miles of green wheat and light blue rye

 

On top of Chimney Rock, which is a great monolith breaking off from the mountains like the spout of a teapot, about twenty persons can stand and look down at ten counties and a dozen rivers and valleys. This morning Atlanta looked down alone upon miles of green wheat and light blue rye and upon cotton fields and red clay and terribly swift streams capped with white foam. By noon she had looked at plenty of scenery while the airplane zoomed round and round the rock, and she was hungry when she descended the winding steps to the restaurant, and found Carley Delannux and a girl on the terrace.

"You looked nice up there," he said. "Sort of remote and unimportant -- but nice."

She sighed; she was weary.

"Roger made me climb those steps three times running," she said. "I think it was punishment for sitting up last night."

(from "I'd Die for You", by F. Scott Fitzgerald, written in 1935)

*

Worldwide production of rye (Secale cereale) has tended to go down in recent years. Perhaps younger generations in the traditional rye-eating areas of central Europe are increasingly switching over from old-fashioned pumpernickel and crispbread to pizza and croissants and all the other irresistible things that can be made with wheat. Worldwide production of rye is still dominated by the rye belt that runs from Germany and Poland through to Ukraine and Russia. (Rye outperforms wheat on both heavy clays and light sandy soils prone to drought.)

Another factor is that, unlike wheat and barley, rye does not self-pollinate. Pure breeding stock is difficult to maintain, so the agri-industry has not put very much effort into "improving" rye. That said, there are now cultivars that are resistant to ergot, the traditional scourge of rye. 

Rye is now a fairly rare cereal crop in the British Isles. The largest farm is on the Breckland in Suffolk. Some is grown on the Cotswolds. I suppose it was more commonplace in the past (doubtful witnesses being Robert Burns' Coming Through the Rye and Tennyson's "long fields of barley and of rye" in The Lady of Shalott). 

But some other nations have a more significant rye production -- and yes, that includes the USA, as in this N. Carolina panorama, which the movie actress Atlanta Downs gets a bit weary of looking at after a whole morning. 

There's a widely-held theory that both rye and oats started out as weeds, contaminants of wheat fields. In that distant era they were both worthless grasses, from the point of view of human consumption. Naturally the early farmers sought to separate the wheat grain from the grain of these unwanted weeds before sowing next year's crop. But cleansing was not 100% effective. Some rye/oat grain slipped through, and it tended to be the grain that most resembled wheat grain. In other words, the biggest, fattest grain. Thus an inadvertent situation was created in which the wild ancestors of rye and oats were preferentially selected on the basis of bigger, more nutritious grain (this mechanism is known as "Vavilovian mimicry"). The eventual upshot was that they morphed into useful cereal crops in their own right. 

*

I love the serendipity that arises from chance encounters with physical books. This was a case in point. I think Kyli got me I'd Die for You, and Other Lost Stories as a birthday present, a couple of years ago. As it happens, though F. Scott Fitzgerald has always been around me I've never read any of his books, until this one. Obviously this was the "wrong" place to start: the barrel-scrapings of his later years, the stories that never got placed, the tryouts that didn't get taken up. 

However, it worked for me. I'm now all eagerness to pick up e.g. The Great Gatsby.  But before, I might have been perversely resistant to such a celebrated book. [NB Five years later I did read it and was blown away, of course.]

I'd Die for You, and Other Lost Stories was published in 2017, a volume beautifully pieced together and edited by Anne Margaret Daniel. 

Anyway, searching through the debris of these eighteen stories or semi-stories, with all their faults apparent, the author's desperate need for money, the signs of hopelessness and loss of confidence, the patent struggle to maintain the expectation of youthful zest, the sunny clichés, the conventions, the story going off-track and blindly crashing into those same conventions...  I enjoyed most of it very much.  

But if I make any generalizations about Fitzgerald here, forgive me -- I've no right. (I'm like one of those close relatives who know a great writer's work only from ephemera that are completely unrepresentative.) 

Fitzgerald in the mid-late 1930s was unhappily working for Hollywood, the main source of his earnings. Some of these pieces are outlines for screenplays; some have Hollywood characters. There's no noir, though there is darkness -- for instance  in "I'd Die For You", the stand-out story, in which two women are drawn in to "Suicide" Carley's dangerous atmosphere, while mistaking its nature. 

There's little sense of the imminent world war that haunts European writing of the same period. Several of the stories are crazy comedies, for instance "The Couple" and "The Women In the House", or crazy action adventure ("Love Is A Pain"). Some are based round the medical institutions that Fitzgerald was seeing so much of, both on Zelda's account and on his own.

He never got away from writing about the young, beautiful and wealthy. "Travel Together", for instance, starts off bracingly as hobos on a goods train halted outside Dallas. But it turns out that both the principals are really slumming it. The genuine hobos, on the other hand, are portrayed as stereotypical brutish threats to beauty, ejected from the story by the hero. (A view of  the lower classes that's pretty much unchanged from the Morte d'Arthur or Arcadia, centuries before.)

There are bit-parts for black Americans, kindly but dismissive, in the comic mode of Gone With The Wind (a screenplay that Fitzgerald contributed to).

Unexpectedly, there's a civil war story here, or rather two. "Thumbs Up" and "Dentist Appointment" both begin with the same arresting scene, in which a Mosby trooper is hung up by his thumbs, though neither of the peace-time continuations is quite able to match this opening.

I was recurrently put in mind of P. G. Wodehouse, another author whose vision was really formed in the twenties: the stories nearly always manage to contrive a sunny ending, a well-matched pair melting into each other's arms. Depth of character, in the Tolstoy or George Eliot sense, just isn't important here. 

What is, is a bit harder to say. A pictorial quality, a sharp accuracy of talk, responsive to the crowded scenarios. A feeling of life, of fertility, that's distinctive in the midst of all the popular clichés. I'll finish with a few examples. 

The rude town was like a  great fish just hauled out of the Mississippi and still leaping and squirming on the bank. Around the wharves spread a card-house city of twelve thousand people, complete with churches, stores, stables and saloons. Walking the littered streets, the newcomers stepped aside for stages and prairie wagons, bull teams and foraging chickens -- but there were also some tall hats and some tall talk, for the railroad was coming through. 

(St Paul, Minnesota; from "Dentist Appointment" (written in 1937)). 

That winter there were many men for Kiki, but her heart was empty and she paid them off in deflated currency. As if asleep she walked through a February inspection of the colleges, but at New Haven she opened her eyes long enough to search for Rip Van Kamp through the swirling crowd, and not finding him sent him a message to his room. Next day they strolled through a light blinding snow, and his face, statuesque against the winter sky, brought a sudden renewal of delight. 

"Where were you last night?" she demanded.

"I haven't got a white tie and tails."

"How ridiculous!" she exclaimed impatiently. "But I've got my plans for you -- gross material ones. I think I've found you an angel. Wait till you hear."

Sitting in his study before a wood fire she told him.

"It's a man named Gittings, class of 1903, a friend of the family . ..."

(Kiki and her protege football player, in "Offside Play" (written in 1937)).

"That's the end of Roger and me," she thought next morning. "I never loved him -- he was only my best friend."

But it made her sad when he did not tell her when to go bed the next night, and it was not much fun now on location or at meals. 

Two days of rain arrived and she drove with Carley Delannux back into the hills and stopped at lost shacks trading cigarettes for mountain talk and drinking iron water that tasted of fifty years ago. Everything was all right when she was with Carley. Life was gay or melancholy by turns but it was at all times what he made it. Roger rode along with life -- Carley dominated it with his sophistication and humor.

This was the season of flowers and she and Carley spent a rainy day fixing up a float to represent Lake Lure for the Rhododendron Festival in Asheville that night. They decided on a sailboat with a sea of blue hydrangeas and an illuminated moon. Seamstresses worked all afternoon on old-fashioned swimming costumes; and Atlanta turned herself into a stout bathing beauty of 1890, and they telephoned the little nurse, Isabelle Panzer, to be a mermaid. Roger would drive the truck and Atlanta insisted on sitting in front beside him. She was inspired to this gesture by the vague idea, peculiar to women in love, that her presence would cheer and console the other man. 

The rain had stopped and it was a fair night. In Asheville their float took its place in the assembling parade -- there had already been one parade in the afternoon and the streets were littered with purple pink rhododendrons and cloudy white azaleas . Tonight was to be Carnival, wild and impudent -- but it was soon apparent that to plant an old world saturnalia in the almost virgin soil of the resort was going to be difficult; the gaiety was among the participants rather than in the silent throngs from the mountains, who gathered on the sidewalks to watch the floats move by in the shaky and haphazard manner peculiar to floats, with great silent gaps, and crowdings and dead halts. 

(from "I'd Die For You" (written in 1935)).

Kaviar

 

The Swedes call it "caviare" (kaviar), or more precisely "sandwich caviare" (smörgåskaviar). It's an iconic everyday brand in Sweden, but it's not actually that old.  It was introduced in 1954 by Aktiebolaget Bröderna Ameln (subsequently Abba AB, now Abba Seafood), a firm based in Bohuslän on the west coast of Sweden. (It isn't part of my very earliest childhood memories, and I suppose my mother, a northern Swede living in England since the mid-1950s, hadn't yet come across it.)

Though described on the tube as "mildly smoked" (mildrökt), it's a robustly flavoured spread, good with boiled eggs or straight on crispbread (or rye bread, as I'm demonstrating here in this photo of my breakfast). It's basically sweet-salted cod roe, mixed with rapeseed oil, potato flakes, and tomato puree, plus a bit more salt, potassium sorbate and ascorbic acid.

The recipe was purchased in 1954 from a gårdfarihandlare or nasare, i.e. a pedlar. (Once an important feature of rural life in Sweden, they supplied small grocery items and household goods to farms and villages.)

When the spread proved popular with children, Abba marketed it as "Kalle's caviare" (Kalles kaviar) and added the picture (based on a photograph of the CEO's son Carl) that still appears on the tubes 65 years later. (Kalle is an informal version of Carl.)

Swedes are much more attached than Brits to buying foods in tubes. Here, we'd typically think only of  tomato puree, and toothpaste. But over there, besides kaviar and messmör, there are a host of other sandwich spreads commonly sold in tubes: cheese, meat and fish products, pates, pickles and mayonnaise. A particular favourite of our family was buckling pate (böcklingpastej); apparently it's still around, but I haven't tasted it for far too many years. Maybe next time . . .

Predominantly these tubes are still made out of aluminium rather than plastic, so wise consumers roll them neatly from the far end to prevent any cracking. 

(As proudly shown on the tube, Abba Seafood were one of several cod fisheries that acquired MSC status in 2017 when stocks seemed to have recovered from the crisis of 2006; but this status may be temporary.  In 2019 it was reported that North Sea cod stocks were collapsing again.)

The 2025 campaign to promote monthly breast self-exams: On the tube it says Du har väl inte glömt att klämma? (I suppose you haven't forgotten to squeeze?).

berry culture and prejudice

What we grew up with we tend to assume has always existed. I thought about this again today, dipping into Örjan Armfelt Hansell's Bärboken (The Berry Book, 1969).

From here I learned that filmjölk, the sour fermented milk beloved by most Swedes (and by me as a child), was relatively unknown as recently as the author's own childhood. He ate his stewed lingonberries with ordinary cow's milk and broken-up crispbread (a practice he attributes to his family's North Småland roots).

Nor, back in the 19th century, did woodland berries play quite as large a role in the Swedish diet as I've always supposed. The main reason was the unavailability, for most ordinary people, of sugar. That made it impossible to preserve most berries. You ate them fresh in August and September, and that was all.

Lingonberries (aka Cowberries, Vaccinium vitis-idaea) were the exception. They contain quite a lot of benzoic acid, a natural preservative, so all you had to do was mash them and bottle them, or lightly boil them. They would then last through the winter, aided by the reliably freezing temperatures. The lingonberry harvest was the most culturally important berry event of the year. The mash or sauce was quite tart, ideal as a meat accompaniment (providing vitamin C through the winter) but also used in soups, breads, for preserving pears, and in many other ingenious ways. The one problem with lingon is that it stimulates the appetite. Thrifty housewives noticed that when they served lingon their man would also demand more bread; accordingly, some of them used it very sparingly!

(Strange to think of this from a UK perspective, where there is next to no tradition of using cowberries, though they grow quite widely in the north-west and Scotland in particular.)

Nevertheless, the lingon harvest was quite small-scale and local until the late 19th century, when German traders became aware of Sweden's berry resources and would pay much higher prices. That was when the idea of the woodland berries as Sweden's "gold" originated; that was when berry-picking became a summer job for whole rural communities, you could make real money from it.

 And with sugar now being cheap and available, the"gold" was not limited to lingonberries but could also extend to bilberries, cloudberries, etc.

*

But not, on the whole, another common edible species, Vaccinium uliginosum, called Odon in Swedish. (The English name is Bog Bilberry or Northern Bilberry, but I'll use the snappier Swedish name.)

This is a dwarf shrub similar to the normal Bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus, called Blåbär in Swedish), but growing usually in wetter areas such as the edges of bogs; the berries are fewer and larger, and the juice does not stain like bilberry juice, but is colourless, like the juice of the blueberries in our supermarkets (American Blueberry, Vaccinium corymbosum).

These would seem to be positive factors, but strangely Odon was widely regarded as

an inferior food, yes, even downright unpleasant -- and more or less injurious. Wikström says in Stockholm's Flora: "and as is maintained, somewhat narcotic, causing headaches." Liljeblad: "the berries eaten in quantity are said to cause dizziness." (Bärboken, p. 252)

Hansell gives examples of folk-beliefs about Odon from across Sweden.

From the coast of Småland it's reported that elderly people didn't dare to taste even one, because they were considered to bring on feeble-mindedness if eaten in large amounts. In Västergotland children were warned from eating Odon berries, seeing as they engender worms in the stomach. In Dalsland "it was considered shameful to eat Odon, so we children ate them on the sly", and in Finnerödja [community in Örebro county] Odon berries were regarded as useless after St Lars' Day [10th August] because "snakes spurted venom on them and the children knew that". Even the Nordic Family Book says of Odon berries that "consumed in large numbers they cause dizziness and headaches". (Bärboken, p. 252)

My own childhood experience was simply that when I once pointed out that the berries we were standing among looked different from normal Blåbär, neither my mother nor grandmother could say whether they were good to eat or not, so we avoided them.

I have a great respect for traditional country lore, but it doesn't always get it right. Of course few topics are more prone to rumour, myth, hearsay and hysteria than plant toxicity; nobody wants to experiment or tempt others to do so.

Besides, different parts of the world often have different feelings about the same plant. Odon is a case in point, being used widely in Finland, Poland, Russia, Japan and Canada. The prejudice against Odon is centred in Sweden and Norway. I'm calling it a prejudice because researchers haven't discovered any toxins in Odon berries and it isn't clear if there are many well-attested cases of ill effects.

Odon berries have 10 times more Vitamin C than Blåbär, also anthocyanins and flavonoids, all very good things from the health point of view.

Anyway, Odon's questionable reputation goes back a long way. Linnaeus in 1749 reported that the berries "were pleasing to children and young turkeys, but often cause some dizziness".

How much further back than 1749? Well, we don't know, but the word odon could be significant. According to the SAOB (Svenska Akadamiens Ordbok) it's "probably" related to the Old Swedish word oþer (wild, frenzied, enraged, crazy); the same derivation as odört, the Swedish name for Hemlock (Conium maculatum), which of course is deadly poisonous. The earliest written appearance of the word odon comes from 1590, ironically in a list of drinks, one of which is Odon brännvin.

Other local Swedish names may suggest the generally low esteem in which the berries were held: snorbär (snot-berries), hundbär (hound-berries), galenbär (crazy-berries), blåbukar (blue bellies), fyllebär (drunken-berries), pungbär (pouch-berries), utterbär (otter-berries) (I took the list from this article: https://www.skogsskafferiet.se/odon/ ).

Was the low esteem purely a matter of prejudice, or is there any substance to it? Odon berries are sometimes infected by the parasitic fungus Sclerotina megalospora, and one theory is that infected berries might produce symptoms of intoxication, dizziness, etc.

So, what does Odon taste like? Hansell, a fan, describes it as as "tasty, sweet and juicy with a characteristic aroma". But the plant description in Den virtuella floran describes the taste of the berries as "fadd" (insipid), and the SAOB headnote describes them as "föga välsmakande" (only faintly nice-tasting). From what I remember, they tasted pleasant but not as intense as Blåbär.

But taste is a highly subjective sense. It took Europeans centuries to decide that they liked the taste of the decorative plant from America called "tomato"*. I think I expected Odon to taste a bit inferior. Like another widespread but unesteemed berry, Crowberry (Kråkbär, Empetrum nigrum) it was in fact often resorted to in bad Blåbär years, but sold under the marketable name of the latter.

Of course now I'm looking forward to checking out the taste of Odon more fully. But I'll stick to healthy-looking berries!

* Flora Thompson described the tomato arriving at a rural English hamlet in the 1880s:

It was on Jerry's cart tomatoes first appeared in the hamlet. They had not long been introduced into this country and were slowly making their way into favour. The fruit was flatter in shape then than now and deeply grooved and indented from the stem, giving it an almost starlike appearance. There were bright yellow ones, too, as well as the scarlet; but, after a few years, the yellow ones disappeared from the market and the red ones became rounder and smoother, as we see them now.

At first sight, the basket of red and yellow fruit attracted Laura's colour-loving eye. 'What are those?' she asked old Jerry.

'Love-apples, me dear. Love-apples, they be; though some hignorant folks be a callin' 'em tommytoes. But you don't want any o' they—nasty sour things, they be, as only gentry can eat. You have a nice sweet orange wi' your penny.' But Laura felt she must taste the love-apples and insisted upon having one.

Such daring created quite a sensation among the onlookers. 'Don't 'ee go tryin' to eat it, now,' one woman urged. 'It'll only make 'ee sick. I know because I had one of the nasty horrid things at our Minnie's.' And nasty, horrid things tomatoes remained in the popular estimation for years; though most people to-day would prefer them as they were then, with the real tomato flavour pronounced, to the watery insipidity of our larger, smoother tomato.

(Lark Rise to Candleford, pp. 120-121)

January marmalade

Last week I did the traditional January thing and made a batch of marmalade. The fruit, known as "Seville oranges", "marmalade oranges" or "bitter oranges", appears in our shops for only a few weeks.

Bitter oranges arrived in Moorish Seville as early as the 10th century, and they are used in Spanish cuisine today, but not in anything like the quantities demanded by millions of British breakfast tables, so most of the annual Seville crop ends up here.

See how she simpers it, as if marmalade

Would not melt in her mouth. 

(Thomas Middleton, Women Beware Women, c. 1620)

The oafish Ward means a fruit conserve, but not necessarily oranges. The earliest British recipe for "marmelat of oranges" dates from 1677. Iberian marmalade recipes go back to the 15th century. They were solid and fairly homogeneous conserves, perhaps like today's mermelada de membrillo, a quince conserve cut into wedges and eaten with cheese.  Janet Keiller of Dundee, in 1797, helping her son make the most of an unwanted cargo of Seville oranges, may be the true inventor of what we think of as marmalade today, i.e. a spreadable semi-liquid that includes shreds of peel.

The Bitter Orange is a "species" of hybrid origin. Its scientific name is Citrus x aurantium. Ultimately it derives from two wild species, the Mandarin (Citrus reticulata) and the Pomelo (Citrus maxima). The same two ancestors, in differing proportions, lie behind the Sweet Orange (Citrus x sinensis), the Grapefruit (Citrus x paradisi), and all the small oranges you see in shops (Satsumas, Clementines, Easypeelers, etc). Broadly speaking, the sweetness and orange colour derive from the Mandarin, the size and firmness from the Pomelo.

Apart from British marmalade, the bitter orange also flavours drinks like Curaçao and Grand Marnier, canard à l'orange, and even Finnish and Swedish pepparkakor (though it isn't among the ingredients of my own family's recipe). It's much valued in Iranian cuisine.

Bitter orange is thought to have some of the same adverse impacts as grapefruit on people who take statins and many other prescription drugs. (The effect was discovered by accident in 1989, when grapefruit juice was used in a medical test to hide the taste of ethanol.) The problematic substances in Citrus fruits, which cause the prescription drug either to accumulate to dangerously high levels, or dwindle to such low levels that it no longer does its job, seem to be mainly connected with the Pomelo ancestry.

I do wonder if these substances would be likely to survive the several hours of boiling involved in making marmalade, but I've seen no advice on that.

Tropical fruit

Because of Storm Brendan the River Ray has spread all over its floodplain. But indoors from this Swindon January I'm in the tropics, reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's devastating novel Half of a Yellow Sun (2006).

The novel's world is often articulated through fruit trees, and as I've been spending so much of my reading time in Nigeria recently (e.g. here) I thought I would learn a bit more about some of them.

Ripe cashew apples

[Image source: Wikipedia.]

Cashew tree, Nsukka, p. 13, 15, 16, 24, 175, 419. The "wine-like scent of ripening cashews". Orlu, p. 311, 318, 391, 402, 406, 409, 412, 414. Anacardium occidentale, native to tropical America. The pulp of the cashew apple can be distilled into liquor. Its seed is the cashew "nut".

Ube fruit

[Image source: Wikipedia.]

Ube tree, Opi, p. 8. Dacryodes edulis, native to tropical Africa. The fruit can be eaten raw or cooked. It's valued for its high fat content.

Avocado, Lagos, p. 30, 32. At a posh dinner. From "one of our farms.. the one near Asaba". Persea americana, native to South-central Mexico.

Kuka pod

[Image source: Wikipedia.]

"ripe gourdlike pods on the kuka tree". Kano, p. 39, 40, 129, 148. I.e. the baobab (Adansonia digitata), native to savannahs of sub-Saharan Africa. Kuka soup is a popular delicacy in northern Nigeria.

Indian Almond fruit

[Image source: https://afrikahnqueen.wordpress.com/2016/08/09/a-fruit-called-fruit/ .]

Umbrella tree fruit, p. 73. "they had fallen during the previous night and lay, oval and pale yellow, on the lawn. ..smelt the over-sweetness of their rotting". I'm pretty sure this is the Indian Almond, Terminalia catappa , known in Nigeria as umbrella tree, according to the link above. Both flesh and kernel are eaten. The native range is uncertain; long naturalized in a broad belt from Australia through S. Asia to Africa.

Pawpaw (papaya) tree

[Image source: https://plantinstructions.com/tropical-fruit/grow-papaya-seed/ .]

Pawpaw, Nsukka, p. 15, 24, 107. "blackbirds that ate the pawpaws in the garden". This must be the papaya (Carica papaya), often called pawpaw, native to tropical America (not the pawpaw of the Eastern USA and Canada (Asimina triloba)).

Orange tree, Port Harcourt, p. 77, 113, 316, 426. Orlu, p. 390. The sweet orange Citrus x sinensis is the world's most cultivated tree. It arose in ancient China, a hybrid between pomelo and mandarin.

The sound of the rain slapping against the window woke him up the next morning. Kainene lay beside him, her eyes half open in that eerie way that meant she was deeply asleep. He looked at her dark chocolate skin, which shone with oil, and lowered his head to her face. He didn't kiss her, didn't let his face touch hers, but placed it close enough so that he could feel the moistness of her breath and smell its faintly curdled scent. He stretched and went to the window. It rained in slants here in Port Harcourt so that the water hit the windows and walls rather than the roof. Perhaps it was because the ocean was so close, because the air was so heavy with water that it let it fall too soon. For a moment, the rain became intense and the sound against the window grew loud, like pebbles being flung against the glass. He stretched again. The rain had stopped and the windowpanes were cloudy. Behind him, Kainene stirred and mumbled something.
     "Kainene?" he said.
     Her eyes were still half open, her breathing still regular.
      "I'm going for a walk," he said, although he was sure she didn't hear him.
      Outside, Ikejide was plucking oranges; his uniform bunched up at the back as he nudged fruit down with a stick.
       "Good morning, sah," he said.
       "Kedu?" Richard asked. He felt comfortable practising his Igbo with Kainene's stewards, because they were always so expressionless that it did not matter whether or not he got the tones right.
        "I am well, sah."
        "Jisie ike."
        "Yes, sah."
        Richard went to the bottom of the orchard, where he could see, through the thicket of trees, the white foam of the sea's waves. He sat on the ground. He wished that Major Madu had not invited them to dinner ....  (p. 113-114)

Breadfruit

[Image source: https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/fruits/breadfruit/breadfruit-tree-facts.htm . Photo by bennyartist.]

Breadfruit tree. Opi, p. 7, 420, 421. Orlu, p. 400. Artocarpus altilis, probably deriving from a wild species native to the Philippines and New Guinea.

Udala fruit

[Image source: https://www.kitchenbutterfly.com/2017/01/06/thou-shalt-not-pluck-fruit-from-the-agbalumo-star-apple-tree/ .]

Udala tree, Abba, p. 190. Children "fighting over the fallen udala fruit. They could not climb the tree or pluck the fruit because it was taboo; udala belonged to the spirits." Chrysophyllum albidum, native to tropical Africa, also known as white star apple.

Mango tree

[Image source: http://www.westafricanplants.senckenberg.de/images/pictures/mangifera_indica_img_6465_ralfbiechele_1058_6b680e.jpg .]

Mango tree, Nsukka, p. 175, 215. Abba, p. 185. "fruit drooping down like heavy earrings." Umuahia, p. 264. Orlu, p. 398. Mangifera indica and other species, native to S. Asia.

Olanna ran past the Town square on her way to Akwakuma Primary School in the morning. She always did that in open spaces, running until she got to the thick shade of trees that would give good cover in case of an air raid. Some children were standing under the mango tree in the school compound, throwing stones up at the fruit. She shouted, "Go to your classes, osiso!" and they scattered briefly before coming back to aim at the mangoes. She heard a cheer when one fell, and then the raised voices as they quarrelled over whose throw had brought the fruit down. (p. 264)

Guava tree

[Image source: http://www.westafricanplants.senckenberg.de/images/pictures/psidium_guajava_img_0761_ralfbiechele_1306_ceb19a.jpg .]

Guava tree, Abba, p. 184, 194. Its bark "a light clay alternating with a darker slate, much like the skin of village children with the nlacha skin disease." Psidium guajava, native to tropical America.

Kola-nut pods

[Image source: https://bellafricana.com/the-precious-african-nut-kola-nut/ .]

Kola-nut tree. Nsukka, p. 18, 175.
Obosi, pp. 164-165. "broke the kola nut apart into five lobes".
 Abba, p. 185, 188, 195, 299. One of various species, especially Cola acuminata and Cola nitida, native to tropical Africa. The nut contains caffeine. It is chewed, releasing the bitter taste. It reduces hunger pangs and has many social and ceremonial uses.

Lemon tree, Nsukka, p. 15, 24, 209, 365, 432. "'I also use lemons to make cake; lemons are very good for the body...The food of white people makes you healthy, it is not like all of the nonsense that our people eat.'" For both Harrison and Ugwu (his sceptical listener) citrus fruits are alien introductions. Citrus limon seems to have originated in NE India, perhaps as a hybrid between bitter orange and citron.

Banana "tree" (technically the world's tallest herbaceous plant).  Umuahia, p. 326, 331. One of various Musa species, native to tropical Indomalaya and Australia.

*

The fruit trees in Half of a Yellow Sun are naturally eloquent in ways that need no commentary: they speak variously of locality, community, hospitality, shelter, native culture, alien culture, fulfilment, betrayal, desecration, corruption, memory, loss, continuity, resolve...

But one general aspect of their meaning I might have missed if I hadn't looked up kwashiorkor, the particular brand of starvation that killed so many Biafran children, characterized by a swollen abdomen and pitted ankles. Kwashiorkor occurs where there's a relative availability of energy foods (sugars, carbs) but an extreme lack of protein. (The abdominal swelling is the enlargement of the liver with fatty deposits.) This is the dietary vulnerability that Ugwu's aunty hints at on the very first page of Adichie's novel, when she promises him that in his new job as houseboy "as long as you work well, you will eat well. You will even eat meat every day."

The Biafran war ended in 1970. But
malnutrition and child mortality remain terrible facts of life in some parts of Nigeria even today. Kevin Watkins' recent Guardian article (15 January 2020):

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jan/15/nigerias-child-development-crisis-is-a-tragedy-heres-how-we-can-end-it

Frederick Forsyth's article about Britain's involvement in the Biafran war:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/21/buried-50-years-britain-shamesful-role-biafran-war-frederick-forsyth

*

There's plenty of debate about Half of a Yellow Sun within Nigeria and elsewhere, but it's mostly behind academic paywalls so involves a trip to a university library. Some aspects of that fraught discussion are represented in this 2017 paper by Abayomi Abewela:

https://lucas.leeds.ac.uk/article/adichies-half-of-a-yellow-sun-abayomi-awelewa/

Kate Kellaway's piece for the Observer was the most interesting I've seen of the newspaper reviews that came out at the time of publication:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/aug/13/fiction.features2

One more extract. People are on relief flour by now.

The cake turned out crisp on the outside and moistly soft inside, and he cut slim slices and took them out in saucers. Special Julius and Olanna were sitting down while Master was standing, gesturing, talking about the last village he visited, how the people had sacrificed a goat at the shrine of oyi to keep the vandals away.
          "A whole goat! All that wasted protein!" Special Julius said and laughed.
          Master did not laugh. "No, no, you must never underestimate the psychological importance of such things. We never ask them to eat the goat instead."
          "Ah, cake!" Special Julius said. He ignored the fork and stuffed the piece in his mouth. "Very good, very good. Ugwu, you have to teach the people in my house because all they do with our flour is chin-chin, every day is chin-chin, chin-chin, and it is the hard kind with no taste! My teeth have finished."
          "Ugwu is a wonder at everything," Olanna said. "He would easily put that woman in Rising Sun Bar out of business."
          Professor Ekwenugo knocked on the open door and walked in. His hands were swathed in cream-coloured bandages.
          "Dianyi, what happened to you?" Master asked.
          "Just a little burn." Professor Ekwenugo stared at his bandaged hands as if he had only just realized that they meant he no longer had a long nail to stroke. "We are putting together something very big."
          "Is it our first Biafran-built bomber jet?" Olanna teased.
           "Something very big that will reveal itself with time," Professor Ekwenugo said, with a mysterious smile. He ate clumsily; bits of cake fell away before they got to his mouth.
            "It should be a saboteur-detecting machine," Master said.
            "Yes! Bloody saboteurs." Special Julius made the sound of spitting. "They sold Enugu out. How can you leave civilians to defend our capital with mere machetes? This is the same way they lost Nsukka, by pulling back for no reason. Doesn't one of the commanding officers have a Hausa wife? She has put medicine in his food." .... (pp. 284-285)

Wild flowers from the fells - Jämtlanstriangeln Sylarna Summer 2016

Storulvån

Storulvån. The name of the river, and also the name of the adjacent Fjällstation, which was the start and finish of our four-day triangular jaunt in the fells (29/7/16 - 1/8/16). (I did the walk with Kyli and Hannah.)

As I struggled along with my too-heavy pack, I of course snapped a few common mountain plants; and here they are.

(During the actual walk my meditations mostly concerned the various dwarf willows we saw along the way, but in the end I never made time for in-depth willow study, there were too many other exciting things to do. I brought home a plastic bag of willow samples, and forgot to unbag them until they'd gone mouldy and had to be thrown away.)

Angelica archangelica

Angelica archangelica (Sw: Kvanne, En: Garden Angelica)

It's true we were only just above the tree-line at this point, but there remains an air of paradox about the sight of this sturdy vegetable in the open fell country. The places it frequents, however, are usually luscious spots on the edges of streams.

Its worldwide distribution is bizarre: a sort of line from the Himalayas and Urals through Russia and Scandinavia to the Faeroes, Iceland and Greenland: and nowhere else.

The above statement lumps together two different subspecies. The one famous as a candy, food and medicine, is this mountain plant, ssp. archangelica, sometimes known in Sweden as Fjällkvanne to distinguish it from the coastal ssp. littoralis (Strandkvanne), which is found only in Scandinavia and Iceland. [Neither are to be confused with the familiar woodland plant Wild Angelica (A. sylvestris) (see end of this post!).]

An extremely fragrant plant, attracting insects from a wide area around. Unfortunately I couldn't smell it at all;  it was far too early in our ramble for my uncertain sense of smell to have recovered from months of office air-conditioning!

The plant has been used locally as food, e.g. in Sami dishes (compare Oxyria digyna, below). The stems can even be eaten raw; they have a sweetish taste.

But its wider use in international cuisine began with its cultivation at the other end of Europe, in the marshy flatlands of Marais-Poitevin in W France. (Most sources say the cultivation began in 1602, following an outbreak of the plague, for which the plant was said to be a remedy.) One of its main uses today, aside from the familiar green candied angelica, is as flavouring of e.g. Vermouth, Dubonnet, Chartreuse and Bénédictine.

Angelica archangelica in my garden

In the UK it has never been native (hence the English name Garden Angelica) and it occurs only as an escape from cultivation; the London area is where you're most likely to run across it.

Persicaria vivipara

Persicaria vivipara (Sw: Ormrot, En: Alpine Bistort). The plants hedge their bets reproduction-wise, with hopeful sexual flowers at the top, and more reliable bulbils further down.

It works: this plant grows nearly everywhere in Sweden. Sentimental attachment probably explains why I snapped this not particularly splendid specimen, and why the resulting photo moves me as it does.

It has a wide distribution all round the northern hemisphere, getting about as far north as it's possible for a plant to go (on the north coast of Greenland).

In the British Isles, however, P. vivipara is restricted to the mountains of C Scotland and a small area of the N Pennines.

The vernacular names reflect that. The Swedish name "Ormrot", which means "snake root", is homely and obviously of popular origin. Just as obviously, the English name "Alpine Bistort" comes from the botanical community.

At least both those names are stable. On the other hand, the scientific name has proved a nightmare. In addition to Persicaria vivipara you'll also see it called Polygonum viviparum, Polygonum vivipara, and Bistorta vivipara. I'm still not really sure which name we're meant to be using.

Ranunculus acris

Ranunculus acris (Sw: Smörblomma, En: Meadow Buttercup)

Surrounded by so many plants unknown in our daily lives in lowland Britain, it was almost a surprise to spot the odd familiar species. One of them was Meadow Buttercup, here growing with Angelica archangelica. I also noticed lots of Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus minor).

Dryas octopetala

Dryas octopetala (Sw: Fjällsippa, En: Mountain Avens)

The Dryas leaves are the fresh green gribbly-edged ones. [The larger grey-green orbicular leaves are a dwarf willow that is so unmistakable that even I can recognize it, Salix reticulata (Sw: Nätvide, En: Net-veined Willow).]

Dryas octopetala characteristically grows on dry, calcareous ground from which the snow clears relatively early. This type of species-rich vegetation is known as  fjällsippshed / Dryas-heath. We only saw it in one place, beside a pretty beck on the ascent to Blåhammaren.

The Swedish name connects it with various with other showy wild plants such as Vitsippa (Wood-anemone), Mosippa (Pasque Flower), Blåsippa (Hepatica) and Gulsippa (Anemone ranunculoides). But this one is in the Rose family, not in the Buttercup family like the others.

Also native to the British Isles, mostly in NW Scotland and the Burren.

Dryas octopetala

Last sunset on hills - from Blåhammaren, about 23:00

Blåhammaren is the smallest and highest Fjällstation in Sweden (1086m - 3562 feet). We arrived two hours late for the famous three-course dinner, but they gave us our own sitting.

While the weary hikers were sleeping, or trying to sleep, in the packed sweaty dormitories, a dozen reindeer came to graze around the buildings, and the sunlight moved round the northern horizon. The next morning it was raining heavily.

Saxifraga aizoides

Saxifraga aizoides (Sw: Gullbräcka, En: Yellow Saxifrage). It can often look more spectacular than this: especially when you find the orange and yellow forms growing side by side. By streams and springs on calcareous substrate.

Throughout the fell region. Also found in the Highlands of Scotland, Lake District, and Benbulbin in Co. Sligo.

Carex saxatilis

Carex saxatilis (Sw: Glansstarr, En: Russet Sedge).

I can't believe I've never written about a sedge before, as my list of "Botanical Entries" (to the right of this blog) seems to affirm.

Anyway this handsome sedge is common throughout the fell region in wet places with calcareous substrates. Also found in the Scottish Highlands.

The Swedish name "Glansstarr" translates as "Lustrous Sedge" or "Splendid Sedge".

Pinguicula vulgaris

Pinguicula vulgaris (Sw: Tätört, En: Common Butterwort)

The least bad of several attempts at photographing this single Butterwort flower, while balancing on narrow planks half-way across a bog.

Not specifically a fell species, it grows in wet places almost everywhere in Sweden. In the British Isles it's common in the north-west but has disappeared from much of the south and east due to agricultural drainage of wetland.

Långfil (also called Tätmjölk) is a local kind of fermented milk with a distinctive slimy or ropy texture. One way of starting the culture is rubbing the inside of the churn with the leaves of Butterwort or Sundew. This leaves a substance (it's disputed whether it's the enzymes of these insectivorous plants, or the bacteria they attract) whose effect is to make the milk proteins form into long polysaccharide chains, hence the ropy texture (which you can get rid of by stirring it before eating it). Linnaeus (Flora Lapponica, 1737) gave a different description of the method: "Some fresh, newly picked Pinguicula leaves, of any kind, are put in a strainer, and the freshly-drawn, still lukewarm, milk is poured over it."

Fermentation was a way of preserving the milk, much needed in the local transhumance culture of Jämtland, where people often spent months at a time pasturing cattle far from their homesteads.

[The Swedish Wikipedia entry for Långfil, however, states that all modern attempts to use butterwort to ferment milk have failed, the appropriate bacterium Lactococcus lactis being absent, and suggests that the much-repeated story of its former use for this purpose should be treated as a factoid. It is certain, however, that butterwort leaves have bactericidal properties and were used to clean the udders of cows.]

Pedicularis sceptrum-carolinum

Pedicularis is a more significant genus up here than in the British Isles (and the Swedish name "spira" sounds much nicer than the English name "lousewort").

This one is the biggest and most magnificent species, Pedicularis sceptrum-carolinum (Sw: Kung Karls spira, En: Moor-king Lousewort). Common on the edges of wet, boggy ground. Not found in the British Isles.

Lichens on stone

Typically decorative stones. I don't know anything about lichens, but the further north you go, the better they seem to get.

More lichens on stone

Hieracium alpinum growing among Alchemilla alpina

Hieracium alpinum (Sw: Fjällfibbla, En: Alpine Hawkweed)

I've made up the English name. Hawkweeds are a highly critical group and this may be better regarded as an aggregate group of microspecies (Hieracium sect. Alpina). Similar hawkweeds occur in C. Scotland. Whether they are the same species as any of the Scandinavian plants is a moot point.

Whatever, Fjällfibbla  in a general sense (whether it's one species or many) is highly recognizable up here and very common.

Alchemilla alpina (Sw: Fjälldaggkåpa, En: Alpine Lady's-mantle)

"Daggkåpa" means "dew-cape", so there is evidently some connection with the English name Lady's Mantle. I suppose these names were suggested by the pleated orbicular leaves of the lowland types (and perhaps, in the case of the Swedish name, the blob of rainwater that often collects in the middle). In the alpine species, however, these leaves are divided into finger-like leaflets.

Sedum rosea

Sedum rosea (SW: Rosenrot, EN: Roseroot). A common plant up here, and some of it was still in bloom. This one wasn't, but it looked really good in the rain.

Pedicularis lapponica

Pedicularis lapponica (Sw: Lappspira, En: Lapland Lousewort). One of my favourites, common throughout the fell region. Not found in the British Isles.

Photo taken just outside the Sylarna Fjällstation, where we stayed for two nights.

This was 1040m / 3412ft above sea level, but the Meadow Buttercup in the background was still hanging in there!

Oxyria digyna

Oxyria digyna (Sw: Fjällsyra, En: Mountain Sorrel) is a very small dock. Very common (one of the plants that grows highest, along with Ranunculus glacialis). The leaves, like those of lowland sorrel, have a fresh, sour taste. (It's added to reindeer milk to make the Sami dish "Juobmo".)

Silene acaulis

Silene acaulis (Sw: Fjällglim, En: Moss Campion).

"One of our few true cushion plants", wrote C.A.M. Lindman in Nordens Flora. This form of growth involves every stem being an identical length, so as to form a perfect defensive dome, cradling the warmth and repelling wind and snow. Each stem produces only a single flower.

When the flowers first appear they are salmon-pink, later becoming a pale violet, as here.

In Britain it's mainly a plant of NW Scotland, with outliers in the Lake District, Benbulbin and Snowdonia.

Bartsia alpina

Bartsia alpina (Sw: Svarthö, En: Alpine Bartsia).

Common in the Scandinavian fells, sometimes descending into the lowlands along river systems. Extremely local in Scotland and N England.  

A rather striking plant. "Svarthö" means "black hay", though I don't know if that's really the origin of the name,

The high fells: Tempeldalen, Sylarna

Veronica alpina

Veronica alpina (Sw: Fjällveronika, En: Alpine Speedwell).

This photo shows the flowers when they're closed. They close up whenever it rains, and up here that's most of the time. (It isn't heavy rain, just the sort of continuous light precipitation that you always get when you're up in the clouds.)

Grows throughout the Scandinavian fell region, in areas where the snow lies late. In the British Isles, restricted to a few mountains in central Scotland.

Ranunculus glacialis

Ranunculus glacialis (Sw: Isranunkel, Renblomma. En: Glacier Buttercup, Glacier Crowfoot).

This remarkable buttercup is the flowering plant that grows highest in the Scandinavian mountains. It's also the plant that grows nearest to the north pole (on the north coast of Greenland).  It's characteristically found on the lower edges of glaciers and permanent snow-patches, where there is a trickle of melt-water all summer. (On Sylarna there are three glaciers, though they're shrinking year by year.)

Occasionally a solitary plant turns up in a lowland river valley, growing from a seed that's been washed downstream.

When the flowers first open they are whitish, but rapidly darken to pink and magenta.

According to Lindman it's a favourite food of reindeer (hence "renblomma"), and I guess that's true, since there's a photo of reindeer grazing on it in Sven Kilander's 1955 book about the height limits of vascular plants on the Swedish mountains (p. 71). An unusual example of the normally-poisonous buttercup family providing pasturage!  (Though I've also been told that the root nodules of Lesser Celandine can be eaten.)

Ranunculus glacialis has never been recorded in the British Isles; not too surprising, as there's really no suitable environment for a plant that's as ice-loving as this one.

Ranunculus glacialis

This is close to the limit of higher plants. The other leaves in this photo are Oxyria digyna, Veronica alpina and Gnaphalium supinum (Sw: Fjällnoppa, En: Dwarf Cudweed). Above this,  it's nothing but moss, algae, lichens and bare rock.

Ranunculus glacialis

Ranunculus glacialis

In the high fells

Finally, a couple of shots from the return leg:

Arctostaphylos alpinus

Arctostaphylos alpinus (Sw: Ripbär,  En: Arctic Bearberry). At Spåime, on species-poor moorland. A specialist of harsh environments where the winds are too strong for snow to settle.

I wrote a separate post about this one:

http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/back-from-mountains.html

Angelica sylvestris

Finally, as we descended in warm sunshine to the friendlier environs of Storulvån, I couldn't resist snapping this enthusiastic crowd of hoverflies on a just-opened umbel of the lowland Angelica species, Angelica sylvestris (Sw: Strätta, En: Wild Angelica).


We were back!


*

Here's my translation of Curt Lofterud's very informative booklet about this walk:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2016/07/storulvan-blahammaren-sylarna.html