Nitrogen Fixing Plants Prarie Acacia or Acacia Angustissima

By Liliana Usvat
Blog 270-365

''Acacia angustissima'' is a perennial, deciduous, shrub or tree in the Fabaceae family native to Central America and the United States. It is also found in South America, India and Pakistan. 

Other common names for it include Carboncillo, Timbe, Timbre, Fern Acacia and Prairie wattle. 

It grows 1m to 4m in height having whitish, 1.3 cm diameter spherical flowers from June through September. ''"Angustissima"'' in Latin means "narrowest," describing the look of the shrub's leaves. 

Good for Reforestation

Altitude: 0-2600m
Annual Temperature Mean: 5-30 deg. C.
Annual Rainfall Mean: 895-2870mm
Soil: ''A. angustissima'' is well-suited for acidic, low-nutrient soils and it has very good resistance to drought.

 The flowers are clustered into 1/2 inch (1.3 cm) wide, fuzzy balls of stamens and will open white and age to a pinkish color. The flowers are followed by flat, elongated, brown seedpods. The leaves are green and bipinnate with tiny leaflets. The stems are hairy, reddish, and spineless. The larger stems are ridged and grooved, unlike the similar, but taller and smooth-stemmed Lysiloma watsonii.

PROPAGATION

Propagation Material: Seeds , Softwood Cuttings 
Description: Propagate by scarified seed or softwood cuttings. 
Seed Collection: Collect in late summer to early fall when seeds are firm, filled out, and dark brown.


Butterfly Plant 

The flowers attract butterflies and other insects like bees.

Chewing Gum

Used as a source of chewing gum or gum flavoring.

Medicinal Plant

 A bitter astringent, sedative herb that improves diegstion

and 

cerebral circulation



Medicinal Uses. Internally for headaches associated with with debility

and 

nervous tension and 
for anxiety, 
neuralgia, 
sinusitis, 
excess upper respiratory tract mucus, 
gastritis, 
poor digestion, 
hypertension and
menopausal problems. 


Excess causes, diarrhoea and vomiting.  Not to be given to pregnant
women. 

Externally for wounds (especially if infected),
 bruises, 
ulcers, 
sore throat, and 
gum inflammation.

Combines well with Scutellaria laterifolia, Verbena officinalis,
Lavandula angustifolia or Hypericum perforatum

 for tension headaches

(although I suspect to much of any of these combinations may be TOO
MUCH)

"action: 

astringent, 
carminative, 
diuretic, 
expectorant, 
nervine, 
tonic,
vulnerary"
"body: bladder, 
kidney, 
spleen, 
stomach"


"used to treat: 

asthma, 
bladder ailments, 
bronchitis, 
cancer, 
cough,
cuts, 
excessive sweating, 
external ulcers, 
heartburn, 

kidney ailments,
neurasthenia, 
sore, 
spitting blood, 
sprains, 
varicose veins,
wen, 
worms"

use: tea
"The infusion is used for neurasthenia, bladder and kidney ailments,
spitting blood, and excessive sweating; 

regular use is recommended for

varicose veins. 
A strong decoction is used against worms. 
The juice of the plant can be used to heal cuts, external "

Forest and Nature

By Liliana Usvat
Blog 269-365

In western culture since the Industrial Revolution ( After 1790) the idea grew that there was little connection between the objects in the wold and the individual. Before that time man did believe that he could affect matter and the environment through his thoughts. With the Industrial Revolution however even the elements of nature lost their living quality in man's eye. See the destruction of the forest for example. They became objects to be categorized named torn apart examined.

In his great curiosity to understand the heredity of a flower, say he forgot  what he could learn by smelling a flower looking at ti watching it be itself.

You cannot understand what makes things live when you rob them of life. So he examined dead nature. Often he had to kill life in order to he thought  to discover its reality.

Man's thoughts no longer seemed to have any effect upon nature because his mind he saw himself apart from it. He became blind to the connection between his thoughts and his physical environment and experience.

Nature became then an adversary that he must control.  Yet underneath he felt that he was at the mercy of  nature, because in cutting himself off from it he also cut himself off from using many of his own abilities.

Very natural functions of the conscious mind therefore were assigned to the underground  and cut off from the normal use.

If the purpose of civilization is to enable the individual to live in peace joy security and abundance, then that ideea of disconnection with nature has served him poorly.

Forest Lessons form the Easter Island

By Liliana Usvat
Blog 268 -365

Most everyone is familiar with the enigmatic stone heads of Easter Island, the massive carved rocks that sit on stone platforms on the coast and lie scattered across the landscape.

The heads, called moai, and a small native population are virtually all that is left of the Polynesian civilization that once flourished on the island. The once-lush forests that covered the 63-square-mile island, known to its inhabitants as Rapa Nui, have all been lost and the fertile soil that once supported a vital farming community has been blown away by tradewinds.

A chilling story of resource exploitation and destruction on Easter Island is beginning to come to light. The first westerners to discover the island wondered how any one could have survived on such a desolate, treeless place. Indeed, this was a mystery until recent core samples taken from the crater lakes showed that the island was heavily forested with a giant now-extinct palm while the Easter Island culture was active.

Easter Island is the prototypical example illustrating the serious consequences of the overexploitation of natural resources by man. According to this thesis, the deforestation of the island, noted by the first explorers, was due to the negligence of the Pascuenses themselves. This latter group, applying no forethought, were said to have cut down all the trees essential to their survival for domestic purposes or even more foolishly, for constructing, transporting and setting up their famous Moai. The disappearance of the trees thus ineluctably led to the decline of their civilization and the near disappearance of the Pascuenses.

When Easter Island was "discovered" by Europeans in 1722, it was a barren landscape with no trees over ten feet in height. The small number of inhabitants, around 2000, lived in a state of civil disorder and were thin and emaciated. Virtually no animals besides rats inhabited the island and the natives lacked sea-worthy boats.

The Easter Island of ancient times supported a sub-tropical forest complete with the tall Easter Island Palm, a tree suitable for building homes, canoes, and latticing necessary for the construction of such statues. With the vegetation of the island, natives had fuelwood and the resources to make rope. With their sea-worthy canoes, Easter Islanders lived off a steady diet of porpoise. A complex social structure developed complete with a centralized government and religious priests. 




It was this Easter Island society that built the famous statues and hauled them around the island using wooden platforms and rope constructed from the forest. The construction of these statues peaked from 1200 to 1500 AD, probably when the civilization was at its greatest level. However, pollen analysis shows that at this time the tree population of the island was rapidly declining as deforestation took its toll.

 A spooky cave (right) at the southwest corner of the island, Ana Kai Tangata, is translated to "cave where men are eaten." Inside are pictographs painted in ochre and white of ghost like birds flying upwards. With no wood left to build boats, all the Rapa Nui people could do was look enviously at the birds that sail effortless through the sky. The Rapa Nui culture and community, which had developed over the past 300 years, collapsed.

Around 1400 the Easter Island palm became extinct due to overharvesting. Its capability to reproduce has become severely limited by the proliferation of rats, introduced by the islanders when they first arrived, which ate its seeds. In the years after the disappearance of the palm, ancient garbage piles reveal that porpoise bones declined sharply. 

The islanders, no longer with the palm wood needed for canoe building, could no longer make journeys out to sea. Consequently, the consumption of land birds, migratory birds, and mollusks increased. Soon land birds went extinct and migratory bird numbers were severely reduced, thus spelling an end for Easter Island's forests. Already under intense pressure by the human population for firewood and building material, the forests lost their animal pollinators and seed dispersers with the disappearance of the birds. Today, only one of the original 22 species of seabird still nests on Easter Island.

With the loss of their forest, the quality of life for Islanders plummeted. Streams and drinking water supplies dried up. Crop yields declined as wind, rain, and sunlight eroded topsoils. Fires became a luxury since no wood could be found on the island, and grasses had to be used for fuel. No longer could rope by manufactured to move the stone statues and they were abandoned. The Easter Islanders began to starve, lacking their access to porpoise meat and having depleted the island of birds. As life worsened, the orderly society disappeared and chaos and disarray prevailed.

Links
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYliCfzOkDE