Having a brother-in-law who’s also a friend is one of life’s true blessings.  Knowing of my obsession with Patrick O’Brian’s sea novels, mine recently sent a copy of “The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact, and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook,” by Hampton Sides.  It’s thoroughly engaging; early on he described how Bora Bora warriors liked to beat their eviscerated victims until flattened, and “then cut a hole in the middle through which the triumphant warrior would insert his head to ‘wear’ his victim as a sort of macabre serape.”  Cook’s first voyage on the Endeavor in 1768 was “the first British purposeful scientific expedition” and was a triumph that was muted for Cook by one of his passengers, “a young botanist and bon vivant named Joseph Banks, who captured most of the attention and garnered most of the praise for the expedition’s success.”  Banks paid a small fortune to have himself and a group of botanical savants, artists, and his personal servants to collect undiscovered specimens and illustrate them while still fresh.  At sea they drove Cook nuts, but back home King George III, who was known as “the farmer king,” expected, and received, a nice haul of exotic plant life.  

George was so impressed that he “tasked Banks with creating the finest botanical gardens in the world at Kew,” according to “Joseph Banks: The Man Who Collected the World,” a recent BBC article.  Banks’ botanical fetish emerged early.  While a teenager at Eton he “noticed old ladies picking plants” and paid them “a few pennies a time to tell him what the plants were and what they were used for.”  Despite his tendency to profound seasickness, botany led him to join a voyage to Newfoundland and later to help fund Cook’s famous first expedition to Tahiti.  Banks enjoyed his pleasures almost as much as plants; that’s how his torrid affair with Tahiti’s queen ended with her stealing his britches and him returning to the ship pantless.  Among other accomplishments, Banks developed an outstanding botanical library that he opened to his special friends in that field.  However, the Britannica noted that “Banks was interested in economic plants and their introduction into countries …. In his capacity as honorary director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (near London), he sent many botanical collectors to various countries.”  In short, he spread a lot of invasive plants species worldwide.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines invasive species as “plants, animals, or pathogens that are non-native (alien) to the ecosystem under consideration, and whose introduction causes or is likely to cause harm.”  For instance, the Alaska Division of Foresty says chokecherry trees, “were originally introduced to Alaska in the 1950s as attractive ornamentals, and were prized for their hardiness, beautiful flowers, and edible berries.  However, they “outcompete native vegetation, forming thick infestations and excluding desirable plants that wildlife rely on for habitat and food, and these trees support fewer terrestrial insects than native plants, which are a key food source for salmon and other fish. Chokecherry trees have caused cyanide poisoning of moose.”  They die hard.  Ridding our house of one rubbing the siding entailed chopping it down, shooting the stump with .22s loaded with systemic poison, grinding the stump, salting the ground, and tarping the area for a year.

Prickly pear cactus is also extremely invasive and hard to get rid of, but two best friends  in Mexico, Adrián López Velarde and Marte Cázarez, teamed up in 2019 to create Desserto, a company that makes leather using prickly pear, also known as nopal.  The pair had industrial experience, and, according to their website, produced “a cactus-based marvel that not only rivalled leather but surpassed it in sustainability, performance, and aesthetics.” Sustainability is key.  Their nopal ranch is completely organic and promotes soil micro-flora and micro fauna.  “The mature leaves undergo a solarium drying process for three days” and is “then processed into Desserto using our patented formula.  Desserto harvests only mature leaves, for nopal is a perennial, and it doesn’t need irrigation since it’s a Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM) species that absorbs CO2 at night and minimizes water consumption.  Nopal is remarkably water-efficient, needing only 200 liters of water to produce a kilo of dry material, while C3 plants like corn, wheat, peanuts, most trees and grasses require 1,000 liters of water to produce a pound of usable product.  To top it off, the Mayo Clinic says human consumption of prickly pears can treat “diabetes, high cholesterol, obesity, and hangovers …. It might be too early to call prickly pear cactus a superfood … but it’s high in fiber, antioxidants and carotenoids.”

Libraries and bookstores are surprisingly good friends since people who use libraries also use bookstores and vice versa.  That’s why we local bibliophiles are celebrating the establishment of Solstice Books on 2^nd Ave.  Libraries and bookstores are symbiotic friends who mutually promote and prize that close relationship, for good friendship. as Francis Bacon wrote, “redoubleth joys and cutteth griefs in halfs.”