North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Stefan Brandle <sbrandle@css.taylor.edu>]

Donna, your discussion about tastes, etc. was really interesting. I was 
born in Angola (Africa) in a family with several generations experience 
there. I've read and been told that there were areas where the people 
were so vitamin C deficient that when the Europeans introduced lemons, 
the locals were eating them like candy and loving it.

One story in the memoirs of a retired Canadian nurse (a friend of my 
mother who now lives in Regina) told about how in extreme circumstances 
people started bleeding through their skins. She wrote that a doctor 
(Dr. Strangway, Englishman if I recall correctly) invented a way of 
doing "lemon juice intravenous infusions" which helped rescue people 
with that condition and which became the standard protocol at the time. 
No, the book doesn't go into medical detail, that's all I know.

- sb

In East-central Indiana where my peaches, cherries, kiwi, etc. are all 
tempting fate by starting to bloom. Those days of 65-70 degree weather 
really has faked them out. The natives -- black walnut, poison ivy :-), 
etc. -- aren't showing any serious signs of believing what the weather 
has been telling them. If it really looks like frost next week, I may 
try covering some of the smaller stone fruit plans with heavy plastic 
over night and see whether that helps.