In article

..net,
William Wagner wrote:

In article
,
William Rose wrote:


Been down so long, it looks like up to me.

Richard and Mamie Farania (SP).

"Been down so long it's beginning to look like up."

Damn motorcycle accidents.

Bill a bit anal for the fun of it.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. William, you trying to copy
my style boy?

Richard and Mimi Fariña.

Richard Fariña is perhaps best known for his novel "Been Down So Long It
Looks Like Up to Me".

Problem with motorcycles is that a simi truck can stop faster than you
can. Fun though.

At least Richard went out a success and it wasn't his bike.

I don't remember the 60's either.

- Bill
Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

In article
,
William Rose wrote:

In article

.net,
William Wagner wrote:

In article
,
William Rose wrote:


Been down so long, it looks like up to me.

Richard and Mamie Farania (SP).

"Been down so long it's beginning to look like up."

Damn motorcycle accidents.

Bill a bit anal for the fun of it.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. William, you trying to copy
my style boy?

Style means no substance.

Richard and Mimi Fariña.

Richard Fariña is perhaps best known for his novel "Been Down So Long It
Looks Like Up to Me".

Just purchased 30 songs. Never read him. Shady Grove.......

Problem with motorcycles is that a simi truck can stop faster than you
can. Fun though.

At least Richard went out a success and it wasn't his bike.

I don't remember the 60's either.


I do and reside here.

- Bill
Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

--

S Jersey USA Zone 5 Shade
http://www.ocutech.com/ High tech Vison aid
This article is posted under fair use rules in accordance with
Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and is strictly for the educational
and informative purposes. This material is distributed without profit.

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:23:01 -0700, William Rose wrote:

Thanks for the follow up. A facultative - obligatory question though.
Just because a plant grows in full sunlight, does that mean that it
can't grow in partial shade? I realize that this represents a spectrum
of possibilities but I think you get my meaning. If I'm just being dense
again, please point it out.

Most plants that prefer full sun can grow in partial sun, but they'll be
depauperate, bloom and fruit poorly. They're just not getting enough
sunlight to photosynthesize enough for their needs. How much is "enough
to grow on" really has to be determined experimentally. Nevertheless,
I've never seen flax growing in an area with only three hours of full sun.

I'm on a slope and, I've just added sand to the garden to help with
drainage. I do live in a rain forest but the summers are bone dry in
California. As I see it, if I can run a railway track through my garden
I still have a shot at it:-)

That might help... by the time you get the railbed in, you may have opened
up enough room for the sun to penetrate more of the day. g

With "rainforest, California, zone 9", I suspect you're on the N California
coast. Linum usitatissimum has been recorded as naturalized there, so
that one is probably quite possible with enough light and soil and water
it likes. Plantago psyllium is not recorded in California, though the similar
P. indica has been found on the south coast. General rule with weedy plants,
imho, is that if they've carried around by humans for awhile as "useful",
they'll probably have naturalized if they truly like an area.

Or as my old major prof used to say, "Seed's cheap. Try it.
The worst you can be is disappointed". But if you've got a position with
better sunlight, you've got a better chance.

Kay


Kay

In article ,
Kay Lancaster wrote:

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:23:01 -0700, William Rose wrote:

Thanks for the follow up. A facultative - obligatory question though.
Just because a plant grows in full sunlight, does that mean that it
can't grow in partial shade? I realize that this represents a spectrum
of possibilities but I think you get my meaning. If I'm just being dense
again, please point it out.

Most plants that prefer full sun can grow in partial sun, but they'll be
depauperate, bloom and fruit poorly. They're just not getting enough
sunlight to photosynthesize enough for their needs. How much is "enough
to grow on" really has to be determined experimentally. Nevertheless,
I've never seen flax growing in an area with only three hours of full sun.

I'm on a slope and, I've just added sand to the garden to help with
drainage. I do live in a rain forest but the summers are bone dry in
California. As I see it, if I can run a railway track through my garden
I still have a shot at it:-)

That might help... by the time you get the railbed in, you may have opened
up enough room for the sun to penetrate more of the day. g

With "rainforest, California, zone 9", I suspect you're on the N California
coast. Linum usitatissimum has been recorded as naturalized there, so
that one is probably quite possible with enough light and soil and water
it likes. Plantago psyllium is not recorded in California, though the similar
P. indica has been found on the south coast. General rule with weedy plants,
imho, is that if they've carried around by humans for awhile as "useful",
they'll probably have naturalized if they truly like an area.

Or as my old major prof used to say, "Seed's cheap. Try it.
The worst you can be is disappointed". But if you've got a position with
better sunlight, you've got a better chance.

Kay


Kay,
good deduction on my location, 80 miles north of San Francisco in the
Redwoods, a temperate rain forest.

So here's the deal. I'm trying to grow flax for its' omega-3 fatty
acids. I bought flax seed marked omega because I thought that implied a
higher level of the omega-3s in the seeds
http://www.horizonherbs.com/group.asp?grp=45&pgNUM=4. Maybe it does but
the two varieties are both identified as Linum usitatissimum. Got any
idea how different a cultivar could be from its' genome in expressing
it's genetic traits? I am awaiting a reply from the company but I would
like a third party's opinion as well.
Fortunately, purslane is an alternative and, should be easier to grow.
It would be cool to have my own train tracks though.

Much thanks, milli grazi, merci beaucoup, viele dank, muchas gracias
and, all that sort of thing,

- Bill
Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

P.S. Again, I saw one bee (honey type) yesterday. We are heading into a
few overcast days and, some rain, so the weather guesser says.

On Tue, 01 May 2007 15:19:04 -0700, William Rose wrote:
good deduction on my location, 80 miles north of San Francisco in the
Redwoods, a temperate rain forest.

First set of foothills east side of the Willamette valley here. Similar but
non-equivalent climates. Redwoods do ok here, but they don't flourish. But
I probably can match you banana slug for banana slug. g Flax can be
weedy around here. But not in the shade of doug firs.

So here's the deal. I'm trying to grow flax for its' omega-3 fatty
acids. I bought flax seed marked omega because I thought that implied a
higher level of the omega-3s in the seeds
http://www.horizonherbs.com/group.asp?grp=45&pgNUM=4. Maybe it does but
the two varieties are both identified as Linum usitatissimum. Got any
idea how different a cultivar could be from its' genome in expressing
it's genetic traits?

Can I recast your question for you? I don't think you're asking what you
think you're asking.

What I think you're asking is basically, can cultivar A be quite different
from "generic species", and can cultivar A be quite different in some property
than cultivar B?Â*The answer to both of those questions is "yes". Consider,
for instance, wild common sunflower, Helianthus annuus. Smallish heads
on lanky plants with medium sized leaves. But from the wild plants were
selected a couple of types under heavy agronomic cultivation now: oil-seed
sunflowers generally look much like their wild prototypes -- multiple heads,
often kinda rangy looking plants, small seeds, but a lot more oil per seed and
per plant than the wild types. The other agronomic form is the
large-seeded form grown for confectionary use... the packaged snack sunflower
seeds. Seeds are relatively large, relatively low in oil, and heads are
much larger (and usually just one per plant) compared to the wild or oil
seed types. And then there are the decorative forms that have suddenly
become popular in horticultural circles, like the pink flowered sunflowers
or the "teddy bear" type cultivars.

You'll see exactly the same thing looking at most multi-purpose crops.
In flax, there are cultivars of Linum usitatissimum that make lovely,
strong bast fibers... they're the ones that are cultivated to make linen
from. Nobody really cares about the seed oil content of these, so chances
are it's around that of the wild type flaxes. Then there are the oil seed
types bred for linseed oil 50 or more years ago; high oil content, but I'd
expect the amount of linolenic acid (the major omega 3 fatty acid in flaxseed)
to be somewhat variable, because the breeders then were looking for gallons
of linseed oil per acre, and the presscake shouldn't actually kill animals
it was fed to g. The new push for high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids
probably caused breeders to go back and check the oil seed cultivars available,
and either market one with decent amounts of linoleic acid production as
"health food" or perhaps to breed especially for linolenic acid content.
I wouldn't expect oil seed flaxes to have nice strong fibers for making linen
fabric. Different cultivars, different genetic backgrounds, different
tissues and composition of plants.


My guess is that the "omega" seed they're offering is an oilseed type,
and may be selected for high linolenic acid. And the "brown flax seed"
they're offering at a lower cost is whatever they can get or produce cheap.
BUT, without an analysis, I'd be unwilling to state that their "omega" is
higher than their "brown flax seed" in linolenic acid content. They don't
actually state that their seed is the cultivar called 'Omega' in this
research report, and the form of the name they use is not what I'd expect
from an operation with plant breeders, but it may be the same. Or maybe
not. Anyhow, here's the research report mentioning 'Omega':
http://ag.montana.edu/warc/flax.htm -- it appears that there is a high
linolenic acid cultivar, with lighter-colored seed, called 'Omega'

Where would you go to find information on what cultivars are particularly
high in linolenic acid? You could try a google search with something like
[linolenic flax content seed], but I'd probably go to a couple of
other abstracting services -- PubMed for medically related data, and
Agricola for plant breeding, etc. and poke around for names of cultivars
and comparative data tables. I'd expect Agricola to be the richer source.
Pubmed is he http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?DB=pubmed
and Agricola is he http://agricola.nal.usda.gov/ (I'd search articles,
not books, first)

Once I got the names of some cultivars with the desired properties, I'd
try to find seed and see which grew well for me and which I could stand to
eat. g

More thoughts possibly irrelevant to your immediate question:
1) dark brown seeds tend to contain more flavonoids than light brown seeds.
We are all now being urged to get more dietary flavonoids for their
various antioxidant functions -- e.g., lutein, quercitin.
If you're hoping to do that at the same time, you probably want to pick
a darker seeded cultivar than 'Omega'. On the flip side, flavonoids are
pretty yucky tasting to most people, and do a wonderful job of binding
proteins. So ya pays your money and ya takes your chances on some of this
stuff.

2) Your actual question was "Got any
idea how different a cultivar could be from its' genome in
expressing it's genetic traits?" translates to me as a question that
I'd re-translate to English as "Can growing conditions make a plant do
something that's not within its genes?" And that gets to be a really
complex question that's still got a lot of research ahead of it. But right
now, the basic answer is "No." Phenotype, the plant characters we
can see, touch, taste, measure, etc. is the product of both the environment
and the genes within the individual. Genes sort of set the limits of what's
possible for the phenotype, but within those limits, environment plays
a big role in what we "see". For instance, if you grow a cherry tomato
plant in the best possible environment for producing tomatoes, with plenty
of light, the perfect temperatures, the perfect soil, the perfect amount
of soil nutrients, the perfect pH -- well, you're still going to be picking
cherry tomatoes off that plant. They might be a little bigger than
average, but they're not going to be two pounders like you might pick off
a 'Beefsteak' under the same conditions. Take that 'Beefsteak' seed and
plant it in poor conditions for tomato, and the tomatoes you get are unlikely
to be a couple of pounds each. In fact, under some really stressful
conditions, you might be picking what you think are cherry tomatoes.
But they're really 'Beefsteak', just really poorly grown 'Beefsteak'.
That's an example of environmental factors acting in concert with the
genome of an individual cultivar to produce plants that "look" different,
but are genetically the same. So another "gotcha" in your growing your
own high linolenic acid flax is that it may not produce as much linolenic
acid under your growing conditions as it does in a test plot in Montana.
Or North Dakota. Or where ever. Or it may produce more. Without an
analysis, you'll never really know.

And with that, I'll bid you good night... I've had a few too many short
nights and long days recently, and the quilts are calling to me... ;-)

Kay

In article ,
Kay Lancaster wrote:

Redwoods do ok here, but they don't flourish. But
I probably can match you banana slug for banana slug.

I'm just going to let my jaw hang here for a little while longer.

I mean, like, WOW and, SHAZAAM!!! I'm going to be picking-up pieces of
my mind for the next month.

I prostrate myself before your knowledge, oh master. Do you charge much
to let mortals worship at your feet?

Thank you, seems so insufficient.

It's hard to segue into something juvenile, after standing on the
mountain top, but my public expects it. Your only young once but, you
can be immature forever, ya know?

The redwoods extend from Monterey, California to southern Oregon. It
provides the perfect breeding grounds for that 9 inch, black and kaki,
wonder of the western world, THE BANANA SLUG. A gardener can't really
stomp one of these critters because you end up with leaves and pine
needles glued to the bottom of your boot for the next couple of days.
Our brightest minds pondered on the question of how to rid ourselves of
these pesky critters and a plan was devised. The cultural center of the
Russian River (soon to be Russian Creek) is Guerneville (A.k.a. Stump
Town [when it wasn't under water, {which it used to be at least once a
year} then it was called a flood but, that's another story] because that
was all that was left once the loggers had finished their labors.) holds
a yearly celebration of this magnificent gastropod call "Slug Fest". The
high light of this intellectual exposition, catered by local breweries
and wineries, is (hang on to your breakfast) a slug cook-off. The "best"
recipe wins.

Personally, I hide until all those pre-verts are outta town.

Strangely, this deviant behavior seems to be spreading. You Danish
speakers might enjoy
http://www.dr.dk/Regioner/Bornholm/T...1117111142.htm
mono-linguists can go to the English speaking sites that are listed.

Well, it was nice being on Mount Olympus but now I'm safely back to my
ol' familiar neighborhood.

Thank you again dear lady,

- Bill
Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

LMAO!

Gloria

"William Rose" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Kay Lancaster wrote:

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:37:47 -0700, William Rose
wrote:
Yes, wonderful. I as playing with the subject heading. I just want to
know if anyone has the vaguest idea of how to grow these plants and
what
requirements they have. Excuse me for being lazy and asking a gardening
question when it is manifestly obvious that I will have to look it up
myself. Your answer is completely correct and totally useless. You
don't
work for microsoft, do you.

No. You might, though, as you seem to have problems reading an entire
post.
To quote from my original post:

Plantago psyllium in the eastern US tends to grow along railroad
tracks, which
suggest that it's one that needs a lot of sunlight, and well
drained soil.
Doesn't seem to have been collected S of N. Carolina, either.

Flax is another dry, open place plant. Though it's amenable to
warm
conditions it likes full sun.

I doubt either species is going to like the conditions you offer.

Kay

Been down so long, it looks like up to me.

Thanks for the follow up. A facultative - obligatory question though.
Just because a plant grows in full sunlight, does that mean that it
can't grow in partial shade? I realize that this represents a spectrum
of possibilities but I think you get my meaning. If I'm just being dense
again, please point it out.
I'm on a slope and, I've just added sand to the garden to help with
drainage. I do live in a rain forest but the summers are bone dry in
California. As I see it, if I can run a railway track through my garden
I still have a shot at it:-)

Thanks again,
- Bill
Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

That was way more information that he needs.

Gloria

"Kay Lancaster" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 01 May 2007 15:19:04 -0700, William Rose
wrote:
good deduction on my location, 80 miles north of San Francisco in the
Redwoods, a temperate rain forest.

First set of foothills east side of the Willamette valley here. Similar
but
non-equivalent climates. Redwoods do ok here, but they don't flourish.
But
I probably can match you banana slug for banana slug. g Flax can be
weedy around here. But not in the shade of doug firs.

So here's the deal. I'm trying to grow flax for its' omega-3 fatty
acids. I bought flax seed marked omega because I thought that implied a
higher level of the omega-3s in the seeds
http://www.horizonherbs.com/group.asp?grp=45&pgNUM=4. Maybe it does but
the two varieties are both identified as Linum usitatissimum. Got any
idea how different a cultivar could be from its' genome in expressing
it's genetic traits?

Can I recast your question for you? I don't think you're asking what you
think you're asking.

What I think you're asking is basically, can cultivar A be quite different
from "generic species", and can cultivar A be quite different in some
property
than cultivar B? The answer to both of those questions is "yes".
Consider,
for instance, wild common sunflower, Helianthus annuus. Smallish heads
on lanky plants with medium sized leaves. But from the wild plants were
selected a couple of types under heavy agronomic cultivation now: oil-seed
sunflowers generally look much like their wild prototypes -- multiple
heads,
often kinda rangy looking plants, small seeds, but a lot more oil per seed
and
per plant than the wild types. The other agronomic form is the
large-seeded form grown for confectionary use... the packaged snack
sunflower
seeds. Seeds are relatively large, relatively low in oil, and heads are
much larger (and usually just one per plant) compared to the wild or oil
seed types. And then there are the decorative forms that have suddenly
become popular in horticultural circles, like the pink flowered sunflowers
or the "teddy bear" type cultivars.

You'll see exactly the same thing looking at most multi-purpose crops.
In flax, there are cultivars of Linum usitatissimum that make lovely,
strong bast fibers... they're the ones that are cultivated to make linen
from. Nobody really cares about the seed oil content of these, so chances
are it's around that of the wild type flaxes. Then there are the oil seed
types bred for linseed oil 50 or more years ago; high oil content, but I'd
expect the amount of linolenic acid (the major omega 3 fatty acid in
flaxseed)
to be somewhat variable, because the breeders then were looking for
gallons
of linseed oil per acre, and the presscake shouldn't actually kill animals
it was fed to g. The new push for high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids
probably caused breeders to go back and check the oil seed cultivars
available,
and either market one with decent amounts of linoleic acid production as
"health food" or perhaps to breed especially for linolenic acid content.
I wouldn't expect oil seed flaxes to have nice strong fibers for making
linen
fabric. Different cultivars, different genetic backgrounds, different
tissues and composition of plants.


My guess is that the "omega" seed they're offering is an oilseed type,
and may be selected for high linolenic acid. And the "brown flax seed"
they're offering at a lower cost is whatever they can get or produce
cheap.
BUT, without an analysis, I'd be unwilling to state that their "omega" is
higher than their "brown flax seed" in linolenic acid content. They don't
actually state that their seed is the cultivar called 'Omega' in this
research report, and the form of the name they use is not what I'd expect
from an operation with plant breeders, but it may be the same. Or maybe
not. Anyhow, here's the research report mentioning 'Omega':
http://ag.montana.edu/warc/flax.htm -- it appears that there is a high
linolenic acid cultivar, with lighter-colored seed, called 'Omega'

Where would you go to find information on what cultivars are particularly
high in linolenic acid? You could try a google search with something like
[linolenic flax content seed], but I'd probably go to a couple of
other abstracting services -- PubMed for medically related data, and
Agricola for plant breeding, etc. and poke around for names of cultivars
and comparative data tables. I'd expect Agricola to be the richer source.
Pubmed is he http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?DB=pubmed
and Agricola is he http://agricola.nal.usda.gov/ (I'd search articles,
not books, first)

Once I got the names of some cultivars with the desired properties, I'd
try to find seed and see which grew well for me and which I could stand to
eat. g

More thoughts possibly irrelevant to your immediate question:
1) dark brown seeds tend to contain more flavonoids than light brown
seeds.
We are all now being urged to get more dietary flavonoids for their
various antioxidant functions -- e.g., lutein, quercitin.
If you're hoping to do that at the same time, you probably want to pick
a darker seeded cultivar than 'Omega'. On the flip side, flavonoids are
pretty yucky tasting to most people, and do a wonderful job of binding
proteins. So ya pays your money and ya takes your chances on some of this
stuff.

2) Your actual question was "Got any
idea how different a cultivar could be from its' genome in
expressing it's genetic traits?" translates to me as a question that
I'd re-translate to English as "Can growing conditions make a plant do
something that's not within its genes?" And that gets to be a really
complex question that's still got a lot of research ahead of it. But
right
now, the basic answer is "No." Phenotype, the plant characters we
can see, touch, taste, measure, etc. is the product of both the
environment
and the genes within the individual. Genes sort of set the limits of
what's
possible for the phenotype, but within those limits, environment plays
a big role in what we "see". For instance, if you grow a cherry tomato
plant in the best possible environment for producing tomatoes, with plenty
of light, the perfect temperatures, the perfect soil, the perfect amount
of soil nutrients, the perfect pH -- well, you're still going to be
picking
cherry tomatoes off that plant. They might be a little bigger than
average, but they're not going to be two pounders like you might pick off
a 'Beefsteak' under the same conditions. Take that 'Beefsteak' seed and
plant it in poor conditions for tomato, and the tomatoes you get are
unlikely
to be a couple of pounds each. In fact, under some really stressful
conditions, you might be picking what you think are cherry tomatoes.
But they're really 'Beefsteak', just really poorly grown 'Beefsteak'.
That's an example of environmental factors acting in concert with the
genome of an individual cultivar to produce plants that "look" different,
but are genetically the same. So another "gotcha" in your growing your
own high linolenic acid flax is that it may not produce as much linolenic
acid under your growing conditions as it does in a test plot in Montana.
Or North Dakota. Or where ever. Or it may produce more. Without an
analysis, you'll never really know.

And with that, I'll bid you good night... I've had a few too many short
nights and long days recently, and the quilts are calling to me... ;-)

Kay