Dec'07 - Gardening News

 

News of Interest to Gardeners

Landscaping

• New parking lots in Toronto should include landscaped areas with trees, permanent irrigation systems and be paved with light-coloured, porous materials. So directs new guidelines promulgated by the city’s planning and growth management committee.

·         Studies show that as much as 11% of municipal water is being wasted through leaking toilet-tank flapper seals writes Mary Teresa Bitti in the Financial Post. So why are the greenies picking on lawn and garden irrigation and not sticking their noses into toilet tanks?

• “I thought I’d plant my front yard, with flowers, shrubs and trees./A little bit of country, to please the birds and bees./But someone couldn’t stand it, they called the inspector in./Anything but just plain grass, is a horticultural sin.” Jean Dickson in the San Francisco Chronicle.

·         San Francisco’s new $484-million Natural History Museum in Golden Gate Park incorporates “so many green design features, including green roof and insulation made for recycled blue jeans, that it beats the energy-use standards set by the US Department of Energy by 30%,” reports the impressed journal Nature.

• If a group of buildings in London and Montreal were clad in vegetation, peak temperatures would drop by 4ºC, reports New Scientist. Eleftheria Alexandri and Phil Jones at the Welsh School of Architecture at the University of Cardiff, UK, used computer models to compare the impact of “greening” buildings in nine cities. In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia the average temperature in the gap between the buildings would fall by 11ºC.

Lawns

·         Amongst other unusual tombstone inscriptions discovered by Nancy Millar, the Calgary-based author of The Final Word: The Book of Canadian Epitaphs, was that of the late Tom Thomson, first Metro Toronto Parks Commissioner. Over his grave in that city’s fabled Mount Pleasant Cemetery his marker reads, “Please walk on the grass.”

·         Congratulations on celebrating their 50^th anniversary at Zander Sod of southern Ontario, now with the third generation participating in this 70-employee operation. Do we hear a wee coronach for the anti-lawn environiks?

Trees

·         Torontonians can rely on the speed with which their beloved bungleaucrats respond to threats to life and limb. A child having been killed by a falling tree in the Royal Botanical Gardens, Burlington in 2005, reports the Toronto Star, prompted Toronto parks staff to propose a program to monitor and deal with dangerous trees by hiring three forestry workers.

·         The proposed felling of the diseased chestnut tree that Anne Frank glimpsed while hiding from the Nazis provoked a storm of international protest. Judge Bade ordered Amsterdam bungleaucrats to cease and desist. They will seek ways to preserve the 150-year-old specimen. Meanwhile, a neighbour as offered a nut allegedly from the tree for sale on eBay with bids reportedly reaching about $2,500. The Anne Frank House museum has already taken grafts and plans to replace the tree with a sapling from the original.

·         Primary rain forest is irreplaceable, and even if forests are replanted with faster-growing plants, they will not be as efficient at soaking up carbon dioxide or provide homes for creatures that live there, scientists from the University of East Anglia, U.K., and Brazil’s Goeldi Museum, report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

·         Adding a rabbit gene to poplar trees allowed the transgenic cuttings to remove 51-91% of the common pollutant TCE in hydroponic solutions during a one-week period with less than 3% uptake in the control group, reports the journal Nature. The research by Sharon Doty at the University of Washington in Seattle also showed that the modified poplars also removed more benzene and TCE from the air.

• Nearly extinct and all but forgotten, the local American chestnut is finally seeing a revival, writes Pamela Cuthbert in Maclean’s. Ernie Grimo, president of the Northern Nut Growers Association, estimates 15 to 30 tonnes of chestnuts are grown annually in the Niagara region, not enough for most of us to roast by the open fire. Still it’s a comeback for Castanea dentata.
• It was said a squirrel could jump from chestnut to chestnut without touching the ground, all the way from Georgia to Maine. So explains Susan Freinkel in her new book, American Chestnut: The Life, Death and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree. Four billion trees once covered the eastern hardwood forests north from Florida into eastern Canada. But by the 1920s almost all had disappeared thanks to the virulent fungus Cryphonectra parasitica. Thanks to determined efforts it now face reintroduction, however, even if the specimen at the White House is hardly thriving.
• Contrary to expectations Caribbean forests were at their densest for the past 2000 years during the little ice age, 1350-1850 AD, research by Maria Lozano-Garcia, a paleontologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico has revealed (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

Shrubs

·         The ‘Plant of the Month’ is Brandywine™ Viburnum we are informed by Spring Meadow Nursery’s delightful Danielle Ernest over in Michigan. Great choice, certainly, but isn’t it a little late in the planting season, at least here in the land of milk and maple syrup?

·         “During the winter months, I keep chopped lemon, grapefruit, lime and orange peelings in a large container in the garage,” Marnie Hazelwood of Wilmut, Nova Scotia tells the current edition of Harrowsmith. “When spring arrives, I add water, let it sit for a few days, then water my acid-loving plants, such as blueberries, azaleas and rhododendrons.”

Roses

• The right to name the new Hazel McCallion Rose was purchased by the Mississauga Board of Trade for “in excess of $10,000” in honour of that city’s beloved, long-serving mayor. Hortico Nurseries near Burlington (www.hortico.com) describes it as a white and pink flowered, mildly fragrant but prolific bloomer that is disease resistant. The catch is it will not be available to the public until October 2008.

Flowers

·         It can’t be true – just a single new hosta listed under Landscape Trades magazine’s 11^th list of “next spring’s hottest new plants. Nearly solid gold foliage ‘June Fever’ is described as being extremely hardy, slug resistant and up to 60-centimetres (24-inches) in both height and width.

·         Fresh-cut yellow daisies still adorn the counters in the banking pavilion at Toronto’s TD Centre, just as architect Mies vaan der Rohe intended when the Centre first opened in 1967, writes Shawn Micallef in the weekly Eye magazine.

• Vantreight Farms cuts 18 million daffodil blooms annually on B.C.’s Saanich Peninsular. Now the family-owned business proposes to build an environmentally friendly $150-million residential subdivision on part of the 400-acre farm. Treated sewage will used to heat the homes and farm facilities as well as fertilize and irrigate the fields. Daffodils will never smell the same again.

Wildflowers

·         Next June may seem far away, but the Orchid Society of the Royal Botanical Gardens has a superb 2-day trip planned for an expert-guided tour of the Wild Orchids of the Bruce Peninsular. Most travels costs are included in the bargain$259 but you’ll need to come up with a deposit of $100 “as soon as possible.” For details, visit www.osrbg.ca/orchid_calendar.html.

·         Edelweiss, the beloved alpine plant of central Europe never suffers sunburn, despite exposure to UV light. The mystery has been solved by Jean Pol Vigneron at the University of Notre-Dame de la Paix in Namur, Belgium says New Scientist. Minute hairs on the leaves steer the UV light away from the plant’s interior. The trick should be exploited to create a “natural” sunscreen for people,” says Vigneron.

Vegetables

·         Spinach, pumpkin seeds, sweet potatoes and regular potatoes are amongst the best foods for blood-pressure control, advises Jennifer Sygo in the National Post. Her other two choices are halibut and yogurt. Or you could also avoid reading about politicians, bungleaucrats and Paris Hilton.

·         Beta-carotene, the antioxidant found in carrots, and also spinach, sweet potatoes and coriander, fed to men as a long-term supplement, may result in “less cognitive decline,” according to a recent U.S. study. Nothing about improved eyesight, which would have disappointed the late Dean Martin. When, he asked, did you ever see a rabbit wearing glasses?

Fruit & Nuts

·         Rubbing half a lemon under each armpit is said to be an effective hangover cure for those who have overindulged. So reports Bartender magazine publisher Ray Foley. However, others will recall that, according to Robert Benchley (1889-1945), the only cure for a hangover is death, who was himself a noted elbow bender.

• They went bananas on the Dutch island of Terschelling. Container loads of the yellow fruit were swept overboard from a freighter, washing up on the beach.
• “Chinese Mandarin Oranges Product of China 4 lb box Fresh Cut Prices! 3.99” announced a Dominion Supermarket flyer in the middle of last month. Who writes these things? A graduate from the Toronto School Board? Or were they getting excited over the navel oranges?

Beverages, Herbs & Spices

·         Commuter newspaper 24 Hours sniffs out a “sexy dog perfume.” Reportedly selling at a mere $65 for a 3.4 ounce bottle at www.sexybeastsyle.com, it has “the scent of bergamot and vanilla musk with hints of patchouli, mandarin and nutmeg oils is captured in a sleek, dark-purple bone-shaped bottle.” Strangely, there is no mention of vanilla being poisonous to dogs, as recently revealed by National Geographic magazine.

·         This past summer, Pepsi Ice Cucumber was launched this summer in Japan, according to Food in Canada. The limited-release, mint-coloured soda is artificially flavoured to taste like fresh cucumber. The trade magazine also notes Peru’s Inca Kola has a “sweet flavour resembling bubblegum.”

• Nils Liedholm trained as an accountant, went on to captain Sweden’s soccer team in the 1958 World Cup Final and in 1972 purchased a vineyard in Italy’s famed Asti region. There he produced a successful range of wines, while remaining a favourite with Italian soccer fans. He died early last month aged 85.
• People in Central America were drinking beverages made from cacao before 1000 BC, hundreds of years earlier than once thought, says a new study led by John Henderson, a professor of anthropology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In brewing a chocolate beer, or chichi, from the pulp of the cacao fruit Mesoamericans discovered that the seeds imparted a chocolate flavour, setting the stage for the modern chocolate industry.

·         Nikki Tate, author of the children’s novel Trouble on Tarragon Island is in trouble with a school library in the Saskatchewan community of Kindersley. According to Maclean’s, fictional heroine Heather Blake says: “What they say about my grandmother is true. She does have generous bazoongas, and all of Tarragon Island has seen them.” Wait till they discover that Henry VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon because of her reckless use of tarragon.

·         Six elephants died after discovering rice beer brewed in Chandan Nukat, a village in Meghalaya state, India. The tuskers “went berserk,” tore up an electricity pole, electrocuting themselves.

·         Tea bushes can accumulate fluoride from the soil, reports New Scientist. Too much of the wrong kind can add significantly to the amount of fluoride you consume, says the London, U.K.-based weekly, with the tea in just four cups supplying up to one-third of the maximum safe daily amount.

·         Thanks to biofuel demand and several seasons of bad weather in hop-growing regions, there is a worldwide shortage of the beer flavouring and preservative, reports CanWest News. Hint: until the reign of Good Queen Bess, the English used yarrow (Achillea) to flavour their beer – and London tried to outlaw that filthy foreign muck from Holland called hops.

• In a vehicle powered by 2,000 litres of bio-diesel made from 4,000 kilograms of cocoa butter extracted from waste chocolate, a pair of intrepid Brits is headed from their homeland 7,200 kilometres south to Timbuktu.

Houseplants

·         A home robot can water plants, control lights and appliances, play music and remind owners to take medication, according to Post Homes. Invented by Danh Trinh, 35, of Towson, Maryland, it was built using the iRobot Create program. If you believe a robot can water plants successfully, check out www.tomshardware.com/irobot. Otherwise, back to the watering can and moisture meter.

·         “Until the late ‘70s, the American Embassy in Ottawa had a greenhouse and a skilful gardener who grew orchids,” recalls Sandra Gotlieb in Weekend Post. “When the ambassadorial couple I knew best, Thomas and Gaetana Enders, had a party the house was filled with the greenhouse orchids . . . But the Enderses’ successors fired the gardener and filled the house with trashy last-forever silk flowers. To me, this was more than a hint of the decline of the American Empire.”

For the Birds

·         Anyone familiar with tropical America or Africa will doubtless be familiar with the magnificent great egret (Casmerodius albus). Now, Peter Money writes to the Toronto Field Naturalist Newsletter that, while “solitary great egrets have become fairly common sights in High Park and on them, lower Humber,” he has seen them in a group of four above the first weir on the river. He thinks this is unusual for the species. We can assure him that, at least in tropical climes, it is not.

·         Gardeners pestered by pigeons might be surprised to learn some people practice the sport of pigeon racing. It is – or was – especially popular in certain segments of New York City we learn from an obituary in The New York Times. In Brooklyn recently, Frank Viola, one of the “grand old men” of the ornithological oddity, passed away at age 87.

• A New York pigeon may live for 15 years and poop 11 kilograms of droppings ever year, we learn from NYC Councillor Simcha Felder who wants a bylaw to ban feeding them. “If people like pigeons, take them into their homes, feed pigeons in your house and let them crap all over the place in your living room,” he told reporters.
• According to Maclean’s, Sir Benjamin Slade’s English estate has a “gay peacock.” Sir Benjamin says the aggressive bird mistook an employee’s blue Lexus car for a “peacock boy” and got rambunctious. The bird’s pecking and scratching caused $8,000 damage.

·         Watch winter birds in Amherst Island near Kingston, Algonquin Park, Manitoulin Island, and Georgian Bay suggests Canadian Geographic Traveller, with details to be found at www.ontariooutdoor.com/en/getaways.

Bugs and Other Thugs

• South Korean dogs have proven successful in detecting termites. In a televised demonstration, a pair of spaniels proved that this was the faster and cheaper way to detect infestation of wooden buildings.

·         Rodents are making rice farmers richer in Thailand. The bandicoot rat, said to feed on rice and snails, is caught, roasted and sold at roadside stands for twice as much as pork or chicken. We’ve said it before: if you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em.

·         Deer have even invading downtown Victoria, B.C. They are, reports CanWest News, snacking on gardens, sleeping on lawns . . . taking advantage of flower and salad smorgasbords. Also, alas, frequently becoming traffic statistics. Despite this, the animals are becoming increasingly city-savvy, according to biologist Val Schaefer, an assistant professor at the University of Victoria, interviewed by CanWest.

·         Scientists could one day stop termites from damaging buildings by turning them all into layabout royals, a new study in the journal Science suggests. Dr. Nathan Lo from the University of Sydney, Australia hopes eventually to find compounds to achieve this. “That would cause a collapse of the colony, because these royals just sit around doing nothing and waiting to be fed. They’re pretty much useless when it comes to hard work.“ Sounds something like bureaucrats also.

• A fossil discovered in 390-million-year-old rocks suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were far larger in the past than previously thought, says Simon Braddy a University of Bristol paleontologist. Some were two metres long. “We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches and jumbo dragonflies. But we never realized until now just how big some of these ancient creepy crawlies were,” he explained.

Diseases

·         “It’s amazing that an understanding the genetic makeup of a microscopic organism can have a broad range of implications ranging from human health to agricultural science,” says Thomas Dawson, a scientist at Proctor & Gamble Beauty who led a study to sequence the genome of the fungus that causes dandruff. Malassezia globosa is related to fungi that attack corn and other plants.

·         “Australian packages [of bees] only arrived on the U.S. shore in 2005 so the linkage with Australia is just garbage.” Australian bee expert Dr Doug Somerville of New South Wales Department of Primary Industries pouts scorn on accusations that the virus causing colony collapse disorder came with bees imported from his country. “[U.S.] Bees are suffering a whole range of other issues which are probably more serious,” he said in a report by Anna Salleh of ABC’s Science News.

• Carolyn Malmstrom of Michigan State University and her colleagues suspect that a historical takeover of California grasslands by Eurasian grasses succeeded in part because the invaders brought viruses with them that affected the natives or changed the dynamics of an existing virus population, reports the journal Nature.

Fungi

·         An American whose life was saved by rapid medical intervention after he had consumed the deadly Destroying Angel (Amanita virosa) was both grateful and regretful, Eva Davis recounts in the Toronto Field Naturalist Newsletter. It was, he said, the “Best damned mushrooms I ever ate.”

Gardeners

• “Because the world needs more vanilla.” Ori Ruben, while raking backyard leaves with his dad, considers a new motto for Canada to enter in a National Post competition.

Gardening in the City

• Toronto gardeners may wish to consider installing xerophytic landscapes. Water rates are predicted to rise some nine per cent next year or around $50 per home. The city’s water budget amounts to $400-million annually.

·         Climate change is now being blamed for the decline of Toronto’s trees. Naturally, nothing is achieved without a report and that’s just what the city’s parks committee was presented with. Committee chair thingie, Councillor Paula Fletcher declared: “We need to factor in climate change in the budget. We need to adapt to our new realty.” Meanwhile trees continue to die for lack of attention as they have been doing for the past quarter-century as report succeeds report.

·         Vegetable gardening would appear to be gaining ground. The harvest proclaimed finished, the Toronto Food Policy Council held an analysis meeting. Nothing new about that – but the location, in a Committee Room at Toronto City Hall would seem to indicate this very active group is onto something.

·         Toronto’s director of solid waste management, Rob Orpin, has refused to extend leaf pickup past the 7 December deadline, despite a mild fall. Instead, he tells taxpayers they can either store them or leave them where they lie. City councillor Rob Ford has labelled this as “ridiculous.” Responded Orpin in an interview: “I have the utmost faith in the residents of Toronto that they will follow the collection calendar and any applicable bylaws.” Obviously Orpin is a fan of Saudi Arabia’s Muttawa, the religious police from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

·         The difference between Toronto’s Annex and Rosedale, according to Jane Boyd in weekly Toronto magazine? The Annex is distinguished by “rustic gardens with wildflowers,” Rosedale relishes “pristine lawns without leaves. However, while Rosedale has “groups of gardeners with leaf blowers disturbing the peace,” the Annex features “groups of drunken students with beer bottles disturbing the peace.”

·         Canada Blooms is now a festival, as opposed to a consumer show. As such it “is being refreshed and renewed” with new general manager Gerry Ginsberg at the helm. Plan to join Canada Blooms Flower Power next 12 to 16 March.

·         It was a very dry season so the Toronto’s thingies at City Hall spread the word that concerned citizens should water street trees as well as their own. Coming next year, it will cost homeowners 9 per cent more to water trees or anything else as Disaster-on-the-Lake continues to implode.

Science and the Gardener

• The global conflict over high yield farming became even uglier last week when armed activists for the landless invaded Syngenta biotech research farm in Brazil, reports the Canada Free Press. One activist and a security guard were killed and eight other people injured.

·         Industrialization of bee farming has made bees more susceptible to mass die-offs and abrupt disappearances, according to Professor Mark Wilson of B.C.’s Simon Fraser University, writes Andrew Nikiforuk in The Globe and Mail. There’s a bigger problem than a rogue virus, says the newspaper, and the real crisis still lies ahead.

·         Scientists have suggested a dinosaur as the “cow of the Mesozoic era.” The mouth of Nigersaurus taqueti enabled it to vacuum its way through ferns and other groundcover.

·         Photographs of a “functionally extinct” tiger in southwest China are revealed as faked by Fu Dezhi, a botanist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who said that the plants are not to scale in relation to the tiger, reports the journal Science.

·         African farmers struggle to keep elephants from trampling their land and destroying their crops. Nothing seemed to work until Lucy King at the University of Oxford and her team played 4-minute recordings of bees to herds of elephants, reports the weekly New Scientist. She is conducting field trials using a cheaper, less technological substitute: real hives.

·         A new and easy way to fight plant pests using RNA interference (RNAi) has been suggested by two groups working independently, reports Nature Biotechnology. In separate research, scientists at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences in China and the Monsanto Company in Chesterfield, Missouri have successfully demonstrated the technique both in the laboratory and the field.

·         Soil erosion, the long-held bogie man that led to the Mayan civilization’s downfall in Central America may not be to blame after all, says Flavio S. Anselmetti in the journal Geology. Analysis of clay washed into Guatemala’s Lake Salpetén shows it accumulated 2,700 to 4,000 years ago, reports Science News, early in the Mayan era.

·         “If all plants and animals have common DNA ancestry then perhaps we are all vegetarians,” responds Brian Falconer of Aberdeen, UK, to a query to New Scientist if it is feasible not to eat anything with DNA in it. “We are all also vegetables and for that reason the world is awash with cannibalism,” adds Falconer.

·         Analyzing scrapings from amphorae retrieved from shipwrecks in the Mediterranean has revealed to marine archaeologists some of what travelled over ancient trade routes. It wasn’t all wine, as previously believed. Colin Barras in New Scientist reports that DNA analysis showed that olive oil flavoured with thyme and oregano were amongst other cargoes carried in the ubiquitous jars.

·         Natural selection, not chance, paints the desert landscape, headlined the journal Science. For more than half a century, Linanthus parryae, the desert snow flower of the Mojave Desert, has produced two conflicting evolutionary theories: genetic drift or natural selection. The answer appears to lie in environmental differences, says a new study. “Botanists are a boring lot and always give you trouble” (apologies to Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate).

Weather

·         Plan your plantings ahead. We are in for another cool period so Fairbridge-curve theories predict, writes the redoubtable Lawrence Solomon in the Financial Post. If the pattern holds, this period actually began in 1996, with the effects to be felt starting in 2010. Some predict three decades of severe cold.

Down on the Farm

·         French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced a moratorium on the commercial cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops. However, the plan violates European rules; countries cannot ban the European Union-approved strains.

• China and India risk future famine by using scarce water to irrigate biofuel crops rather than food, according to a study from the International Water Management Institute, reports the weekly New Scientist.

·         The 2007 New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year is Locavore, a movement that encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Four San Francisco women coined the word.

·         British geologist Chris Turney at the University of Exeter believes the catastrophic collapse of glacial ice dam holding back Lake Agassiz in Central Canada more than 8,000 years ago was responsible for the rapid spread of agriculture across Europe around the same time. Farming spread rapidly in Neolithic Europe due to an exodus of coastal people moving inland to escape sea levels which rose at least a metre, says Turney.

·         Biofuel is a bad investment, says Bjørn Lomborg, interviewed by New Scientist magazine. “It does little good and has many bad side effects,” he says.  “There is something fundamentally wrong about taking food and turning it into fuel, at great environmental cost and at the same time driving up food prices which specially effects the poor.”

Organic Scene

·         After nine years of comparison, the clear difference between organic and conventional production systems are emerging at the Iowa Sate University Neely-Kinyon Research Farm. According to Long-Term Agro-ecological Research (LTAR) initiative led by Kathleen Delate the longer rotations and careful management of the organic system show greater yields, increased profitability, and steadily improved soil quality over conventional practices.

Environment

• “Others pointed out, however, that there was far more potential danger in the lead paint in old houses. At least if you ground up the paintwork and inhaled it.” The Financial Post’s Peter Foster casts a jaundiced eye on alleged lead pollution.

·         “Don't talk to me about global warming. I just do not buy it whatsoever.” Maurice Flanagan, executive chairman of the Dubai-based Emirates airline also called Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, “absolute rubbish” at an airline industry conference in Singapore.

• Scientists have discovered giant “tongues” of ozone routinely swoop down from the upper atmosphere over Eastern Canada and can exacerbate smog problems on the ground, report scientists in the journal Nature.

·         Every year, up to 2,000 tonnes of waste grape skins and seeds from Inniskillin Wines will now be diverted to produce methane that, in turn, will fire electricity generators. The partnership with StormFisher Biogas will by supply power for Niagara Region homes.

• Frito-Lay’s factory in Casa Grande, Arizona, wants to create the environmentally benign chip, we learn from The New York Times. Despite going through a daily delivery of 500,000 pounds of spuds and processing them in energy devouring production that “creates vast amounts of wastewater, starch and potato peelings,” the company proposes to go green. It plans to run almost entirely on renewable fuels and recycled water all in the name of producing a junk food.
• Passengers in the UK town of Kilmarnock are getting a 20p (41¢) discount on their bus fare if they bring their used cooking oil, which is converted into biodiesel for the fleet. Notes the journal Nature.
• Apollo butterflies, Parnassius smintheus, live in a series of alpine meadows on Jumpingpound Ridge in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, reports Natural History magazine. There, trees now live some 650 feet higher up the mountainsides than they did forty years ago. The result is the fragmentation of the Apollo populations, which become more vulnerable to being wiped out.

·         Toronto-based environmental marketer TerraChoice sent researchers into six big box stores to look for every environmental claim made in the products sold there, reports www.citynews.ca. All but one of the 1,018 products surveyed “made claims that are either demonstrably false or that risk misleading intended audiences.” See www.citynews.ca/news/news_16918.aspx

• “Berry-producing shrubs such as willows and dogwoods will provide a food source for returning wildlife as well,” Toronto Councillor Janet Davis (Beaches-East York) informs us in her Town Crier community newspaper column. She announces a project to build a pond in Taylor Creek Park that “will treat storm water and host aquatic plants such as native rushes and reeds.” Redwing blackbirds are also to attracted back, she says – as if they ever left. Davis’ failings in botany and ornithology are duly noted.

Show Biz

• Jerry Seinfeld, who also co-wrote the animated flick, voices the hero of Bee Movie, an Apis mellifera named Barry B. Benson. Barry is headed for the hive to labour his life away collecting pollen and nectar. Er, push the buzzer, Jerry, its back to Biology 101 for you. Honey bees of the female persuasion do the work, while the male drones . . . well Jerry, check out the birds and the bees bit again . . .
• Apparently PBS, the famed American broadcaster, is also confused about life in the hive. Drones are not “worked to death,” noted The New York Times. It is the female bees that do the work. If the drones do not die after mating, they are forced out of the colony and quickly expire. Sorry, Barry.
• Hollywood’s going green, advises Emer Schlosser of Inside Entertainment. This apparently includes the colours as well as the philosophy if not the gills for the gals of Tinsel Town. Green gowns are everywhere right now, writes the fashionista, and the other shades on the colour wheel are green with envy.

Law and the Gardener

·         A proposal that home swimming pools should be fenced on all four sides, not just the present three, is being considered by Toronto’s Licensing and Standards Committee, the flatophiles of City Hall.

·         Under Canadian law, the ingredients can come from anywhere in the world and still get a “Product of Canada” label, notes Patti-Ann Finlay of W-FIVE. That’s because “Product of Canada” only means that at least 51 per cent of the manufacturing costs were incurred in Canada.

Business

• Chiquita Brands is in trouble. Hit by food safety concerns and increasing costs, the distributor of fruit and salad said it will cut management and production jobs while closing facilities to save up to US$80-million annually.
• Evergreen at the Brick Works project on Toronto’s Bayview Avenue will be breaking ground next fall, according to Marilotte Bloemen, director of public relations for Evergreen. Evergreen will feature a native plant nursery, demonstration gardens and conference and event facilities. The non-profit environmental organization says it has so far raised $37-million of the $55-million required for the centre.
• Batter Blaster, a pancake mix in an aerosol can, is certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as organic, notes Maclean’s.

·         “Cabin Fever,” proclaimed Post Homes, “Spot deer, coyotes and turkeys from the backyard of this woodsy, $1.2-million home.” Although this was in Ontario’s Tiny Township, an hour or more drive north of Toronto, you can enjoy the same wildlife in Toronto, especially Scarborough although turkeys are not unknown in the vicinity of City Hall.

·         “Nothing Runs Like a Deere” certainly holds true for the agricultural equipment manufacturer that reported a 52 per cent increase in fourth-quarter earnings.

·         Thousands of residents in northeast China took to the streets and surrounded government offices to demand help in getting money back from a bizarre scheme to raise ants to make an aphrodisiac, reported the National Post. For every 10,000-yuan ($1,350) they paid the company as “deposit,” investors were promised a dividend of 3,250 yuan.

Health

• Two synthetic versions of curcumin, the yellow, cancer-fighting compound found in turmeric, have been created by scientists in Japan. Unlike the natural version, however, the synthetic curcumin does not break down quickly when ingested.
• Human pathogens are making their homes on plants, writes Susan Milius in Science News. Consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables has increased by about a third since the 1970s, which accounts for some of the rise in disease outbreaks. But pathogen poisonings traced back to fresh produce are up at a much higher rate and scientists are discovering that some high-profile human pathogens can live on plants. Worse yet, they are hard to dislodge. But, reassures USDA’s Jerii Barak, “Flare-ups of food pathogens are rare events.” Further this research scientist admits, “Oh, I eat the stuff. I’m a vegetarian.”
• Many Americans still incorrectly believe that factors such as pesticides on food are bigger causes, nutrition experts at the Harvard School of Public Heath have said, much to the very vocal horror of greenies. What people eat and how fast they grow are both significant causes of cancer, say the specialists, adding to eat mostly plant foods, such as fruits, vegetables and grains, avoiding calorie-dense foods such as sugary drinks, and limiting red meat, alcohol and salt.

·         Six cups of caffeinated coffee a day reduce chances of developing the most common form of skin cancer by 35%, reports The Daily Telegraph. Dr. Ernest Abel, whose study was published in the European Journal of Cancer Prevention, said the decreased prevalence in non-melanoma skin cancer associated with daily consumption of caffeinated coffee was “consistent with other studies.”

·         Blueberries and their effect on the brain is the centre of attention of two separate research studies, we learn from Food Technology. Researchers report they have learned how the fruit reduce inflammation and improves brain function.

• “Power Pops,” weight-loss lollipops containing extract of African Hoodia gordonii, a plant that has been touted as a potent appetite suppressant, has gained a dubious endorsement, reports Maclean’s magazine: “Britney Spears is trying to burn off her recently acquired blubber” by using them, says the weekly.
• The European Parliament has overwhelmingly backed a recommendation for a pilot project looking into the legalization of opium production in Afghanistan to make morphine-related medicines, as an alternative to destroying opium poppy crops by chemical spraying, reports the journal Nature.

·         Do you know of a “food baring tree?” How about a “clump of bamboo or a healthy dumpster”? Dock Whoosie, a 28-year-old of Portland, Oregon has launched website www.gleantheplanet.com for “sharing of food outside of monetary-based economies.” Er . . .

• Ease silent-but-deadlies with ginger, papaya leaves and laughter, advises Elizabeth Bromstein, alternate health columnist in the weekly NOW. Telling us rather more than we would like to learn about flatulence under a header “Calming Anal Volcanoes,” she also discovers so might a paste of asafetida and hot water rubbed round the belly button, according to Sonal Bhatt, an Ayurvedic practitioner of Toronto.
• In Israel, many infants eat Bamba, peanut flavoured puffs, when they’re as young as six months old. The rate of peanut allergy in Israeli toddlers is 0.04%. At least 1% of young children in the United Kingdom and the United States have peanut allergies, notes the journal Science. Yet it is in the U.S.A. and U.K. as well as Canada that physicians urge parents not to feed kids peanuts until they are 3 years old. A U.K. research team is seeking a definite answer.

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