Fingerlakespermaculture mailing list

[Jon Bosak <bosak AT pinax.com>]

Micheal Wheeler wrote:
> -- I remember an article (¿in Coevolution Quarterly?) about living 
> fences, and remember figures about weaving the stems together to make a 
> cordon.  The military was so impressed that Belgian fences could stop a 
> WWI tank that they took the word into their own lexicon. [proof-reading 
> that last sentence it sure sounds like an urban legend]

Probably so.  The oldest use of the word "cordon" refers to a kind
of fortification and first appears in written English in 1598,
whereas "cordon" meaning "a fruit-tree made by pruning to grow as
a single stem (usually as an espalier or wall tree)" first appears
in 1878.  So it appears that the military use gave the name to the
living fence rather than the other way around.

Jon