A Life of Apples

Seems like I spend a lot of time talking about apples here, which is sort of odd, considering that I've actually never worked with them, and I talk much less about some of the crops I have worked with. But part of why apples keep coming up is that they seem to possess a special place in our culture and our history.

During my months away from this site I stumbled across an apple blog, which I read for a bit, planned on posting here, and then promptly forgot about it as work and travel took me away from the Internet. Then today I realized that the "Chris" who commented here the other day is none other than the author of that blog

A Life of Apples

A Life of Apples features a number of profiles of cultivars, all interesting and well done, which is how I found it, but also touches on the historical and mythological aspects of apples, as well as yoga, recipes, and more. A definite addition to the sidebar.

The Almond Doctor

I'm always pleased when I stumble across single-crop blogs. This morning's discovery is The Almond Doctor, by University of California Cooperative Extension Farm Advisor for Merced County, David Doll. Apparently there are 102,000 acres of almonds in Merced County, which is absolutely mindboggling! The focus seems to be primarily on pest and diseases, which gives it a very practical bent.

The Almond Doctor

Lanzones?

I was just perusing The Scent of Green Bananas, and came across this:

Name That Fruit!: Lanzones (Scent of Green Bananas)

I have never heard of these things, but I'm intrigued. Anybody know if these are available in the U.S.? Meliaceae is the mahogany family...

TSOGB is basically a food blog, but so fruit intensive that I read it semi-routinely, which is saying something because my tolerance for food blogs wears out pretty fast.

It's not as far north, but...

...it's a heck of a lot colder than London:

Don's Cold Hardy Citrus

Granted, they're not looking at grapefruit, but I'm duly impressed with anybody who can get an edible Poncirus hybrid. A very cool site, and a good resource for those interested in breeding cold-hardy citrus.

The site is set up in reverse blog fashion, with the new stuff on the bottom, which I find unreasonably distracting and odd.

(Todd Wert, a friend of mine from grad school, pointed this page out to me).

Also, here's a fun-looking citrus page in German, one of the users' pages from the forum page.

You think this blog is overly specialized?

Over and over again, outside of work, when I tell people about this site, their reaction is frequently: How on earth do you find enough to write about? At which point I could point out that I have on occasion gone months without posting anything, but the problem there is more one of being busy (sometimes) or lazy (more often) and not a lack of material. As any one who has actually had a conversation with me about fruits can attest, I never run out of material.

Still, it gives me a little secret pleasure every time I find a fruit blog more specialized than mine, especially when said blog is extensive and well-written. Granted that almost never happens. But here's one case where it actually did:

Adam's Apples

Adam writes exclusively about apples. In fact, he writes almost exclusively about apple cultivars, which he tastes, photographs, and describes with surprising regularity (several times a week, pretty much continuously since July). I've been meaning to post the link for ages but I don't think I have. Of course, I never remember what I've posted if I don't post it immediately after finding it, so for all I know I just post the same three links over and over around here. This one merits a link over on the side, as well.

Update: I've been digging through the archives at Adam's Apples, and came across this episode, which amused me:

The Adventure of the Scarlet Blush
Mystery Managed (The non-Holmesian conclusion)
Scarlet Blush, Conclusion (the more appropriate conclusion)

Now I'm thinking I need more fictional detectives around here.

Another Durian blog

Like all Durian websites, it's a bit odd:

Above Average: Durian Links and Information

Any fruit-related site that also works in a reference to Gigantopithecus is just fine by me.

Warning: This site will play music at you. Adjust your volume accordingly. I told you...the Durian people are odd.

Transgeninc plants in Hawai'i: A new colonialism?

Hawai'i has the distinction of being the site of the first (and I think only) commercial trangenic fruit crop, a transgenic virus-resistant papaya. Without the transgenic papaya, there basically would be no Hawai'ian papaya industry. Even what little non-transgenic papaya production is left survives only by burying it in buffer zones of the transgenics.

Because of the level acceptance already in place for transgenic papaya, and probably because of the relative isolation of the island, Hawai'i is a popular plance for trials of transgenic crops. That's not real popular with some folks.

I'm a month late getting this posted, but Karl Haro von Mogel has a post on this up at Biofortified:

Hawai'i's curious relationship with with GE (Biofortified)

I can't remember if I've posted it before, but Karl's own blog, The Inoculated Mind is also worth a read.

#39 is good enough by me

Well, I know absolutely nothing about the website, but I'm not going to question anyone who ranks The Fruit Blog among the top 50 genetics blogs.

Even aside from the opportunity to brag about my honors, it's worth checking out, because there are some great sites there. Some, like Sex, Genes, and Evolution, John Hawks' Weblog, and Pamela Ronald's Tomorrow's Table, I've been following for a while, but there are a bunch of others in there that look absolutely fascinating.

(Considering they seem to have grouped them by category, I suspect the ranking is meaningless.)

Dan Koeppel's Banana Blog

One of the many things I've bookmarked with the intention of posting here and then neglected for months is Dan Koeppel's blog about bananas:

BananaBook.org

Dan's the author of a recent book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World, which chronicles the many disease and diversity issues facing the banana that we've touched on from time to time here before. (I was excited when the book was announced and had actually hoped to review the book here, but after I bought my Kindle I went on a little Amazon spending binge and now I'm laying off the book buying for a little bit).
The blog deals with many of the same issues as the book, and I would guess it was set up to promote it, but even if you haven't read the book (like me, except for the beginning, thanks to the wonder of the sample chapter) it's still entertaining as a general purpose banana blog.

The site also features a rather inexplicable banana themed picture.

Dan also scores points for dropping me a nice note when I added him as a friend on FaceBook, and I'm a sucker for authors who actually write back. (Granted I only wrote him a sentence or two, and he wrote about the same back).

Update: I'm feeling so positive about this website that I've decided to stick it in the sidebar...

Another fruit blog...

I've spent way too much time the last couple nights poking through the the referring URL's for this site. (That's how I found the Micah Rood movie below, actually). It also turned up the Fruit Blog's page on Foodbuzz. So while I was there I poke around a bit and found a fruit blog, called "Fruit Species". It's swimming in ads (or at least potential ads) which I find a little irritating, but I'm always happy to see another fruit blog pop up. The photos are pretty cool, and I like the gallery thing where you can choose an entry by picture.

(It's not clear to me if "The original, one and only fruit blog with full photos and descriptions of all the fruits around the world" is claiming to be the original fruit blog or the first with full photos and descriptions, but if the former, I'd like to gently point out that this one is two years older. Not that I'm counting.)

Either way, I'm sticking it in the links over on the side...