I got interested in Berlandier because so many Texas flora bear his name and as I googledsearched him I became more interested in him and imagined him as the link to get Sor Juana's imagined Arabic interpretation of Marie Madeleine Talon imagined reproductions of Karankawan sand pictograms into the hands of Frances Wright in Paris 130 years later. He spoke French. he was in Mexico and working with the newly independent Mexican government, when MacLure and Say were in Mexico. MacLure and Say were both pioneering geologists and would likely have sought out or been introduced to Rafael Chowell or Chovell, the minerologist on the 1827-28 Mexican government's expedition with Berlandier, and with whom Berlandier co-wrote Diario de Viaje de Commission 20 some years later. So it is safe to presume Berlandier and Chowell were in contact when MacLure and Say were in Mexico. Mme Fretageot was in Mexico with both MacLure and Say, before and after her visit to Frances. When I wrote the artist statement for "...dwelling in tents I had a snippy attitude toward her as a gossipy nosy floozy, because the only source cited by Frances Wright scholars for believing Frances had given birth 6 months before she married, and that she was in what we would call a post partum depression, was a gossipy note from Mme Fretageot to MacLure or Say. I can't check which as I write because I left I left Alice Perkins and Theresa Wolfson's 1972 biography and Celia Morris Eckhardt's 1884 one in Atlanta and they are not republished on line yet.
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| Catnapin's Wolfberries |
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Lycium berlandieri, is known as Whooping Crane Wolfberry, to those of us on the Matagorda Bay side of the Whitmire Estate section of the Arfansas Wildlife Refuge. It is the Whooping Cranes' food of choice when they first arrive in the late fall. The small lilac blue flowers blooming simultaneously with the teeny red berries enthralled me when we bought this bird watcher's paradise from Abby and Joe Birdwell (that is their real name) ten years ago. I learned later about the Whooping Cranes and that they must be watered to keep them evergreen, blooming and bearing continuously. If you bite them, they are salty. I've never thrown them into a salad, and I don't remember them from any wild edibles book, but it's worth checking. They can actually be purchased from Fire Fly Forest in Tucson Arizona, whom I pray will forgive my lifting their great photo of Berlandier's Wolfberry in flower in exchange for this plug. The image of the berries is by Catnapin photographer and artist, Jo Cox of Abilene. Jo's die back in summer.
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| Firefly Forest's Wolfberry flower |
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