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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Fruit trees in the City

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  • From: Spidra Webster <spidra@speakeasy.net>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Fruit trees in the City
  • Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2006 09:48:04 -0700


On Sep 23, 2006, at 6:48 AM, Jim Fruth wrote:

Los Banos, California's streets are lined with Carob Trees. Despite the
many poor folk in the area, no one picks the fruit. The pods fall on the
ground and are swept up and dumped.

The street behind my grammar school in South Pasadena had carob trees planted down it. I was told that the Seventh Day Adventists had planted carob near schools in South Pasadena and Pasadena in the late 19th century. Even though I liked unsweetened carob, I didn't often bother with them. They need a lot of processing to use. And most Americans wouldn't know they were edible. The trees stink something awful, too. There are better choices of public fruit trees.

A lot of it is how removed most Americans are from nature. People don't know how to identify edible plants, fruits, nuts, mushrooms, etc. There are some easy ones - like even the most citified person around here knows Himalaya blackberry when they see it - but I've seen homeless encampments a block from a large stand of feijoa that rarely got harvested. Eventually it was discovered by me and some Chinese ladies who worked at a local chocolate factory. We were the only ones I ever saw harvesting it.

I've spent a lot of my adult life just barely making it so I guess I've always had it in the back of my mind to be prepared if I became homeless. I've made a mental note of where there are any edibles that aren't on private land. For different reasons, others have too:

http://www.fallenfruit.org/



Spidra Webster
http://www.myspace.com/meganlynch
http://www.spidra.com





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