[CH] Re: PEPPERS AND SHADE

Alex Silbajoris (asilbajo@hotmail.com)
Tue, 05 Mar 2002 18:01:02

>From: jim@wildpepper.com

>There was a 7' tall bird pepper that Dave had his picture taken
>with- it also had quite a bit of shade fro the overhead natural canopy.


Hmm, I had never thought of chile plants that way before - as forest 
boundary trees, like dogwoods or sassafrass.

One thing that keeps me wondering about the origins of chiles - I may be 
wrong on this, but I think I heard once that in southern California, there 
are various types of plants found nowhere else on the continent.  This is 
because they rode piggyback on various "terranes" or chunks of land that 
have collided with and stuck to the western edge of this continent, due to 
continental drift over many millions of years.  I heard that the SF area is 
full of these chunks of exotic rock from far away.

(read the last paragraph on this page:)

http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/geol111/pltect.htm

So, if the continental margin along South America's coastline shares this 
trait (I don't know if it does) what if chiles did not originate in Bolivia 
or Peru, but somewhere else entirely, and they were already growing on land 
that later attached to the continent?

(cue up the Donovan) Hail the lost mythic continent of Mu, birthplace of El 
Grande!

Of course, it is equally likely that habs came to us from benevolent alien 
life forms, which would explain last year's Open Fields poster.

- A


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