Prickly pear is edible!

Yes. If not for humans, it is so for cattle. But the fruit of course is edible. Recently I read about this particular kind of Opuntia which is thornless. To my delight, I found this plant standing green and healthy in the Dharma Vana Arboretum nursery and I believe that this plant has great potential in providing nutrition security to semi-arid regions as it can sustain cattle. I found a lot of literature on the possibility of using this plant as a livestock feed while looking for a suitable photograph to accompany this post.


The above photograph is from the blogspot, (http://mesilla.blogspot.com/2007/04/spineless-cactus.html) which gave a very nice account of the plant and also Luther Burbank, "The Plant Wizard." Burbank was born in 1849 and had no schooling beyond 6th grade, but he did have an intense fascination with plant breeding. He is credited with creating over 800 strains and varieties of plants, including the "impossible" plumcot, which he called "a cross which man said could never be made."

Mr. William Frederick Durr all set to plant his dream

My visit to the Dharma Vana Arboretum Nursery, turned out to be a memorable experience, with Mr. William Frederick Durr, Director of the Arboretum taking us around and showing us various interesting plants with utmost patience and passion. The nursery itself looked like an arboretum as he is preparing to plant over 400 acres of land earmarked for an arboretum devoted to semi-arid tree species.

We were first greeted by heaps (hillocks) of compost derived from coconut shells and we felt very happy to see coconut waste being utilized productively. Our attachment to coconuts stems from the fact that we hail from Godavari district famous for coconut plantations. Coconuts are `currency' for us. We saw several kinds of several plants. We saw bamboos planted color after color making a sort of `tunnel'. Lotus and water lillies are grown in cement rings placed in a water tank. Each variety is planted in a ring to maintain isolation. Already there are white, yellow and purple ones. It would be a marvelous sight when the entire tank is filled with colorful lillies in circles.

Dr. Durr scouts mountains and valleys for the `lost species'. He rediscovered several species that are once declared to be extinct and saved them from real extinction. His mission is indeed a great and timely effort in the wake of people talking about `climatic change' and species extinction.

My Arboretum ideas

My Arboretum Ideas

From: sugunasrimaddala, 5 minutes ago

My Arboretum Ideas

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: services sharing)

SlideShare Link

My Arboretum ideas

The thought of my visit to Dharma Vana Arboretum has spurred some new ideas with respect to knowledge building and sharing as well as mainstreaming of trees.

The new avatar ... of Teaching

When I saw my daughter prepare Teacher day greeting cards, I just discovered that the day doesn't relate to me in any way as my days with teachers seemed to be a very distant past. I didn't take `Teaching' as my profession either. I don't teach my children either (they are not teachable?!). So, I rather try to `Inspire' than to `Instruct'.

I had put an end to my contemplation with a deep sigh and continued with my duties. And at the end of the day, `The Teachers Day' did relate to me - when my boss asked me to prepare a quick ppt based on-line turorial to train the new team members of the project we are working 0n.