permaculture

[Heide Hermary <heidehermary@pacificcoast.net>]

As far as I know. Usually seeds contain higher amounts of toxins than 
other plant parts.

I've looked up my reference on toxicity to horses: "Equine Clinical 
Nutrition, Feeding and Care", by Lon D. Lewis (had to design a horse 
friendly farm landscape a few years back: couldn't believe how many 
common plants are highly poisonous to horses: elderberry, yew, red maple 
and dozens more....and those animals don't seem to be particularly 
bright: they eat themselves right to death)
Robinia pseudoacacia (black locust) contains the toxin "Lectin", and 
causes diarrhea, trembling and ataxia.  

Not all plants are equally toxic to all creatures, but whatever I've 
read about black locust has been pretty general.  The mere fact that is 
doesn't decay easily (i.e. doesn't get eaten by microbes) should be an 
indicator of toxic / preservative substances.

One thing that also needs to be taken into consideration: many plants 
that are continuously coppiced will develop toxins in response to the 
coppicing that they would not normally have in their tissues. Plants are 
living creatures that DO know how to defend themselves.

Heide

Claude Genest wrote:

> Seed pods as well Heide ?
>
> Also, Black Locust is one of the hottest burning firewoods and watch 
> you don't plant them on your path too much as they are incredibly 
> thorny !
> On Friday, October 4, 2002, at 01:11 PM, Heide Hermary wrote:
>
> > Black locust is poisonous to animals.  Why would you want to use it 
> > as forage?
> > Cheers, Heide
> >
> > BK wrote:
> >
> > > Hi,
> > > In reguards to black locusts, I'm not an avid silviculturalist, but I
> > > believe they are one of the faster growing trees around. Had a small 
> > > tree
> > > (2" truck, 7 feet) about 2 years ago next to our house, it can now 
> > > be seen
> > > popping up above our roof. Also have tons of little seedlings 
> > > popping up.
> > > Its an n-fixer I believe. I've be playing with the idea of planting (on
> > > barren land) a dense crop of them. Plan being: dense amount of small 
> > > trees
> > > to use as much sun as possible, thin about half of the trees out the 
> > > next
> > > year, use as forage. Thin them next year forage/stickwood. Such that 
> > > you'd
> > > continue to get a good amount out of the plot. Out course thats a 
> > > bit of a
> > > monocultural idea, so it'd be good to find understory crops for the 
> > > more
> > > mature system. Once they start flowering I bet you could get a good 
> > > deal of
> > > honey from the stand. I've set up a smal row of the little 
> > > seedlings, I'm
> > > hoping to try intertwining them as years progress to see how they'd 
> > > work for
> > > some form of biotecture.
> > >
> > > Also, in reguards to industry and stacking, theres a term around called
> > > "industrial ecologies". Setting up a group of industries where one
> > > industries waste is anothers input.
> > >
> > > Lastly, I'm not so sure I'd want to drink rainwater collected from 
> > > rooves in
> > > urban areas. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a bit of airborne
> > > pollution around urban centers that would fall as rain?
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > BK _______________________________________________
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> >
> >
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