man sitting on a bench eating his lunch and asked him what bus we might take. He confessed that he had no idea, that he had never taken a city bus in his life. We stared at him: how could it be that someone had NEVER taken a bus? The difference between a European and an American, I suppose. But I digress.)

It is true to say that the (non-aircon) buses of Bangkok are not the most handsome of buses. In fact, they obviously have had a hard-scrabble life.

And their technology looks – and sounds – very old-fashioned. For instance, whenever the drivers change gears (using a huge gear shift as big as the seated drivers themselves), it sounds distinctly like they are double-declutching (a term which I would imagine is meaningless to anyone below the age of 60). The drivers are always in a tearing hurry, no doubt due to being perennially bottled up in Bangkok’s terrible traffic, so getting on and off buses is an athletic accomplishment. To get on, wave down the bus, rush for the door, swing in as the bus already starts to move off. To get off, ring for the stop, balance yourself on the balls of your feet, hustle down the steps the moment the doors start clattering noisily open, and drop down into the street as the bus already moves off. And while inside, hang on for dear life as the bus barrels its way down the city’s streets, riding roughshod over every pothole and other imperfection in the road’s mantle.

But as I grimly hang on in the bus, bouncing up and down on the (really quite comfortable) seats, I cannot help but wonder at the beautiful parquet floor which the buses have. Look at that! Who has ever seen parquet floors in buses?

Well, “parquet” may be pushing it a little, but this is really nice wood they’ve used. No trash soft wood here, being rubbed to pieces by passenger’s dirty shoes. This is close-grained hardwood. I would be proud to have a floor of that in our living room, sanded down and waxed into a rich red-brown color, instead of the fake plasticized “parquet” which our miserly landlord has laid down and which rings hollow every time we walk across it. I wince when I see how this beautiful wood has been mercilessly screwed down onto to the bus chassis, with big, gleaming, screws. Aie-aie-aie!

The only thing that worries me here is the wood’s provenance. This is not plantation wood, nor I’m sure is it certified wood from responsibly managed forests. I fear that this is just brutally logged wood from Myanmar or Laos or perhaps Indonesia (Thailand has already cut down much of its forests).

Perhaps it would be better for Bangkok to shift to modern, gleaming, air-conditioned, buses with plasticized floors
and leave this beautiful wood standing in its wilderness, soaring up towards the sky.

_______________
Bangkok bus: http://www.langeasy.com/images2/bkk/bus2.jpg (in http://www.langeasy.com/cities/bangkok/bangkokpage1.html)
Bangkok bus floor: my photo
Illegal logging: http://www.globalpost.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/gp3_slideshow_large/illegal_logging_in_anlong_veng_ii.jpg ( in http://pixgood.com/illegal-loggers.html)
Modern city bus: http://i01.i.aliimg.com/photo/v2/280618923_1/SLK6111_Aluminum_Body_City_Bus.jpg (in http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1468014)
Mahogany tree soaring: http://treepicturesonline.com/tree-mahogany.jpg (in http://treepicturesonline.com/mahogany_tree_pictures.html)

SCENT OF MY WIFE

Beijing, 3 August 2014

I’m very boring when it comes to using after-shaves, eaux de cologne, or similar perfumes. I use none. I don’t even like to use perfumed soaps. I prefer to smell of nothing. Very boring.

This dislike of perfumes extends to perfumes on others. For instance, I wince and move rapidly out of the way if I happen, on the street or in a corridor, to find myself walking into the scented wash following a heavily perfumed person. And I always stare disapprovingly at scented people if I find myself with them in elevators or other enclosed spaces from which I cannot escape.

As you can imagine, this scentophobia of mine, if I can call it that, is the despair of my wife. Whenever we are taking an international flight she always makes a bee-line for the perfumery section of the Duty Free shop, where she will try a spray of this and a squirt of that. She always asks me my opinion, and like any good husband I always take a sniff and murmur something unintelligible. She sighs and asks out loud why she bothers. Indeed, why does she bother? I suppose hope springs eternal.

But actually, once, just once, she tried a perfume, she asked me my opinion, I dutifully sniffed … and I blinked. I liked it! I actually liked it! It had a lemony-sort of scent which my nose really found quite attractive. Terribly pleased by this exciting development, my wife promptly purchased the perfume in question and has been using it ever since. Since my readers are no doubt on the edge of their seats by now, wondering what perfume it was, I am glad to announce that it was Chance Eau Fraîche, by Chanel.

I’m not sure that its use filled my wife with quite as much delirious happiness as this young lady is showing, but it did put a spring in her step and a twinkle in her eye. It also allowed me to close my eyes and go “mmm-aaah” whenever she gave herself a spray.

All was well until the perfume began to run out. A replacement became an impelling necessity. An inspection of shops in Beijing showed that prices were ridiculously high here, so I was given the task – gladly taken on, since I liked the perfume – of getting a new bottle on my upcoming trip to Europe. Which I did, in the Duty Free shop at Vienna airport. I triumphantly presented it to my wife upon my arrival. She ceremoniously opened the packaging, fished out the bottle, and gave herself a spray.

OMG, not the same! We sniffed, we conferred, we checked the packaging (I could have got the wrong product, it wouldn’t have been the first time), we compared it to the remaining dregs in the old bottle … No doubt about it, something was different. But what?

I went off in a frenzy of searching on the internet, starting with Chanel perfumes’ own website. Allow me to quote the blurb about Chance Eau Fraîche which I found there

A vibrant incarnation of the unexpected fragrance, now takes on a sparkling freshness. The unexpected floral bursts with a lightness and zest as notes of Citrus, Water Hyacinth and Jasmine Absolute are highlighted and energized with woody notes of Amber, Patchouli and Fresh Vetiver.

I must say, I thought I had reached the maximum levels of BS in descriptions of wines, which I commented on in an earlier post, but the BS written about perfumes beats them all. In any event, this description didn’t help me in figuring out what was wrong.

Another site, after breathlessly quoting the Chanel site blurb almost word for word, added this:

Top Notes: Citron, Water Hyacinth
Middle Notes: Jasmine Absolute, White Musk
Base Notes: Vetiver, Amber, Patchouli, Teak

What was this stuff about notes? A bit more research on my part taught me that there is such a thing as a fragrance pyramid, which looks like this:

This chart explains what all these notes mean (BTW, middle notes are also called heart notes, and top notes head notes), but it’s rather scholastic, the sort of thing a teacher would put on the board at school. Here’s a more colourful version of the same pyramid

Coming back to our problem with Chance Eau Fraîche, something must have happened to the top notes, because we smell the difference immediately. My wife thinks the Chanel people have cut back on the citron note. I think it’s something else – have they fiddled with the water hyacinth note? I wouldn’t be able to say because I have no idea what water hyacinth smells like. The closest I’ve come to the plant is clumps of it floating past the window on the Chao Phraya River last week in Bangkok.

In fact, I only know it as a horribly invasive species, which has more or less choked Lake Victoria in Africa to death. But it has a beautiful flower

which, it seems, was the reason it was taken away from its original homeland in South America and spread the world over.

But now that I’ve learned this stuff about notes, I shall have to sneak up on my wife some 10-15 minutes after she has applied the perfume and see if I can smell the middle notes, jasmine absolute and white musk – which are what, exactly?

Well jasmine I know, and I know that my wife loves it. But there are a bewildering number of jasmine species, several of which are used for fragrances, so completely randomly I’ve chosen a picture of the flower from jasminum multiflorum to represent the species.

As for this word “absolute”, I have learned that some flowers, jasmine being one of them, are too delicate to have their oils extracted through distillation. Instead, they are extracted with solvents or through enfleurage, a process where the petals are pressed or stirred into fats.

I think I would recognize jasmine if I smell it on my wife, but I’ve no idea what white musk would smell like. I have this idea that it would be very penetrating as a smell – “animalic”, as they put it in that second fragrance pyramid I give above. Come to think of it, I don’t even really know what musk is, or at least I didn’t until I read up for this post. Now I know a bit more. For starters, white musk is the name given to synthetic musk. For economic, and I would hope ethical, reasons, musk is no longer taken from its natural source, which is a gland of the male musk deer (I had vaguely thought it came from civet cats, don’t know why).

Nice looking creatures, although what strange fangs they have! The famous musk gland lies in a sac located between the poor animal’s genitals and its navel. Presumably, you had to kill the animal to get to this gland.

So that does the middle notes. After three-four hours, I can sneak up on my wife again and try to detect the base notes. And here again, I have to confess to much ignorance. I know what amber and teak are, although I have difficulties in understanding what essential oils could be extracted from them, but what, I asked myself, are vetiver and patchouli?

They are both plants, it turns out, which come from India or thereabouts. Vetiver is a grass, related to sorghum.

The essential oil used in perfumes comes from its roots.

The oil is described as smelling “warm and dry, and conveying earthy, woody, leather, balsamic and smoky notes”. I’m not sure how exactly that would register in my nose; I guess I will see.

As for patchouli, it is a bushy herb of the mint family with small, pale purple flowers.

If you thought like I did that the essential oil comes from the flowers, you would be wrong. It comes from a distillation of the plant’s leaves. It seems that it has a heavy and strong scent, so I guess I will recognize it when I take that surreptitious sniff at my wife’s neck.

As for amber, I quickly understood that we were not talking about real amber. Instead, the word is used to loosely describe a fragrance that is “warm, musky, rich and honey-like”, and also “somewhat oriental and earthy”. Like everything nowadays, it can be made completely synthetically. But I prefer to believe that the master perfumer who created Chance Eau Fraîche, Jacques Polge, used natural resins. In that case, the basis of the “amber” in my wife’s perfume will probably be labdanum, which comes from a species of rockrose found in the Mediterranean. The shrub has a lovely flower

but actually what is used in perfumes is the plant’s resin, which is usually extracted by boiling the leaves and twigs. To this can be added benzoin resin (obtained from the bark of several species of trees in the genus Styrax), copal (another type of tree resin), Dammara resin (from the kauri or dammar trees), vanilla, cloves and who knows what else. Labdanum’s fragrance is described as “animalic, sweet, woody, ambergris, dry musk, or leathery” and “very rich, complex and tenacious”. OK, let’s see what my nose tells me.

And teak? I guess that will be a woody smell …

Right, it’s time to go sniffing around my wife.

____________________

Chanel Chance Eau Fraiche: http://goods.tuanweihui.com/ueditor/php/upload/20131114/1384410621998.jpg [in http://www.wensm.com/zonghe/qita/9872.html%5D
Man smelling perfume: http://raindropsbasmatirice.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/1083376-clipart-man-smelling-an-aroma-royalty-free-vector-illustration.jpg [in http://raindropsbasmatirice.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/keeping-a-tradition-alive/%5D
Fragrance Pyramid: http://www.toutenparfum.com/miniguide/element/olfactive_pyramid.jpg [in http://www.toutenparfum.com/miniguide/petit_guide/smallguide.en.php%5D
Fragrance pyramid-2: http://www.lacedivory.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/FragranceFamiliesPyramid.jpg [in http://www.lacedivory.com/blog/2012/05/12/guest-post-an-introduction-to-the-different-notes-in-a-fragrance/%5D
Water hyacinth on the Chao Phraya River: my photo
Water hyacinth flower: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Pond_Water_Hyacinth_Flowers.jpg [in http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pond_Water_Hyacinth_Flowers.jpg%5D
Jasmine flower: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Starr_030602-0071_Jasminum_multiflorum.jpg/800px-Starr_030602-0071_Jasminum_multiflorum.jpg [in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jasminum_species%5D
Musk deer: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9d/Moschus_moschiferus_in_Plzen_zoo_(12.02.2011).jpg/640px-Moschus_moschiferus_in_Plzen_zoo_(12.02.2011).jpg [in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musk_deer%5D
Vetiver: http://www.essentialoilspedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/vetiver1.jpg [in http://www.essentialoilspedia.com/vetiver/%5D
Vetiver roots: http://www.vetivernurseries.co.nz/uploads/images/3Months growth2.JPG [in http://www.vetivernurseries.co.nz/index.php?page=the-vetiver-system%5D
Patchouli: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HiPRjCwKAUk/UbWkXqtZyFI/AAAAAAAACPQ/IuvNYw7f8O0/s1600/patchouli+plant.jpg [in http://eleneetha.blogspot.com/2013/06/tonight-patchoulis.html%5D
Labdanum flower: http://www.biolandes.com/images/p-ciste-labdanum-espagne6grand.jpg [in http://www.biolandes.com/en-cistus-labdanum.php?lg=en%5D

LIME GREEN? SPRING BUD MAYBE?

Beijing, 1 July 2014

For reasons which are too long to explain, a few days ago my wife and I moved out of our apartment and into another one not too far away. Suffice to say that renters have little if any protection in China: “you don’t agree to my doubling the rent? Well, the door is over there. Oh, and by the way, I’ll keep the deposit.”

In any event, this forced relocation has meant that I’ve had to walk a new route to and from the office, which takes me under a new set of trees. Every cloud has a silver lining, as they say, which in this case is my discovery of the goldenrain tree, Koelreuteria paniculata, under a row of which I now walk every day. This picture shows nicely the origins of the name. At this time of the year, the tree is covered with bunches of small yellow flowers, which drizzle down on the ground around the tree.

In my row of goldenrain trees, planted as they are close to each other – to give shade, which is devoutly to be thanked for at this time of year – I don’t get such an uncluttered view of the trees and their flowers. This is about the best I’ve managed to see.

I also haven’t really been able to see the golden raindrops scattered around on the ground since the street sweepers are very efficient in this part of town. This is all I’ve seen, little piles ready to be picked up

although this car parked under some of the trees shows what the pavement must look like early in the morning.

Actually, it wasn’t the flowers which attracted my attention. It was the seed pods (the tree seems to move from flower to seed astonishingly quickly). Some of them had fallen onto the pavement

and it was their light, translucent green which drew my eye. I carefully picked up a few – they are very delicate – and took them home. My wife took this in her stride; she is used by now to my bringing home botanical strays. I laid the pods out on our table cloth and took this picture

I’m not sure what to call this green. The clever thingy which in the Word software allows me to have an infinite number of colours for my fonts tells me that in the colour model RGB (whatever that is) it’s about 200 Red, 255 green, and 90 blue. But that’s far too boringly scientific. I would like a name for this green! A search of colour charts for paints, dyes and the like suggests that it could be Lime Green. Or there’s a green called Inchworm, after an inch-long worm of that colour. Or could it be Chartreuse? But that’s too yellow I think. Or maybe Spring Bud; it certainly has something of that tender green which we associate with Spring.

And I really like their shape. A number of websites call it bladder-like. Really, some people have no imagination! Others note a resemblance to Chinese lanterns, which is a much better comparison

although I think Chinese lantern makers could profit aesthetically from trying to copy the somewhat rounded pyramidal shape of these seed pods.

Having had my attention drawn to the pods, I quickly noticed how they clustered thickly about the crown of the trees, giving a frosting of light green on the dark green of the leaves, a delightful effect.

I understand that the pods eventually turn brown. It will be interesting to see how this changes the visual pleasure which I currently get from the tree on my daily walk to and from the office (intermittently cursing at my previous landlord).

POSTSCRIPT 1, 10 July 2014

Once you see one, you begin to see them everywhere …

I’m in Budapest at the moment, for reasons which are also too long to explain. Yesterday evening, I was walking across a little park when at its exit I stumbled across a goldenrain tree sheltering locals having a quiet evening drink and chat.

Here, it’s an immigrant in a foreign land. The goldenrain tree is native to China and Korea.

POSTSCRIPT 2, 17 August 2014

Well, the pods have turned brown. This is what the trees look like now.

I don’t know, I think I prefer the pods in their lime green phase.

______________________

Solitary goldenrain tree: http://www.whatgrowsthere.com/grow/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Koelreuteria-paniculata-6.jpg [in http://www.whatgrowsthere.com/grow/2011/07/01/goldenrain-tree-sparks-a-july-golden-celebration/%5D
Green Chinese lanterns: http://10kblessingsfengshui.typepad.com/.a/6a00e39336235e8834014e5f344434970c-800wi [in http://10kblessingsfengshui.typepad.com/10000_blessings_feng_shui/2011/02/lighting-lamps-for-the-lantern-festival.html%5D
other pictures: mine

SCULPTURE AND NATURE

Beijing, 15 June 2014

My wife and I were watching TV with one eye the other day when the BBC passed a programme which caught our attention. It was about the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in the north of England. I think a few words of explanation are required for those readers who have never heard of this Park (our situation before watching the BBC programme). It was established back in 1977 in the grounds of a stately home the last of whose aristocratic owners (Viscount Allendale) had sold it to the local council after World War II, no doubt to save his financial skin (I mentioned the financial woes of the UK’s stately homes in an earlier posting of mine). The idea is a simple one: rather than displaying modern sculpture in open spaces in cities like plazas

or squares

or using the atriums of posh buildings

use the sweeping, open vistas of the countryside to display them. Here are some of the pieces at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park:

My wife and I agree on many things, and one of them is that modern sculptures are enhanced by being seen in a natural, organic setting rather than in the built urban environment. Personally, I think it has to do with the contrast between the dead surfaces of the sculptures and the much softer, living surfaces of the surrounding landscapes. It sounds a bit fancy, but the dead sculpture comes alive when in contact with organic life.

This was brought home to us very strongly when, 25 years ago, and on the advice of a friend who worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we visited the Storm King Art Centre, which is an hour’s drive north of New York City, near the Hudson River. Here again, a few words of introduction. It’s really the classic American story (as much as the history of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park is the classic British story of modern times – decay of the old order and birth of a new one). A certain Mr. Ogden, after a successful career in the family business, purchased the land and property of Storm King and started collecting. He initially bought small sculptures which he exhibited around the house. At some point, he expanded out into the surrounding landscape, installing much bigger pieces. That’s it, in a nutshell. But the result – for us at least – was epiphanic.

In wonder we wandered along the rides mown through the grass, walking from one towering sculpture to another

from hilltops, we discovered long views across the surrounding landscape, where sculpture and land merged into one

we walked through glades in the woods, each with their own sculpture

we entered the woods to find smaller, more intimate sculptures scattered under the trees

we also found a sculpture-wall meandering through them

(better seen in this photo taken during the winter)

we turned our steps back to the house, discovering other smaller sculptures set down in more formal gardens around the house.

And finally, we entered the house and fell upon a sculpture which in all these years I have never forgotten: a group of robotic-looking statues with small motors making their jaws work up and down and with a closed-loop recording of voices quietly droning “chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter …” on and on, endlessly. Wonderful. Every time I find myself in one of those meetings where people blather on and on and on I recall this statue group with intense clarity.

So taken were we with Storm King that the very first time we went back to New York after an absence of fifteen years we made sure to find time to go up there. It cast the same spell over us – although sadly the chattering statues had vanished (smashed to smithereens, no doubt, by an employee crazed by their endless droning).

As I contemplate these photos, it occurs to me that many of the megalithic structures scattered across the face of Europe could pass as modern sculptures set down in the surrounding landscape. Stonehenge, the most iconic of all megalithic structures, is probably too much like a ruin to make this comparison

but Avebury, like Stonehenge located in Wiltshire, has something of the abstraction of sculpture parks

and how about Carnac, in Brittany?

or Badelunda in Sweden?

or the Ring of Brodgar, in the Orkney islands?

And even further afield, although not from the Mesolithic period, we have this intimate collection of upright stones in Toraja, Indonesia

Of course, the people who built these structures were not building sculpture parks, but I have to think that they too were stirred by the same feeling of connectedness between their standing stones and nature as we have between sculpture and nature. They attributed this feeling to a divine grace in the place, we simply enjoy the feeling.

____________________________

Sculpture in cities-1: http://percivalhenry.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/52af841ee4b0b09acc808041-lost3f3f3f-1387234862071-flamingo.jpg [in http://percivalhenry.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/art-history-martch-madness-first-round-new-york-regional/comment-page-1/%5D
Sculptures in cities-2: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Juilliard_School-Manhattan-New_york.jpg [in http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Juilliard_School-Manhattan-New_york.jpg%5D
Sculpture in cities-3: http://i3.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article740970.ece/alternates/s615/A%20new%20sculpture%20on%20the%20fourth%20plinth%20in%20Trafalgar%20Square,%20central%20London%20The%20work%20by%20sculptor%20Bill%20Woodrow,%20entitled%20%27Regardless%20of%20History%27,%20%20shows%20a%20tree%20resting%20on%20a%20head%20and%20a%20book [in http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/love-it-or-hate-it-bronze-rocking-741129%5D
Sculpture in cities-4: http://womenworld.org/image/082012/Paris%20-%20Beaubourg%20and%20Les%20Halles_1.jpg [in http://womenworld.org/travel/paris—around-town—beaubourg-and-les-halles-%28part-1%29.aspx%5D
Sculpture in cities-5: http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/06/images/cis/sculpture.jpg [in http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/06/060426.cis-photos.shtml%5D
YSP-1: http://www.yorkshireattractions.org/images/cms/attractions_21_3_large.jpg [in http://www.yorkshireattractions.org/visitor-attractions/21/yorkshire-sculpture-park%5D
YSP-2: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Yorkshire_Sculpture_Park_Caro_Promenade.jpg [in http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yorkshire_Sculpture_Park_Caro_Promenade.jpg%5D
YSP-3: http://antonyjwaller.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/nik_5931-copy.jpg [in http://antonyjwaller.wordpress.com/travel-articles/yorkshire-and-northern-england/the-yorkshire-sculpture-park/%5D
YSP-4: http://www.sculpture-info.com/upload/1008/image/Yorkshiresculpturepark.jpg [in http://www.sculpture-info.com/news-626/yorkshire-sculpture-park.html%5D
YSP-5: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6GgifPCMTc8/UgZKx2yojhI/AAAAAAAACDg/WYBKhXaNWp8/s1600/2+Buddha+and+Rob.JPG [in http://expertslife.blogspot.com/2013/08/picture-of-week-10-august-2013.html%5D
YSP-6: http://www.thomasharveydesign.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/YSP6.jpg [in http://www.thomasharveydesign.co.uk/2011/05/09/yorkshire-sculpture-park-wakefield/%5D
YSP-7: http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/52104000/jpg/_52104252_7cbb7745-313f-43e9-8974-d144adf6c05f.jpg [in http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13034363%5D
SK-1: http://brooklynimbecile.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/img_4256.jpg [in http://brooklynimbecile.com/2011/11/05/weekend-spread-storm-king-art-center/%5D
SK-2: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OWDq8YQCBog/UA6M17c9N6I/AAAAAAAAYI4/OqODfTIunKU/s1600/Mountainville_NY_A_Calder_Storm_King_AC_photo_S_Gruber_June_2012_+%2888%29.JPG [in http://publicartandmemory.blogspot.com/2012_07_01_archive.html%5D
SK-3: http://www.greenstrides.com/images-wp/Storm-King.jpg [in http://www.greenstrides.com/2013/07/10/sculpture-parks-can-inspire-your-own-garden-design/%5D
SK-4: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4sgNF1ufdU4/U4T1ul7DPRI/AAAAAAAAP8w/JzGsmMOY6No/s1600/Newman.jpg [in http://nycgarden.blogspot.com/2014/06/storm-king.html%5D
SK-5: http://i.vimeocdn.com/video/332835418_1280.jpg [in http://vimeo.com/48015694%5D
SK-6: http://inhabitat.com/nyc/wp-content/blogs.dir/2/files/2011/07/storm-king-boulders.jpg [in http://inhabitat.com/nyc/storm-king-art-center-a-summer-retreat-for-the-artsy-nature-loving-new-yorker/storm-king-boulders/%5D
SK-7: http://faeriemooncreations.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html [in http://faeriemooncreations.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html%5D
SK-8: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_sVe9wO8fJls/S4zMOOgpUZI/AAAAAAAAEDo/IaUESi6KOGQ/s800/goldsw3.jpg [in http://lettuce-eating.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.html%5D
SK-9: http://stormking.weebly.com/uploads/2/3/8/8/23889452/6893557.jpg [in http://stormking.weebly.com/permanent-collection.html%5D
SK-10: http://www.stormking.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/smith-lawn1.jpg [in http://www.stormking.org/collection-conversation/%5D
SK-11: http://eof737.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/img_2564.jpg?w=800 [in http://mirthandmotivation.com/2011/09/04/happiness-installation-art-at-storm-king/img_2564/%5D
Stonehenge: http://st-listas.20minutos.es/images/2013-06/362538/4049632_640px.jpg?1370571567 [in http://listas.20minutos.es/lista/maravillas-del-mundo-362538/%5D
Avebury-1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury#mediaviewer/File:Avebury_Panorama,_Wiltshire,_UK_-_Diliff.jpg [in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury%5D
Avebury-2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury#mediaviewer/File:Avebury,_West_Kennet_Avenue,_Wiltshire,_UK_-_Diliff.jpg [in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury%5D
Carnac-1: http://weadorefrance.com/es/images/w.800/h.600/c.1/d.guide_photos/sd./i.carnac-brittany-standing-stones-20130325.jpg [in http://weadorefrance.com/es/brittany-bretagne/g.31%5D
Carnac-2: http://media.tinmoi.vn//2012/02/27/4_28_1330310626_92_20120224114942_l6.jpg [in http://www.tktyt1haiduong.edu.vn/?p=888%5D
Badelunda, Sweden: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Badelunda_V%C3%A4stmanland_Sweden.jpg [in http://some-landscapes.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html%5D
Ring of Brodgar, Orkney: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Brodgar#mediaviewer/File:RingofBrodgar.jpg [in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Brodgar%5D
Toraja, Indonesia: http://tribudragon.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/2-tt-6.jpg [in http://tribudragon.wordpress.com/category/indonesia/%5D

CAPERS

Beijing, 7 June 2014

It never ceases to amaze me that there are certain ingredients which one adds to recipes in small quantities but which make a huge difference to the final taste. Spices are the obvious example – although I often wish that the hot spices had never existed – but there are others. Parsley, for instance, or coriander, or anise. Or capers.

Capers are a particular favourite of mine ever since a business trip I made many years ago to Malta. I was there to do an environmental audit of a factory. After a long day of inspecting the wastewater treatment plant, the waste segregation area, the toxic chemicals storage area, and I don’t know what else, my colleagues and I were finally free for dinner. We left the hotel and wandered around, but it was a dead time of the year and there wasn’t much available. We finally came across a modest restaurant, which proclaimed itself to be a fish restaurant. Why not? we said, after all, we were in an island, presumably the fish would be good. And it was, it was! We all ordered Orata al cartoccio, where a bream is cooked – steamed in its own juices, really – in a closed aluminium foil package together with cherry tomatoes, capers, and olives. It’s really a very simple recipe. Having washed and cleaned the bream, you lay it on a big piece of aluminium foil, you place a little rosemary inside the fish, drizzle it with olive oil, place the sliced cherry tomatoes, rinsed capers, and olives around the bream, wet the whole with a little white wine, wrap up the foil and close it well (so that none of the juices escape), and cook it in the oven at 200°C for about 45 minutes. Voilà!

Simple, but absolutely delicious. The capers in particular impart a taste to the fish’s flesh which even to this day, after all these years, I can summon up at will for my private delectation.

The marvelous effect of the capers was actually quite a surprise to me. I had first come across capers as a young boy, at my English grandmother’s house. At some earlier moment, my elder brother had evinced a love of capers, so every time he came to stay with her she bought a small jar of them. This time, I was in tow so I got to try some. Salty! So salty! How could anyone like these tiny balls of salt? I made sure to steer clear of them after that, pushing them carefully aside if I came across them in a salade Niçoise, for instance. Until that fateful encounter in a modest fish restaurant in Malta. Such is life …

After that gastronomic epiphany in Malta, I feel that I owe it to the caper to write its hagiography, which like all good hagiographies should start from its birth. The caper comes from a bush, the caper bush to be precise, capparis spinosa. The bush is not much to write home about. Here is an example from the island of Salina, one of the Eolian Islands off the north-west coast of Sicily

and here’s another from near Brindisi in southern Italy

Both pictures admirably depict the poor, rocky soils and harsh environments that the bush grows well in. They also tell us that you find the bush around the Mediterranean. But that’s not only place you find C. spinosa; the bush has quite a wide range, down through eastern Africa, across central, southern, and southeastern Asia, all the way out to the Pacific Islands and Australia. But as far as I know, and I’m very willing to be corrected, the caper is not used in the local cuisine in any of these areas.

The last picture also tells us that the bush sports flowers. Small, but actually very lovely, with a cluster of long mauve stamens reaching out to the world (this is one of many beautiful photos of the caper flower on the internet; the efforts of my photographic e-friends have turned me quite poetic).

This last picture also modestly introduces us to the hero our story. Because the caper is that green flower bud behind. It gets picked, salted, and pickled for our delight. I think it deserves a picture of its own

I have to say, I always marvel at things like this. How did the women in some far-off time think of picking the flower buds of this bush to eat? (I’m sure it was the women; the men were just lazing around the camp fire cracking stupid jokes and farting.) Maybe desperation, to stave off starvation. Or maybe … but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Capers are sold sorted by size. Either because the French got into the game of commercializing capers before anyone else, or because some canny marketer thought French names would sell better, or for some other reason unknown to me, the grades mostly have French names. From smallest to biggest we have: “non-pareil”, incomparable; “surfine”, very delicate (those hideously salty little balls which my grandmother bought for my brother must have been either surfines or non-pareils); “capucine”, which is a little pointed cowl, like the ones worn by Franciscans nuns – looking at the photo below and squinting a little, I suppose you could say that the capers in question look cowl-like; “capote”, which is a rather bigger cowl with a definite point (it is also French slang for a condom for reasons which I’m sure the readers can divine after a little bit of thought); “fine”, delicate (like the oysters). And at the very end of the grades we have “grusas”, which is not a French word. My guess is that it’s Provençal and has a meaning similar to the Spanish “gruesos”, fatty. Of course, the French were not going to use their delicate language for such a coarse member of the caper family. As one could guess from the grading nomenclature, the smallest sizes are considered to be the most desirable; I’m sure it is no coincidence that the smallest sizes come from southern France …

Malta brought me my culinary epiphany with the caper. It also introduced me to the caper berry, which I find to be a much more delicious product of the caper bush. My Italian colleague, whom I have had cause to mention in an earlier post as the person who introduced me to durian, was with me on this Maltese environmental audit. Rather than asking the staff of the wastewater treatment plant to see the data on wastewater treatment efficiency he asked them to get him several jars of pickled Maltese caper berries. On the promise of my not revealing this professional faux-pas of his he shared one of the jars with me, which I took home to my wife. We have been hooked ever since.

As the name suggest, caper berries are the fruit of the caper bush. This photo shows the berry in its natural state.

I understand they are perfectly edible, although I have never seen them sold in a shop. I’ve only eaten the pickled variety. They are much bigger than capers, less salty, more crunchy (because of the seeds they contain) and can be eaten as a snack – and my wife and I have indeed snacked happily and often on them, in front of the TV or other such snack-happy locations.

Coming back to my meditation on how anyone ever came up with the idea of pickling flower buds to eat, I suspect the path was through the berry: step 1 – eat the berries; step 2 – salt the berries to preserve the excedent harvest before they rot; step 3 – hang on, why don’t we try the same thing with the flower buds?

My in-depth research (i.e., Wikipedia) has revealed to me that in Greece and Cyprus they also eat the pickled leaves of the caper bush.

This I have never tried. I read that they are particularly used in salads and fish dishes. A web-site called Good Greek Stuff proclaims that “these tangy cured leaves of the caper plant are less salty than the buds, and lend a citrusy undertone to such foods as Greek country salad, dakos (barley rusks with tomato, olive oil and feta), fish sauces, and cabbage slaws. It gives an astringent, piquant note to herb pestos and pasta dishes. And you’ll be amazed at what it does to the humble spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncino or how well it works as a garnish to fried squid.”

I have another culinary epiphany awaiting me in some Greek island.
__________________
Orata, pomodorini, capperi, olive: http://www.cucinanonnapapera.it/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/PICT1017.jpg [in http://www.cucinanonnapapera.it/?p=464%5D
Caper bush Salina: http://atasteoftravel.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/20110717-082956.jpg [in http://atasteoftravelblog.com/2011/capers-on-salina/%5D
Caper bush Brindisi: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2Nr_U2AWCUs/Uaid3mGYgqI/AAAAAAAAASM/NBQh22nv_Rk/s1600/Caper+Bush+growing+from+Rocks.jpg [in http://lisainitalymay2013.blogspot.com/%5D
Caper flower: http://kojikisans2.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/caper11.jpg?w=1008 [in http://kojikisans2.wordpress.com/%5D
Caper flower buds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caper#mediaviewer/File:%E1%83%99%E1%83%90%E1%83%9E%E1%83%90%E1%83%A0%E1%83%98_Capparis_spinosa_Kapernstrauch.JPG [in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caper%5D
Graded capers: http://www.asofood.com/aso_images/capers.gif [in http://www.asofood.com/capers.html%5D
Caper berries: http://www.photo-dictionary.com/photofiles/list/1401/4818marinated_capers.jpg [in http://www.photo-dictionary.com/phrase/1401/marinated-capers.html%5D
Caper berries-natural state: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Okhm7AjHzv8/R1kZdfwxBCI/AAAAAAAAAac/Eu8RWxYi6f4/s320/e-caperberries.jpg [in http://medcookingalaska.blogspot.com/2007/12/recipes-caper-tart-capers-and-eggs.html%5D
Caper leaves: http://eshop-santorini.gr/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/k/a/kaparofilla-caper-leaves.jpg [in http://eshop-santorini.gr/index.php/authentic-food-1/more/santorini-wild-capers-1.html%5D