Spiny oranges

David Stockhoff · 04 Nov 2009, 13:16 · from 2009-November.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:16:51 -0500
Subject: (urth) Spiny oranges
In-Reply-To: <mailman.3551.1257315491.27276.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
References: <mailman.3551.1257315491.27276.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <4AF17EC3.4040306 at verizon.net>

Certainly, plant species with male and female PLANTS are not good 
candidates for staple food crops, nor for the co-evolutionary process 
that produced humanity's staple crops. The mating season is too tricky! 
You might have plenty of females but no males around, and you'd starve.

More to the point, you need a rapid progression of generations to 
"naturally" breed a useful food crop from an edible jungle plant. It 
also helps to have an aggressive colonizing habit. All our staple crops 
are essentially weeds that grow easily in disturbed soil. You need a 
plant that is highly effective at producing seeds. Thus, crops bred from 
grasses.

But neither separate FLOWERS, nor sexes combined in the same FLOWER, 
pose these problems.

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