Tea at Trianon: Frankincense Endangered

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Frankincense Endangered

From Garden Design:

Despite its long history as a sacred plant, Bostwellia trees today are looking at a grim future. According to a December 2011 study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, the trees are threatened by various pressures that may reduce their numbers by 90 percent in the next 50 years. Young saplings are not surviving, trees are seeding less frequently, and, when they do, with decreased viability. Over-harvesting is a factor, but so are predators and increased fires.

This year, hope arrives in a new paper in the Annals of Botany. By mapping the tree's anatomy, botanists from the Netherlands and Ethiopia have discovered a new approach to tapping the trees, one that will yield more resin with less harm to the tree. Motuma Tolera, an author of the study, explains: "Tapping the tree creates wounds in the stem that take resources to be healed, and more wounds create more opportunities for insects to attack the tree. It's not a surprise that some trees die." When he and his colleagues discovered an intricate network of canals in the inner bark, they saw "an option to reduce the number of cuts, and reduce the damage to the trees." (Read entire article.)