Images from the PLANTBANK residency

Today is Tuesday and I leave PLANTBANK on Friday, May 9th so it has been an intensely busy period. I've been recording the days on my Facebook page : Homage to the Seed and on Instagram.

This is the photo feed from FB.  You will need to refer to May, 2014 for the appropriate images if you are reading this after May, 2014.

An introduction to the PLANTBANK Residency

In 2008 I bought a Mac Desktop computer and really for the first time started documenting images reasonably successfully, and frequently. In May 2009 I started blogging at Visual Eclectica and that PLUS getting onto a Mac computer, which gradually I could navigate with ease, represented a revolution in a sense for my Art Practice.

From a painter normally surrounded by canvases and works on paper, unceasingly productive whenever circumstances allowed, I gradually shifted the focus of my art practice so that writing became more public, articulating ideas and influences, researching and in time, further developing the Homage to the seed project after its launch in 2010 for a Residency at Brisbane Botanic Gardens.

Interactions particularly ... and research ... shaped what I investigated, how and when... and gradually that morphed into whole new chapters and directions, all within the Homage to the Seed project.

Why I mention this is to highlight the fact that whilst photography has long been a process of documentation for me .... its never been an art form in that I never took it seriously as a way for me to express what I wanted to say.

I've been surprised when positive comments were made about some images in the last few years  because it actually forced me to reflect on what one is doing when one photographs. As a painter I am not drawn to replicate everyday reality. My paintings invariably lean to abstraction no matter the starting point. Aesthetically I like nature to appear dusty and raw... seeds are often dusty and can easily disintegrate over time. Creating highly polished renditions never seemed to make all that much sense to me as a way of interpreting material as art work.

Scientifically speaking  Botanical Illustration makes absolute sense and can certainly be perceived as very beautiful or remarkable in its own right. And without doubt they can be artworks of great integrity. But personally I am pulled to a different journey in responding to seed material... be it pods, capsules, seeds and interpretations via micro imagery, drawings or photos.

At times though favouring abstract painting over photographing and drawing seeds has seemed at odds with something I very much like to do... and that is showcase the extraordinary diversity of seed forms. But back in the studio there are compering demands on my time and focus and without the availability of what I can access at a place like this the

On this residency the Microscopy Room has been like a voyage to another world ... one that I've been hoping to visit for some time. There is a lot more I could say about what this has given me but this in not the time as I have a painting in progress.

Two processes available in this room are the X-ray machine and Micro-imaging computer. I have worked on both finding X-raying seeds brought the best results to date. It takes time however and I made only a rudimentary start n the Micro-imaging.

This eucalyptus species, Eucalyptus erythrocorys , was the perfect example of a seed that at first glance seems quite ordinary. 100's of seeds fall from each capsule and its only when gathered up in a petrie dish like below... that one begins to notice each seed look different to the naked eye... size and shape vary a great deal. Three dimensional, the complexity is obvious under the microscope... but under the x-ray machine something even more fascinating can be observed.

These are the x-rays  of this same seed ...

In this image I was reminded how well over-lapping works

so made a point of crowding the seeds together in the petrie dish for this next image

...  then focused in and altered the back and white contrast tabs, using my iPhone camera to take a large series of variations and close-ups in preference to using the machine to capture images and slowly save each one... one at a time.

This imagery lends itself beautifully to artistic interpretation. It already has the appearance of a beautifully rendered tonal drawing.

I will be downloading more images soon... Ive taken 100's.  Until then you can go to Facebook for updates on this residency.  

Sophie

Use of genetic diversity to adapt crops to human needs is as old as the Neolithic revolution

OPEN ACCESS PEER-REVIEWED

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Global Ex-Situ Crop Diversity Conservation and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault: Assessing the Current Status

• Ola T. Westengen mail,
 
• Simon Jeppson,
 
• Luigi Guarino

Sophie Munns : Today I am sharing the Introduction to an article well worth reading if you wish to understand more on this topic. 

"The use of genetic diversity to adapt crops to human needs is as old as the Neolithic revolution[1]. In the 1920s the Russian geneticist and botanist Nicolai Vavilov started systematically collecting and conserving genetic diversity as a resource for crop breeding, making ex-situ (off-site) conservation part of the agricultural R&D system [2]. Crops producing seeds that can be conserved at low relative humidity and low temperature (orthodox seeds) are now commonly conserved ex-situ in genebanks. The two-fold rationale for genebanks is, on the one hand, to conserve diversity that is threatened in-situ (in farmers' fields or in the wild) and, on the other hand, to make genetic resources accessible to users [3]. In the 1930s, the barley breeder Harry V. Harlan was among the first to sound the alarm on genetic erosion of crop genetic resources[4], and, in 1967, a conference in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) initiated what has become the genetic resources movement [5]. In the early 1970s, other hallmark conferences laid out practical action plans for the FAO and the Consultative Group on Agricultural Research (CGIAR) to establish an international network of conservation activities and genebanks [6], [7]. While the initial focus was on establishing a small number of genebanks with a global mandate, the FAO currently reports that there are 1750 genebanks around the world [8]. Precarious funding, in combination with less than perfect collaboration and coordination among genebanks, has called into question the ability of many of these facilities to ensure long-term conservation, and genetic erosion inside genebanks has become a major concern [8], [9]. The need for proper safety duplication of the world's unique crop genetic resources is therefore an important international priority [8], [10], [11]."

Cary Fowler, former Executive Director of Global Crop Diversity Trust

Photograph by Jim Richardson, National Geographic

"The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was established with the “objective to provide a safety net for the international conservation system of plant genetic resources, and to contribute to the securing of the maximum amount of plant genetic diversity of importance to humanity for the long term in accordance with the latest scientific knowledge and most appropriate techniques”[12].The Seed Vault is managed in partnership by the Government of Norway, the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen) and the Global Crop Diversity Trust (the Trust). NordGen is a public regional institute supported by the governments of the Nordic countries, and the Trust an independent international organization based in Bonn, Germany. The Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food is the legally responsible authority for the Seed Vault, and its operation is overseen by an International Advisory Council consisting of international technical and policy experts representing, among others, the FAO, national genebanks, the CGIAR and the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA). The Seed Vault provides free-of-charge, long-term storage of duplicates from genebanks around the world and works as an insurance policy against incremental or catastrophic loss of the original collections (Fig. 1). The international community has called for an effective, efficient and sustainable global system to conserve Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (PGRFA) in the Global Plan of Action for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (GPA) [13], [14] and the ITPGRFA [15]. The Seed Vault has, in its five years of operation, become a cornerstone in the global system emerging from within this international policy and legal framework, and good progress has been made towards the target of duplicating all the distinct accessions of PGRFA conserved as orthodox seeds around the world. At its fifth anniversary in February 2013, the collection stood at 774,601 seed samples, originating from 95% of the 193 UN member states. All seed samples are safety duplicates of accessions already stored in conventional genebanks, with 53 genebanks having deposited material so far (Fig. 2)."

To read more on this, + view images and graphs go to ARTICLE.

At the conclusion is this:

Symbol for the larger cause

The Seed Vault has gained considerable international media attention and even fame [40]. We believe that media reports, though occasionally inaccurate, have contributed to increased public awareness about the importance of crop diversity. While conservation of genetic resources has been part of the environmental movement since the seminal UN conference on the human environment held in Stockholm in 1972, it has often been overshadowed by other issues. The Seed Vault has contributed towards raising the profile of this issue on the broader environmental and food security agenda. In the words of the late Nobel Laureate, Wangari Maathai: “The significant public interest in the seed vault project indicates that collectively we are changing the way we think about environmental conservation. We now understand that along with international movements to save endangered species and the rainforests of the world, it is just as important for us to conserve the diversity of the world's crops for future generations.” The Seed vault is not a panacea for securing the future's food supply, but it is an important element in safely conserving the genetic resources necessary for agricultural development. As the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on the occasion of his visit in the Seed Vault in 2009: “Sustainable food production may not begin in this cold arctic environment, but it does begin by conserving crop diversity.”

In light of the huge media attention directed towards the Seed Vault, it is important to stress that it only makes sense as a part of a global conservation system. The conventional genebanks spread around the world are doing the essential job of conserving, regenerating, multiplying and distributing seeds to those that use them for applied and basic research for agricultural development and increased food security. The Seed Vault is, on the one hand, a high-profile environment and development project and, on the other, a low-tech practical solution increasingly serving a basic global need for the safety duplication of seeds held in conventional genebanks, as documented in our analyses. There are important synergies between these two aspects, and the Seed Vault plays an important symbolic role for enhanced integration and cooperation in the global ex-situ conservation efforts.

You might also like to read more of this article below from National Geographic:

Food Ark

A crisis is looming: To feed our growing population, we’ll need to double food production. Yet crop yields aren’t increasing fast enough, and climate change and new diseases threaten the limited varieties we’ve come to depend on for food. Luckily we still have the seeds and breeds to ensure our future food supply—but we must take steps to save them.

By Charles Siebert

It took more than 10,000 years of domestication for humans to create the vast biodiversity in our food supply that we're now watching ebb away. Selectively breeding a wild plant or animal species for certain desirable traits began as a fitful process of trial and error motivated by that age-old imperative: hunger. Wild wheat, for example, drops its ripened kernels to the ground, or shatters, so that the plant can reseed itself. Early farmers selected out wheat that, due to a random genetic mutation, didn't shatter and was thus ideal for harvesting. 

Up-coming Residency at PLANTBANK.

In Late April I will take up a two week residency at PLANTBANK at The Australian Botanic Garden south west of Sydney, NSW.

Plantbank

 

The Australian PlantBank The Australian PlantBank is a science and research facility of the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust and is located at the Australian Botanic Garden, Mount Annan. It houses the Trust's seedbank and research laboratories that specialise in horticultural research and conservation of Australian native plant species, particularly those from New South Wales. Click here to read much more about this fascinating facility which opened in November 2013 and is a partner project with the KEW Millennium Seedbank in the UK where I did a 3 weeks residency in October 2012. One of the projects I will be following up there is: Rainforest seed project - a project to save rainforest species, our most vulnerable resource  * Read more here. Images all from the PLantbank site! This will be a very tight time frame in which to achieve all that I hope to do... research, documentation,      photos will all be crucial for taking away material I can follow throughout  on back at home. However I felt it would be better to aim for 2 periods of two week residencies so I can make the most of the available resources! Watch this space for more information. In order to cover expenses I am holding a weekend OPEN STUDIO event April 12 and 13. I'll be posting information on that here and at other sites over the next 10 days. Contact me here for direct information! Cheers,       Sophie

bread

So much has been written about bread... so much history, such a variety of grains, across so many cultures... so many traditions, recipes and variations of recipes.

Its hugely political for a host of reasons ... debate rages over seeds and copyright, seed sovereignty, costs and availability, health properties, what's in the bread and how its made, who's missing out on their daily bread, and why!

There are updates coming in as to where bread-making might have begun and for how long humans have been cultivating grain for flour to be used for bread-making.

Now we have Molecular research adding layers of knowledge... and bringing more debate... and then there's the archeological research spectrum. There's a museum for bread and certainly the popularity of bread has not waned so much as been challenged for the fact it is not everyone's best friend!

In the West we thought we could rid ourselves of labour by having our bread come from huge factories. Sliced and ready. Well it speeded things up but it took away taste and nutrition too.

Some, by necessity or choice, make their own bread or if able to afford the option, buy from artisans bringing us quality breads. We've often tasted breads from around the world and delighted in leaving behind some of the more bland offerings that might have shaped our childhoods, if we could. 

What is your daily bread?  Where do the grains come from?  Do you know whats happening with seeds and 'wild relatives'? 

In my new book in planning I want to bring some focus to the place of bread in our lives. Its a big story... and there is plenty to think about!

May the seeds you've planted bring forth abundance in 2013!

Allocasuarina duncanii germinating on 1% Agar at the Tasmanian Seed Conservation Centre. Allocasuarina do not shed seeds but winged fruits called samara. These usually contain a single seed but occasionally you get two sprouting from a single fruit.

Allocasuarina duncanii twins by Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens on Flickr

what seeds have you planted for 2013?

I've been reflecting hugely on my work on the 'homage to the seed' project as 2012 came to an end and 2013 begins to unfold. Its a project of many parts really. First and foremost I draw, paint and make work out of the musing and research I do on seeds.

Ive been writing about this and weighing up my direction and projects within the project.  More on this in posts to come!

On a different tangent I've been following the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog for some time, recently posting on their work. Scanning their blog tonight I found articles I wish to share... and this statement under "about" first-off.

"Separated by half a world but united by their passion for agricultural biodiversity and the internet, Luigi Guarino and Jeremy Cherfas decided to create a space that would allow them to indulge their passions and maybe do some good. This blog is it.

Our aim is to collect in one place anything we find on the internet that relates somehow to the notion of agricultural biodiversity (or agrobiodiversity, though we don’t particularly like the word), a big tent but one that the whole of humanity shelters beneath. If that helps others to find things of interest, so much the better."

I noted this new year's resolution at their blog:

New Year Resolution No. 8: Disengage from the whole are-GMOs-good-or-bad? thing. It’s the wrong question, and nobody is listening anyhow.

That took me to the Nature Education KNOWLEDGE PROJECT:

History of Agricultural Biotechnology: How Crop Development has Evolved

By: Wieczorek Ania (Dept of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Hi at Manoa) & Wright Mark (Dept of Plant and Env Protection Sciences, University of Hi at Manoa) © 2012 Nature Education 

Citation: Wieczorek, A. M. & Wright, M. G. (2012) History of Agricultural Biotechnology: How Crop Development has Evolved. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):9

Soil: The Foundation of Agriculture

By: Sanjai J. Parikh (Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, University of California, Davis) & Bruce R. James (Department of Environmental Science and Technology, University of Maryland, College Park.) © 2012 Nature Education 

Citation: Parikh, S. J. & James, B. R. (2012) Soil: The Foundation of Agriculture. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):2

•  |  Lead Editor:  Sanjai J. Parikh

SOIL, AGRICULTURE, AND AGRICULTURAL BIOTECHNOLOGY

Sustainable Agriculture

By: Brodt Sonja (UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program and Agricultural Sustainability Institute), Six Johan (Department of Plant Sciences, UC), Feenstra Gail (UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program and Agricultural Sustainability Institute), Ingels Chuck (University of California Cooperative Extension, Sacramento County) & Campbell David (Department of Human and Community Development, UC) © 2011 Nature Education 

Citation: Brodt, S., Six, J., Feenstra, G., Ingels, C. & Campbell, D. (2011) Sustainable Agriculture. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):1

There's some serious reading in those links... and important things to consider!

I'll finish with this pdf I put together from photos taken straight from the TV screening of David Attenborough's Kingdom of Plants in November last year of ABC TV. Its a 3-part series and during the final show there was a brief overview of the Kew Garden's Millennium Seedbank Partnership.

I was excited to see Attenborough tell the story of a plant I had been fascinated by in the greenhouse during my three week residency in 2011 onsite at the Seedbank. 

Also filmed was Wolfgang Stuppy who'd been my contact person at the MSB. As a seed morphologist he is often called on to talk about the work being done onsite and to explain the world of seeds.

New posts at my Visual Eclectica blog and Studio Archives blog refer to early 2013 plans... its off to a very busy start in terms of prep for an exhibition and other projects to come whilst also traversing a major life change involving selling a home and finding a new residence.

If I'm a bit absent from the blogs in the coming months you'll know why!

cheerio till next time!
Sophie

Samara... newsletter of the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership

Last week I reblogged an excellent post from the Millennium Seedbank Blog here . This week I'm sharing the MSB Newsletter SAMARA ... available online and in several languages going back over a number of years. With partnerships all around the world articles in this newsletter cover a lot of ground and make for interesting reading... and not just for specialists necessarily.

Samara

The newsletter of the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership

From website: "Samara aims to provide information, and inspiration for MSBP partners and a flavour of the successes of the Partnership for other interested recipients. It is available as a pdf.

Read the Latest issue here.

The seed pods have a ‘wing’ making them
a ‘dorsal samara’ type of seed moctar )

2004 Samara

2002 Samara

in the lab: Kew.org



documenting material: Kew.org



2005 Samara

Seed Morphologist Wolfgang Stuppy on Nuts!

Wolfgang Stuppy's posts on the Millennium Seed Bank blog are always worth reading but this post will surprise many who may never have seen how cashews grow, nor read about this much loved nut.

All text and images are the IP of Stuppy and KEW Millennium Seed Bank. I have reblogged this from the July 24 post on this page.

NB: I was privileged last October to work and live onsite at the MSB over three weeks where Wolgang was the contact person for the residency period, so this is not the first time I have posted on his work or that of the many wonderful people at the MSB. Please visit the page highlighted above to read more of the MSB blog posts and gain comprehensive overview of the entire project through hundreds of pages of links.

POST QUOTED IN FULL:

Love nuts? Love seeds! But which one is the tastiest of all?

By: Wolfgang Stuppy - 24/07/2012

After previously exploring colourful, enigmatic, poisonous and sadistic seeds, in his new blog, Wolfgang goes nuts about nuts.

• Like this
•  

• 3 likes
• 0 comments

I absolutely love nuts! They are healthy, taste great and being a Seed Morphologist, I obviously have a very special relationship with them. This last is fueled by the strange awareness that every time I eat a nut, I eat an embryo. Yuk? Well, read on!

To me, the most delicious nut of all is the cashew. No other nut can match its fine flavour and soft creamy texture. If you are also nuts about nuts, you will undoubtedly know cashews, even if you (incomprehensibly) prefer macadamias, pistachios or Brazil nuts. I wonder, though, how many people know the plant that cashew nuts come from and about the unusual and amazing appearance of the actual fruit they are borne in. Hence this blog. . .   

The vibrantly colourful fruits of the cashew tree, Anacardium occidentale

 Cashew apples and cashew nuts

Cashew nuts grow on trees with large, beautiful, bright green leaves. Nowadays cultivated and naturalised almost all over the tropics, the cashew tree (Anacardium occidentale, Anacardiaceae) is originally native to the coastal plains of north-eastern Brazil, where it forms part of the so-called restinga* vegetation. Long before European colonisation in the sixteenth century, Brazilian Indians relished the delicious fruits. Called ‘acajú’ by people of the Tupi tribe, the name was converted by the Portuguese into ‘cajú’ which eventually became ‘cashew’ in English. 

A cultivated cashew tree (Anacardium occidentale) in Brazil

Young cashew fruits with their stalks starting to swell, top right: flowers 

From very humble, tiny, first white, then pink, flowers rather large, brightly coloured (there are orange-red and yellow varieties) and somewhat weird-looking fruits arise. When ripe they resemble a very soft pear with a hard, kidney-shaped nut tucked in at one end. The pear-like part, also called ‘cashew apple’ (whoever came up with that name has never seen an apple next to a pear!) is extremely juicy and easily squashed which is why you can’t find them in our supermarkets. In Brazil I have seen them offered at roadside stalls where they were carefully displayed in egg trays. 

Ripe cashew fruits on the tree  

'Cashew apples' are so soft, they need to be treated like raw eggs (here in a roadside stall in Lindóia, Brazil) 

Hard sell methods aside, what’s most unusual about the cashew fruit is that the fleshy bit is not formed by the swollen ovary of the flower as in ‘normal’ fleshy fruits. Rather, the cashew apple is formed by the hugely swollen stalk of the flower which is why you wouldn’t find any seeds in it. If you want to find the seed you must open the fertile part that is formed by the ovary of the flower, namely the hard, kidney-shaped ‘appendix’, better known as the ‘cashew nut’.

A longitudinal section of a 'cashew apple' proves its origin from the flower stalk; there are no seeds, just flesh 

Ever had to stuff your mouth with a cotton ball soaked in milk?

Sounds delicious but here’s a word of warning to those who love to travel in the tropics. If you ever encounter a fruit-laden cashew tree, restrain your enthusiasm, at least for the ‘nutty’ bit. Whilst the amazingly succulent cashew pear, err... apple, is harmless and best enjoyed by sucking out the sweet juice and discarding the stringy-fibrous residue, the shell of the cashew nut is poisonous owing to an acrid phenolic oil, called urushiol. Urushiol causes dermatitis which is why the cashew nut was once also called ‘blister nut’. The same nasty oily chemical is found in other members of the Anacardiaceae. Among these close relatives of the cashew tree are notorious plants such as the poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans), poison sumac (Toxicodendron vernix) and poison oak (Toxicodendron pubescens & T. diversilobum) but also mango (Mangifera indica; urushiol is found in the sap and fruit peel!).

If you try to crack a fresh cashew nut with your teeth, you will soon be blessed with a painful blistering rash in and around your mouth (if it’s any comfort, the pain can be soothed by stuffing your mouth with a cotton ball soaked in milk). That’s also the reason why you will never find unshelled cashew nuts on supermarket shelves whereas other nuts like walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds and pistachios are quite often sold ‘whole’. 

How to prepare 'home-grown' cashew nuts: roasting the nuts in a fire destroys the poison and the charred shells can easily be removed

 Why cashew nuts are expensive

Because of the problems caused by the toxic shell of the nut, Latin Americans, West Indians and West Africans have long used only the succulent ‘cashew apple’ making it into wine and refreshing beverages, similar to lemonade, such as the Brazilian ‘cajuado’. However, on a worldwide scale the seed of the cashew tree is still the main commercial product, despite the laborious cleaning process that makes cashew nuts one of the most expensive of all nuts (although in the UK macadamias cost a lot more than cashews). The safest way to enjoy ‘home-grown’ cashew nuts is to roast them in a fire and then remove the charred shell as shown in the pictures above.

In the wild, the brightly coloured, 5-10 cm long cashew apple acts as a tasty reward for the animals it needs for seed dispersal. Fruit bats, monkeys and bats pick the fruits to feed on the yellow- to scarlet-coloured apple but discard the poisonous nut, leaving the seed inside unharmed. 

Cashew nuts off the supermarket shelf as we all know and love them

About eating embryos

Every nut contains a seed and as such, logically, also an embryo (i.e. a little baby plant that ‘hatches’ from the seed upon germination). Therefore, every time you eat a nut, you eat an embryo. But this is not like eating a microscopically small embryo when you eat a chicken egg. The edible part of the nuts we eat as nibbles consists of nothing else but the embryo. Here’s an experiment for you that proves my point: next time you eat a cashew try pulling it apart and you will see that it splits into two halves, the cotyledons of the embryo. There is even a tiny shoot axis with miniscule leaves in between them! 

A whole cashew nut, botanically an embryo, and one split in half, revealing its true nature: a baby plant with two leaves (cotyledons) and a shoot axis

Oh, one more thing....

We botanists use the term ‘nut’ in a very different and much more rigorous sense than ‘ordinary people’ do in their everyday language. For the food industry, chefs and 'regular' consumers who enjoy a tasty nibble, any large edible kernel that requires forceful liberation from a hard shell before consumption is unscrupulously addressed as a ‘nut’. In a botanical sense, a ‘nut’ is only a nut if it consists of nothing but the mature ovary of an indehiscent (= non-opening) fruit with a hard, dry shell, usually harbouring a single seed. This is true for hazelnuts (Corylus avellana, Betulaceae), walnuts (Juglans regia, Juglandaceae), pecan nuts (Carya illinoiensis, Juglandaceae), acorns (Quercus spp., Fagaceae), and unshelled peanuts (Arachis hypogaea, Leguminosae), though peanuts often (and annoyingly to botanists!) contain more than one seed. Other culinary ‘nuts’ are, in fact, the stones of drupes (= stone fruits), such as unshelled almonds (Prunus dulcis var. dulcis, Rosaceae), pistachios (Pistacia vera, Anacardiaceae), and, in all honesty, also cashew nuts (Anacardium occidentale, Anacardiaceae). I didn’t want to make things too complicated but, working for Kew, I finally have to break the truth about the cashew nut. Although hardly recognizable as such, the shell of a cashew nut does indeed display the three defining layers of a drupe: an outer skin, a very thin, quick-drying but nevertheless soft middle layer, followed by the dominating hard, woody stone.

As a final blow to the culinary nut-concept, it has to be unveiled that unshelled Brazil nuts (Bertholletia excelsa, Lecythidaceae), macadamias (Macadamia integrifolia and M. tetraphylla, Proteaceae), ginkgo nuts (Ginkgo biloba, Ginkgoaceae) and pine nuts (Pinus pinea, Pinaceae) are purely seeds in a botanical sense because their shell consists of the seed coat.

- Wolfgang -

All photos by Wolfgang Stuppy

*Restinga: a distinct type of tropical and subtropical forest found on acidic, nutrient-poor soils at the the Atlantic coast of Brazil.

---

Related links

• "Difficult Seeds Project" - Anacardium occidentale
• Black Walnut on Kew's species pages
• More about the work of the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership
• Read Wolfgang's other blog post

I think you can appreciate what a brilliant insight this is into something we might buy from supermarket shelves entirely without thought for what is behind this item.

Thank you indeed to Wolfgang Stuppy for this wonderful post.
      Sophie