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: