Monday, April 25, 2011 - Devil's Canyon Campground, Blanding UT
< previous day | archives | next day >
Microclimate, White Canyon, Fry Canyon UT, April 22, 2011
Cactus in a hole
Clever cactus. Found a nice warm microclimate in a hole. Got a couple weeks head start on spring. Things might get a little tough later in the summer. Tradeoffs - it's all about tradeoffs.
Rain
It rained hard overnight. There is water in the crick. A couple feet of it. There won't be any exploratory hikes for a day or two. Ah well, I'm outa here - gotta go pick up my mail in Blanding.
Night camp
Site 7 - Devil's Canyon Campground, Blanding UT
- Verizon cell phone and EVDO service - good signal
- Go to Devil's Canyon Campground website
- Locate Devil's Canyon Campground on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Teosinte and the Improbability of Maize
The ancestors of wheat, rice, millet, and barley look like their domesticated descendants; because they are both edible and highly productive, one can easily imagine how the idea of planting them for food came up. Maize can't reproduce itself, because its kernals are securely wrapped in the husk, so Indians must have developed it from some other species. But there are no wild species that resemble maize. Its closest genetic relative is a mountain grass called teosinte that looks strikingly different - for one thing, it "ears" are smaller than baby corn served in Chinese restaurants. No one eats teosinte, because it produces too little grain to be worth harvesting. In creating modern maize from this unpromising plant, Indians performed a feat so improbable that archaeologists and biologists have argued for decades over how it was achieved. Coupled with squash, beans, and avocados, maize provided Mesoamerica with a balanced diet, one arguably more nutritious than its Middle Eastern or Asian equivalent.