I grew up the Cheviots of Northumberland. I was depressed at the poor
living that the land provided. There is a large amount of such land in
Britain. How could we do better?

One of the reasons why such land is so little use is that main crops
we might grow on it are really Mediterranean plants. Of the main
cereals, wheat, barley, rye, only oats can just about manage, and then
not well enough to compete with oats grown in more favourable
conditions. Most other crops are also outside their range. Maize is
classically a hot country crop.

So could we develop plants which are native to this climate into
crops? They don't have to be grasses, it is historical accident that
the classic four, wheat, barley, rye, and oats are grasses. I am
particularly impressed by the possibilities of some sedges. They have
good seed heads, and they should also be good grazing, but my
imagination has been seized by the possibilities of a tree crop.

I wasted too many years trying to graft hazel onto grey alder, Alnus
incana, before accepting that it is true what the textbooks say, they
are too far apart to be grafted.

A tree crop may seem a radical idea, but actually there are plenty of
tree crops. Apples, oranges, bananas, dates, etc., but you will notice
one thing about this list: They all bear FRUITS. That is to say, a
soft, wet thing, usually eaten raw and with poor keeping qualities. To
have a tree producing a GRAIN, a hard, dry thing, not usually eaten
raw, but suitable for making bread pasta, etc., and with good keeping
qualities, is indeed a new thing. Good keeping qualities has a big
bearing on marketing, and we just couldn't eat all of a fruit which
was so widely grown. A tree crop has some other useful
charisteristics: It does not need the land to be ploughed every year,
and the fuel used in plowing costs a lot of money and releases a lot
of carbon, and that the tree is a perennial gives it year-to-year
reliability.

So, I took up the idea of alders. They grow in our climate, they are
nitrogen fixers (a Holy Grail in agriculture), they are not very big
trees like the Sycamore, which also grows on high land, and they cast
a light shadow, so a sheep pasture can exist beneath them. Farmers
like to hedge their bets, and with the nitrogen fixing and the
shelter, the pasture should be a lot better.

I am undecided between the Alder, Alnus glutinosa, and the Grey Alder,
Alnus incana. In favour of the Grey Alder, it can be said that it
grows higher and doesn't need water so much. But the choice may be
taken out of my hands by other factors.

The seeds can be harvested by a machine which drives up to each tree
trunk, spreads canvas "wings" beneath the tree, clasps the trunk and
shakes it.

Why can't Alder be used as it is? Mostly because the seeds are too
small. No doubt many shortcoming exist, and can be overcome, but seed
size is undoubtedly the big one.

One doubt which will have to be overcome is "What are the milling,
cooking, and eating properties of Alder seeds"? We just don't know
yet!

When breeders want to develop a trait, there are two methods they use;

1) Produce mutations buy feeding base analogues and breeding from
plants showing changes in the direction wanted. It takes patience and
YEARS.

2) Look for plants in the wild which have the wanted change. Breeding
work from these still has to be done, but it will cut out a lot of
time and work.

And that is what I would be grateful for. If any of you can provide me
with samples of Alder which have bigger (and therefore fewer) seeds, I
would be most grateful. The cones are likely to look different from a
distance.

I would also be grateful to be put in touch with anybody who takes a
special interest in Alder.

Michael Bell

--

In article ,
Michael Bell writes:
|
| A tree crop may seem a radical idea, but actually there are plenty of
| tree crops. Apples, oranges, bananas, dates, etc., but you will notice
| one thing about this list: They all bear FRUITS. That is to say, a
| soft, wet thing, usually eaten raw and with poor keeping qualities. To
| have a tree producing a GRAIN, a hard, dry thing, not usually eaten
| raw, but suitable for making bread pasta, etc., and with good keeping
| qualities, is indeed a new thing. ...

There are fair number of tropical trees with those properties, and
chestnut also counts (though it is another southern plant). Chestnut
flour was a staple once, though not here. Sorry - there's nothing
new under the sun!

Another one that was commonly eaten in neolithic times is fat hen
(goosefoot, orache, Chenopodium album). The leaves make an excellent
alternative to spinach, but are a bit small (which would be easy to
change by breeding) and the seeds are edible, a bit like buckwheat to
taste, and fairly easy to harvest (again, they could be bred for
simultaneous ripening and not falling when ripe). But they may be
oily, not starchy.

There are several hardy plants with starchy roots, including reed
mace and bracken. The former apparently tastes ghastly, and the
latter contains a carcinogen - but several of our food crops have
been bred for low toxin levels.

| One doubt which will have to be overcome is "What are the milling,
| cooking, and eating properties of Alder seeds"? We just don't know
| yet!

Well, you could try that even with existing seeds. I did with fat
hen!


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

On 21/1/08 09:56, in article , "Nick
Maclaren" wrote:


In article ,
Michael Bell writes:
|
| A tree crop may seem a radical idea, but actually there are plenty of
| tree crops. Apples, oranges, bananas, dates, etc., but you will notice
| one thing about this list: They all bear FRUITS. That is to say, a
| soft, wet thing, usually eaten raw and with poor keeping qualities. To
| have a tree producing a GRAIN, a hard, dry thing, not usually eaten
| raw, but suitable for making bread pasta, etc., and with good keeping
| qualities, is indeed a new thing. ...

There are fair number of tropical trees with those properties, and
chestnut also counts (though it is another southern plant). Chestnut
flour was a staple once, though not here. Sorry - there's nothing
new under the sun!

Another one that was commonly eaten in neolithic times is fat hen
(goosefoot, orache, Chenopodium album). The leaves make an excellent
alternative to spinach, but are a bit small (which would be easy to
change by breeding) and the seeds are edible, a bit like buckwheat to
taste, and fairly easy to harvest (again, they could be bred for
simultaneous ripening and not falling when ripe). But they may be
oily, not starchy.

There are several hardy plants with starchy roots, including reed
mace and bracken. The former apparently tastes ghastly, and the
latter contains a carcinogen - but several of our food crops have
been bred for low toxin levels.

| One doubt which will have to be overcome is "What are the milling,
| cooking, and eating properties of Alder seeds"? We just don't know
| yet!

Well, you could try that even with existing seeds. I did with fat
hen!


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

This might be of iinterest, too
http://www.pfaf.org/database/index.php


--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove weeds from address)
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'

May I suggest you read "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond, which looks at the history of why certain areas of the world developed before other areas, including in particular the development of agriculture. Might help you to realise why certain things succeed and other things fail.

In terms of the grasses, hunter-gatherers went out picking seeds off grasses. But only those grasses that had palatable seeds, and which had a large enough yield to be worthwhile. They preferentially picked the larger seeds. They preferentially picked seeds that didn't fall off as soon as they were ripe (as was the generally the biological tendency of the species), because otherwise they would not have been there to pick them. They dropped a few on the way home, so that quite by accident they found themselves growing them near home, and accidentally selecting them for desirable properties. Why did those Middle Eastern crops come to dominate - because those are the crops that automatically selected themselves for being suitable. The Americas only had one grass species with those suitable properties, which is now Maize, whereas the Middle East had 4 in a small area. Yes, the Canadians have "wild rice", but it doesn't lend itself to agriculture to the same degree. I think there is one British native species of grass with a reasonable yield of seed, I did know what it is but I've forgotten what, perhaps carex elata. Small seed size isn't necessarily a problem, the Ethiopian/Somali staple is teff, and that has tiny seeds.

Edibility is going to be crucial. Nile Perch were introduced to Lake Victoria, which was a disaster because the local people didn't like the taste. Reforming the agricultural sector in Madagascar is a huge headache because the population, substantially of SE Asian extraction, think that rice is the only thing to eat, yet much of the country is much more suited to to maize, wheat, etc. You need your alder seeds to be so edible that they fetch a premium price. The yield of a tree is clearly going to be less than the yield of a grass, because a tree puts a lot of energy and biomass into the wood. So unless you get a premium price, you aren't going to earn enough money per acre. Especially with the higher cost of harvesting from a tree. What do olives and hazelnuts and the like cost in comparison to cereals? Olive oil costs a lot more to produce than corn oil and sunflower oil and rape-seed oil. Palm oil is cheaper, but a palm isn't really a tree, and tropical conditions ensure high productivity. Probably your alder will only add up if you also crop the wood for some purpose. What can alder wood be used for?

PFAF says Alnus glutinosa is a potential wood-fuel crop in suitable conditions, but gives it an edibility rating of 0. It says Alnus incana is a suitable wood-working crop (but what price does it get in comparison to, say, ash or beech or oak or birch?) and has an edibility rating of 0.

Maybe you can discover this edibility rating is wrong, but you have an uphill battle. I know alder have substantial "cones" (but not the kind of cones that conifers have, really a fruit). In fact looking down various alder species on PFAF I find no one bothering to try eating the seeds. I find native americans eating the catkins of Alnus rubra. Perhaps the seeds inside the cones are really small and not worth the bother. Perhaps this is all a bit like proposing to grow carrots or cabbages in order to eat the seeds.

The obvious example of a British native tree which is used as a seed crop is hazel, you have thought of that already.

A foreign tree which grows well in Britain, thrives on moist acid soils, and was used a seed crop by the natives is Monkey puzzle, Araucaria araucana. It has seeds that are the size of chestnuts. It is also excellent timber, which is why there is so little left in native areas. But it is very slow growing, which is why it isn' t being replanted. The related Araucaria angustifolia is used similarly and grows much faster, but is probably only hardy in the mildest corners of Britain, being from Brazil. Since it is quite uncommon for people to grow groves of monkey puzzles in Britain, which is what you need to get any seed, I have no idea whether British conditions produce good seed or not. The seed cases are very tough. Typically you have to boil them in a pressure cooker for a period to cook them and soften the cases to get them off. I tried this without a pressure cooker, cooked them for 4 hours, and found getting the cases off an awful job, I shredded my hands. The product was rather like chestnut. The trees are dioecious (male and female), and take at least 30 years to come to maturity. Even in Chile, pinones are a novelty crop today, no longer the staple diet of Puenche.

Another major tree seed crop from climates comparable to ours is Pinus koraiensis, Korean pine. This tree is the main producer of pine-nuts in the world. It grows not just in Korea but eastern russia, up to 2600m, so it is very hardy. It grows in poor, acid mountain soils. But it needs it to be very well-drained. I'm trying to grow one on the garden, hoping to get some nuts one day on the suggestion that it is partially self-fertile. It is now about 7 years old and so far all the cones have fallen off before ripening. But mine is growing very slowly, but then I'm growing a decorative garden cultivar which grows much more slowly than the species.

In article ,
echinosum writes:
|
| The yield of a tree is
| clearly going to be less than the yield of a grass, because a tree puts
| a lot of energy and biomass into the wood.

That is not true. Annuals have to rebuild the entirety of their biomass
every year, and woody plants don't. The biomass of the wood can be
mortgaged over centuries, and has a certain value in itself.

| So unless you get a premium
| price, you aren't going to earn enough money per acre. Especially with
| the higher cost of harvesting from a tree.

The majority of the uplands of the UK will not support the high-margin
crops, so you earn NO money by growing them there. And the cost is not
necessarily high.

| PFAF says Alnus glutinosa is a potential wood-fuel crop in suitable
| conditions, but gives it an edibility rating of 0. It says Alnus incana
| is a suitable wood-working crop (but what price does it get in
| comparison to, say, ash or beech or oak or birch?) and has an edibility
| rating of 0.

You can grow fungi on it and eat them.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In article ,
says...

In article ,
echinosum writes:
|
| The yield of a tree is
| clearly going to be less than the yield of a grass, because a tree puts
| a lot of energy and biomass into the wood.

That is not true. Annuals have to rebuild the entirety of their biomass
every year, and woody plants don't. The biomass of the wood can be
mortgaged over centuries, and has a certain value in itself.

| So unless you get a premium
| price, you aren't going to earn enough money per acre. Especially with
| the higher cost of harvesting from a tree.

The majority of the uplands of the UK will not support the high-margin
crops, so you earn NO money by growing them there. And the cost is not
necessarily high.

| PFAF says Alnus glutinosa is a potential wood-fuel crop in suitable
| conditions, but gives it an edibility rating of 0. It says Alnus incana
| is a suitable wood-working crop (but what price does it get in
| comparison to, say, ash or beech or oak or birch?) and has an edibility
| rating of 0.

You can grow fungi on it and eat them.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

The thing that struck me (knowing nothing about Alder seeds and their
edibility) was what rotten fire wood Alder makes!
--
Charlie Pridham, Gardening in Cornwall
www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of national collections of Clematis viticella cultivars and
Lapageria rosea