Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote > > If you mean Callicarpa americana (aka French mulberries), they're not > real mulberries (Morus alba) and they're not French (native to > Texas),
Really. Well, maybe I'm not as smart as I like to think I am. I had assumed they were native to south america or somewhere like that. We have a large amount of introduced wildlife that came from south america. > but it seems they do produce fruit. Perhaps the reason I've never seen these trees produce any fruit is that they're all clones of one tree. In 20 years of doing battle with the mulberry trees on my mother's land I've never seen them produce so much as one single berry. > Morus alba's a great energy tree. Great everything tree. Have a look > at this - it might give you some ideas for the French mulberries: > http://journeytoforever.org/edu_silk_mulberry.html > Mulberry trees Looking at the links, it seems I've reinvented the wheel again. With all of this raw material to work with, perhaps I can make my own tapa cloth or paper. > Re cattails, check this out: > http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/Typha.html > Typha ssp. Oh, I know cat tails can be really useful plants. The real problem with Cat Tails here in Florida happens when they get where they're not supposed to be. There are areas of the Everglades in which biodiversity has been practically wiped out by cat tails. One researcher made the observation "If we don't find some way to stop them then in a hundred years the Everglades will be an endless monoculture of cat tails." > Kudzu is excellent fodder for grazing animals, high protein, better > than alfalfa and more productive. My mother did some experimenting with Kudzu as people food, when she found out that people eat it in the East. Being a biologist with a farming background, my mother is always looking for potential new food crops. She says the tubers, when cooked, taste something like beans. > It's a legume and fixes a lot of N - generally a soil improver. That is one good thing I will say about the stuff it really _does_ improve the soil. > The > best way to eradicate it is to turn it into, first, beef, and second, > pork. After the cattle are done, the pigs will root the rest out in > search of the tubers, both animals manuring the land as they go. That would indeed be a good way of enriching the soil. I wonder if any organic farmers have used it that way for their fallow fields. The problem here is that people are not allowed to keep "farm animals" in an urban environment. That's how I got started on this whole thing. Mulberries and Kudzu are growing all over my mother's quarter acre in Clearwater, and the wankers from Code Enforcement cited her for "unintended growth". > Americans and also > Australians it seem to hate the stuff, but where I've seen it growing > wild in the East it has not been much of a pest. The problem here is that where there is nothing to eat it kudzu grows so fast that it will swallow areas quickly. The problem I have with it is that it's another introduced species that will outcompete our native flora. > I've never heard it > referred to as a pest here. Kudzu should be a good energy crop, but I > can't find any references. I can see how it'd be a good energy crop because it grows so fast, but the problem would be harvesting it. Since it's a vine which clings to everything in its path you'd have to grow it on some kind of supporting structure which might make machine harvesting difficult. Harvest it, then shred it and pelletize it, and leave the root stock for the next crop. -- Aviation is more than a hobby. It is more than a job. It is more than a career. Aviation is a way of life. A second language for the world: www.esperanto.org Processor cycles are a terrible thing to waste. www.distributed.net Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
