Wild Seed bank

Scientists have announced a plan to collect and store the wild plant relatives of essential food crops, including wheat, rice, and potatoes.

The project, co-ordinated by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, will collect and catalogue seeds from across the globe.

The aim is to safeguard valuable genetic traits that the wild plants contain, which could be bred into crops to make them more hardy and versatile.

This could help secure food supplies in the face of a changing climate

By Victoria Gill
Science and nature reporter, BBC News

Just the spot!

Our newly planted elephants ears or Colocasia has survived it's first summer finding a relatively sheltered spot proved to be difficult. We often seem to have two winds battling over our garden.
I would like to use more of these plants which would be striking in a large container on the patios around our villa but those large leaves would soon be shredded by the wind.

This is our second attempt with what should be easily grown plants of this species. Last year the two large corms (from Costa Rica) quickly developed a fungal disease and as we had not kept the receipt we were unable to return them for a refund. This year those on display at the garden centre all looked a bit dodgy so I picked the best two and only one of those has survived.

Over on India Garden Green thumb has produced an excellent post on the culinary uses of leaves and corms of the Colocasia.