Dear Mark,
I have no thoughts about it but I missed your contributions to the
discussion in Girona...
best wishes, to Delwen too
Angela
PS: Sometimes I would like to know what you are thinking about the
Hordeum-question.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Nesbitt" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 5:37 PM
Subject: Cyperaceae tubers in Russia
> I have received the following enquiry regarding tuber consumption in
> Russia. I guess from the description (triangular stems) that we are
> dealing with Cyperaceae, not Juncaceae, and from the location the
> species must be temperate, not one of the sub-tropical Cyperus
> species. Any thoughts?
>
> By the way, sorry to miss everyone in Girona, sounds to have been
> a good meeting.
>
> Mark
>
> <SNIP>I am a Russian specialist and I am doing some research
> on a Russian writer called Boris Andreevich Mozhaev (1923-1996),
> who writes a great deal about the Russian countryside. He was a
> very close friend of the famous writer Solzhenitsyn, and he has a
> wonderful knowledge of plants and shrubs which grow around the
> area of Riazan' (sometimes spelt Ryazan), which is about
> 100 miles SE of Moscow. He also writes a great deal about the
> Meshchera national park area, on which there are many references
> on the internet.
>
> He wrote a work which I am translating at the moment entitled
> 'Lively' (named after the nickname of the main character). In it he
> makes reference to an acquatic plant which is growing in a local
> lake (in the Ryazan area), which grows tall, like a reed, but he
> specifically says it is neither a reed nor a grass, but that is not to
> say that technically it might be either. It has a triangular cross-
> section and he describes it as 'black and hairy'. The reason he
> mentions it is because there was a terrible famine in Russia in
> 1932-33 as a result of the government policy to destroy all
> independent farms and push them into collective farms, a
> process called collectivization, which cost the lives of about 6
> million people, because the peasants destroyed their own cattle
> and crops rather than let the state have them. The peasants
> turned to eating anything that grew locally, and they even ate tree
> bark. Horrifically, there were even reports of cannibalism. The
> point Mozhaev is making in the story is that the locals actually ate
> this acquatic plant, by pulling on the stems and
> washing the root/tubers, which they then dried and used as flour to
> bake something resembling bread. He also describes the stem as
> being very sharp, capable of cutting anyone brushing against it,
> and locally it is known as a 'bollock cutter' or 'balls cutter', because
> fishermen were frequently cut by it when fishing using a drag net.
>
> In Russian the common name is 'mudorez', the word 'mude' being
> slang for 'testicles'<SNIP>
>
> *********************************
> Dr Mark Nesbitt
> Centre for Economic Botany
> Royal Botanic Gardens
> Kew
> Richmond
> Surrey
> TW9 3AE
> UK
>
> Tel (direct): +44 (0)20 8332 5719
> Tel (central):+44 (0)20 8332 5197
> Fax: +44 (0)20 8332 5768
> www: http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/scihort/ecbot.html
> Culture Online
> www: http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/scihort/culture.html
> Economic Botany Links:
> http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/scihort/eblinks/
>
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