Michael Bell:

Alnus rubra is the PNW coastal upland N-fixing pioneer ("weed") species. The
seed has wings. To use it as a grain, you'd need to get that off (Bradley
Sherman used the sprouts, not the grain). Has anybody done that? another
important thing to know will be how long seeds remain viable, and, if they
are to be marketed as a food, how long they remain of nutritive value.
Getting the germplasm will be free and easy; proving it is worth doing will
be trickier. A lot has been done to select for herbs (corn, rice) with
highly nutritive endosperm already, and each improvement is time consuming
and costly.

The Populus trichocarpa genome has been sequenced, however, and it is a
close relative of Alnus, so could prove helpful.

bb

On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 12:30 AM, Bradley K. Sherman wrote:

Barbara Bliss wrote:
Does Alnus have any food value? How would one prepare it?


http://www.wildwoodsurvival.com/surv...ins/index.html

--bks

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