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junglegroves - work in progress

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Epiphyte:
lots of updates to share, starting with the updated list of my ficus hybrids...

ficus opposita x carica
ficus fraseri x carica
ficus ulmifolia x carica
ficus racemosa x carica
ficus aspera x carica
ficus lutea x carica

it's sorted from oldest to newest, but also roughly by vigor/viability.  out of around 200 ficus lutea seeds that i sowed, only 1 germinated, but only partially.  an exquisite root emerged from the seed and went into the medium, but after a week of no further growth or development, the seedling quit living.  maybe embryo rescue would work. 

the racemosa x carica seedlings, dang, they are killing me.  i had really low expectations that the racemosa figs would ripen and have seeds, so i was ecstatic when they actually did. then there was the short-lived suspense whether the super tiny seeds would sink in water… numerous did.  this was followed by the painful suspense, which seemed like an eternity, of whether any would actually germinate.  quite a few did, but with considerable variation in vigor and viability.  tragically, so far none of the seedlings has made it past 3".  the inside of the stems become brown and the leaves start to fall off.  initially i sowed the seeds quite thinly, as per my sop, but when i noticed the seedlings dropping like flies, i started sowing them very thickly, which is possible because i actually have quite a few seeds.  well, around 15,000 seeds.  i literally counted 1000 seeds in a single fig.  will at least 1 in 15,000 seeds be an exception to what appears to be the rule of outbreeding depression for this particular batch?  currently i have around 4 distinct types of ficus racemosa.  the trick will be to cross each of them with every carica cultivar, including johannis and palmata.  hah. 

so far the sycidium subgenus (opposita, fraseri, ulmifolia) seems to be a solid tree to bark up for crossing with carica, with the exception of aspera.  back in july i grafted 4 scions (half pencil thick?) of opposita x carica onto a stumped carica in a 45 gallon pot and the scions are now mature.  of course i'm beyond biased, but i think its a beautiful tree.  most people though probably won’t grow it for purely aesthetic reasons.  guessing it will fruit next year and then there will be answers to questions like, will it be pollinated by the carica wasp? 

regarding the question of rkn resistance, this month i will visit my florida grove to see if any opposita x carica seedlings that i planted back in march survived the rkn, and the wild boars.  for anyone who missed my previous threads, earlier this year my partner and i bought 10 acres of old orange grove in central florida, an hour and a half south of orlando.  we live in los angeles and so far have only visited once.  this month will be our second visit and i'm really struggling to keep my expectations as low as possible. 

naturally i know what i want to do with my land.  the biggest question is, what does society want me to do with it?  the most common answer by far is, "develop it!"  the orange groves in the area are being sold off and bulldozed for houses, gas stations, walmarts and so on.  the basic issue is that these private goods are not hamstrung by the problem of free-riding, unlike public goods such as botanic gardens and other green spaces.  if only there was some way to level the playing field! 

back in june i had the opportunity to meet julian duval, the former ceo of the san diego botanic garden, now retired.  turns out he's also a ficus fan!  recently i shared the following plants with him...

aloe tenuior x hercules
annona reticulata red flesh
ficus fraseri x carica
ficus exasperata
ficus ischnopoda
ficus montana red leaf
ficus opposita x carica
ficus septica
ficus tannoensis
ficus ulmifolia
ficus ulmifolia x carica
kalanchoe epiphyte (10 different hybrids)

the aloe and kalanchoes are also my hybrids. 

if duval had still been the ceo of the botanic garden, then the plants i donated would have directly influenced its direction.  i don't think anyone objects to the idea of donating rare plants to a botanic garden.  right?  just like i doubt anyone would object to the idea of donating money to a botanic garden…



out of all the pics i’ve taken at the south coast botanic garden, this one has been by far the most useful.  the donation box says, “help our garden grow!”  but the question is, help their garden grow what?  pansies?  periwinkle?  petunias?  pouterias?  poison oak?

anyone ever watch gone with the wind?  i never have but for some reason this exchange from the movie has stuck with me for decades…

girl: wherever shall i go?  whatever shall i do? 
guy: frankly, my dear, i don’t give a damn. 

ouch, harsh.  but what if you were in his shoes? 

girl: wherever shall i go?  whatever shall i do? 
guy: frankly, my dear, i definitely give a damn!  go to florida and grow luc’s garcinia! 

existential crisis solved! 

what would happen if the botanic garden had 2 donation boxes, one for ornamentals and the other for edibles? 



oooo, wow!  there’s a big clear difference in the demand for ornamentals and edibles.  the people have spoken with their wallets.  let’s be generous and give the people a 3rd option…



well lookit that, it turns out that the greatest demand, by far, is for ornamental edibles. the picture is of chrysophyllum imperiale in my friend’s garden.

invariably there’s always the popular objection that wealthy people will be able to exert too much influence on the rankings.  the irony is profound.  let me try and illuminate it.

the economist israel kirzner shared a simple example of entrepreneurial error… “You opened a hardware store in a place where nobody buys hardware.”  in other words, the entrepreneur guessed that a hardware store was ranked a lot higher than it truly was.  as a result of his bad guess, he barked up the wrong tree and lost his shirt.

hopefully you see how profound the irony is.  the common criticism says that it’s unfair for wealthy people to have so much influence on the rankings, so we’re better off not knowing what the rankings are.  but if everyone actually could clearly see the rankings, then there would never be any need to guess the demand for anything, nobody would bark up the wrong trees, so everybody would be wealthy.   

the proof is in the pudding.  naturally i can’t make the pudding by myself.  what i’ve tried to do is provide the most rudimentary kitchen… junglegroves (jg).  this website for my florida grove is very much a work in progress.  on the homepage will be a list of suggestions ranked by donations.  the donations will be non-binding.  they don’t need to be binding because if the top ranked suggestion is “kwai muk” with a total amount of $224,642 donated for it, even if i don’t pick up this giant gold nugget just sitting at the top of my homepage, i’m sure others will. 

how it works…

1. click the donate button
2. enter any amount
3. in the notes include
a. what its for (ie yangmei)
b. link (optional)
c. your tff username

i’ll manually update the googlesheet when i get a chance.

alternatively, anyone can private message me for my personal paypal to select friends and family and that would cut out the exorbitant fees.  you can also message me on facebook and instagram.

manually having to input the data isn’t optimal but, for all i know, i’m greatly overestimating the demand for donation ranking.  hah.  perhaps at most i’ll only receive one donation a month.  out of the numerous plant forums i’m a member of, i’m giving tff first chance to determine what’s on the jg homepage.  after i return from florida next month, i’ll share jg on my 2nd favorite plant forum, which is… palmtalk (the non-palm category, heh), or agaveville, or orchidboard or… its a long list.  when the members of my 2nd fav forum visit the jg homepage hopefully they will see and learn at a glance what tff’s rare fruit priorities truly are. 

the website files are freely available on github... https://github.com/epiphyte78-web/junglegroves

you can see the developing version here… https://epiphyte78-web.github.io/junglegroves/index.html

the site itself is being freely hosted on netlify… https://www.netlify.com/

it’s too trippy that you can put anything on my homepage, or nearly anything.  no images or videos, for now.  but you can link to any tff thread, any youtube video, any instagram, any facebook group, any blog, any nursery, any page on ebay or etsy.  it doesn’t have to be related to plants but for now that’s what most visitors to jg will be interested in.

what’s the most blasphemous thing i can think of?  “the grove has too many epiphytes”.  this is the epitome of blasphemy, but if someone donates for it, i’ll put it on my homepage.  technically i own my homepage.  practically speaking though, it’s our homepage.  its our mirror that will accurately reflect what’s most important to us as a group.  for this reason, censorship is anathema to me.   as george bernard shaw said, “all great truths begin as blasphemies”.  where would we be today without heretics and infidels?  i literally collect quotes about heresy.  here’s the most recent addition…


--- Quote ---Christ was a wonderful psychologist. He was an infidel of his day, because he rebelled against the prevailing religion and government.  I am a lover of Christ as a man and his works and all things that help humanity, but, nevertheless, just as he was an infidel then, I am an infidel today. I do not believe what has been served me to believe. I am a doubter, a questioner, a skeptic. - Luther Burbank
--- End quote ---

on this blog entry about burbank i found this fun quote from the los angeles times…


--- Quote ---The San Francisco Chronicle advocates the seizing of Luther Burbank at his home in Santa Rosa and placing him in a chair at Stanford University….The main thing is to get the recluse away from his practical experiments long enough to tell people what he has done.
--- End quote ---

burbank struggled with financial problems all his life.  he created numerous very useful plant varieties but was never adequately compensated for them.  the plants themselves were a private good, but their creation and existence was a public good.  therefore, burbank was a severe victim of free-riding.  plant patents didn’t exist during his time even though he directly appealed to the us patent office several times.  it was just 4 years after his death, when he was made poster boy of plant patents by his friend thomas edison, that congress enacted them. in burbank’s own words…


--- Quote ---A man can patent a mousetrap or copyright a nasty song, but if he gives to the world a new fruit that will add millions to the value of earth's annual harvests, he will be fortunate if he is rewarded by so much as having his name connected with the result. - Luther Burbank
--- End quote ---

according to thomas jefferson, “The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.” 

what if burbank had a homepage where anyone could post things and rank them with donations?  i’m sure someone would have posted something like, “plant patents are useful!”  how much money would have been donated for this?  burbank wasn’t just friends with edison, he was also friends with henry ford. 

congress wouldn’t have needed to try and guess the demand for plant patents.  just like an entrepreneur wouldn’t have needed to try and guess the demand for a hardware store.

back in july i received this private message here on tff…


--- Quote ---Hi,

I'm the Plant Curator at the Edison and Ford Winter Estates in Ft. Myers, FL. I'm looking for F. ulmifolia for our collection. It was grown onsite during Edison's time and I'm trying to acquire it and other "historic" species. I saw on the forum that you planted some ulmifolia seedlings in FL. Can you share with me the source of your seedlings? Or at least pass my information along to them? We are members of the BGCI plant exchange but there are only four gardens that list the species and they are all overseas.

Thank you,
Britta Soderqvist
--- End quote ---

what’s the demand for a plant that isn’t for sale?  what's the demand for a plant that doesn't even exist?  we shouldn’t have to guess.  in theory it should be easy enough to find out simply by checking jg. 

honestly it was the first i’d even heard of the edison and ford winter estates.  of course i quickly ran over to wikipedia to look it up…


--- Quote ---From 1914 to 1918 (World War I), Edison became concerned with America's reliance on foreign supplies of rubber. He partnered with Harvey Firestone and Henry Ford to try to find a rubber tree or plant that could grow quickly in the United States and provide a domestic supply of rubber. In 1927, the three men contributed $25,000 each and created the Edison Botanic Research Corporation in an attempt to find a solution to this problem. In 1928, the Edison Botanic Research Corporation laboratory was constructed. It was in Fort Myers that Edison would do the majority of his research and planting of his exotic plants and trees.
--- End quote ---

edison grew ficus ulmifolia to test its sap quality?  if burbank had been there, and the 2 guys had put their heads together, then maybe they would have crossed ulmifolia and carica.  should burbank have been there? 

burbank: wherever shall i go, whatever shall i do? 
edison and ford: frankly, my dude, we definitely give a damn!  come to florida and cross ficus!   

existential crisis solved!

the tug-of-war is always real.  it’s a basic fact of economics that no single resource can be in two places at once.  this is what it means for society’s resources to be limited.  burbank couldn’t simultaneously be in california and florida.  where was he most needed?  all he could do is guess.  but again, having to try and guess demand is detrimental, primitive and the cause of poverty. 

currently only one donation has been made on jg, $1.53 for bulbs by my partner.  she does all the finance stuff and is currently planning to do some credit card wizardry to pay for a fence for jg.  seems like most quotes are around $40,000.  yikes.  admittedly her plan doesn’t sound very copacetic to me.  then again, she’s even more skeptical of my donation ranking plan, heh.  oh ye of little faith!   

when i visited wikipedia just now i was bashed on the head by their giant donation appeal.  each year it keeps getting bigger.  if wikipedia had donation ranking on their homepage, what would be at the top of it?  is jimmy wales too scared to learn the priorities of his donors?  just now when i visited inaturalist i was also bashed on the head by their giant donation appeal.  three days ago i posted a relevant journal entry there… grievance #67 of 95.

in comparison to donation appeals, traditional advertising is way worse, it constantly bashes us on the head.  youtube ads are incredibly annoying.  not only are they disruptive, but they are also entirely irrelevant.  its a huge waste of my time and the advertiser’s money.  which is worse though… advertisements or paywalls? 

75 years ago ira condit was the very first person in history to ever manually cross 2 ficus species.  his landmark paper… an interspecific hybrid in ficus… is behind a paywall.    by the time of his death in 1981, his paper had been cited 5 times.  by 2000 it had been cited 7 times.  citations/votes (cheap signals) should never be used to rank anything.  using money (costly signals) as a barrier to accessing his paper is a terrible idea.  instead, money should be used to elevate the paper on the publisher’s homepage.  money should be used to buy more eyeballs for condit’s paper.  money should be used to create a big bright flashing neon sign with an arrow pointing directly to condit’s shoulders.  the message should be painfully loud and clear… “stand on condit’s shoulders!” 

google took the idea of citation ranking and applied it to page ranking.  each link to a page is a vote for it.  is it a coincidence that, according to franklin foer, the top google search results for “god” are “aggressively, offensively vapid”?  this is what he wrote in the death of the public square, an article in the atlantic, which is behind a paywall.

on youtube, baby shark is ranked infinitely higher than all the videos about ira condit and luther burbank combined.  it highly behooves us to explore the alternatives.  i know its cliche for each generation to worry about the next generation, but in this case the actual term for some of the most popular content is “brainrot”.  there’s never been a time in history when kids had so much control over society’s limited attention as they do now.  we were all kids once, we should all remember how bad our priorities were.  from pooping our pants, to not wanting to eat our veggies, to not wanting to learn our times tables, to thinking that our favorite book or band in the 5th grade would be our favorite for life, its a long list.  kids having bad priorities is not new.  what is new is that, for the first time in history, views/votes have put kids in the driver’s seat.  for the first time, thanks to the internet ranking virtually everything with cheap signals, a huge portion of society’s limited attention has been hijacked by the lord of the flies. 

is jg the antidote to brainrot?  well, its a basic fact that while kids have more time than adults, adults have more money than kids.  with the current system the playing field is unlevel…its advantageous to kids and disadvantageous to adults.  with jg it would be the complete opposite.  we should tell kids, “eat ur veggies and look at jg!”  jg would tell kids to stand on mr. burbanks shoulders. youtube would tell kids to stand on mr. beasts shoulders. 

what if jg actually tells kids to stand on mr. prada’s shoulders?  the first step in improving society’s priorities is by far the most important step: knowing what they actually are.  knowing is half the battle.  right now we don’t know if tff will elevate whichever fruit is the closest equivalent to prada.  it’s funny because… all the fruits at the top of our wish lists are the equivalent of prada.  we’re not here because we’re excited and passionate about common fruit, we’re here for the rarest of the most rare, which is way out of reach, on the other side of the world.  or they are in my backyard.  all my fig hybrids are rarer than any prada product.  sure, i could try and guess which seeds, seedlings, or scions to put on figbid, but the tug-of-war is real. 

one of my fav examples is florida fruit geek.  for quite a while he was doing some really great work testing rkn resistance of various rootstocks for ficus carica.  but then out of nowhere, mulberries won the tug-of-war.  another fav example is flying fox fruit on instagram.  in some of his posts the fruit trees win, but in other posts the skateboarding wins.  and i imagine all of his young skater friends on one side of the rope, and on the other side are all of us old fogies.  its a pretty close fight with clicking the heart button.  too close.  so we should definitely switch to donations.  the 3rd example, the most painful example, is florida natural farming.  we lost the tug of war to miniature zebu cows.  it wasn’t a fair fight, they are way more charming than all of us combined.  the only chance we had was with donations. 

in my case, what’s charming my socks off are my epiphytic kalanchoe hybrids.  unlike with the figs, i don’t even need to pollinate them, because they are naturally pollinated by the most charming bird ever, hummingbirds.  the seeds quickly germinate and the seedlings are instantly fascinating and captivating because they are so incredibly diverse.  and they flower within a year.  and they grow on trees!  all trees always need more epiphytes, contrary to any blasphemous rumors.   

so yeah.  the tug-of-war is real.  its no joke.  and thanks to the free-rider problem, we are constantly sabotaging our side of the rope.  this would be far less rampant with literal tug of war.  if we were all in person engaging in tug-of-war we’d all have the good sense to at least pretend we were pulling hard on the rope.  but we aren’t in person, there is no literal rope, and chipping in hasn’t been a team effort, until now. 

in theory jg provides us, the members of the tropical fruit forum, with the single most powerful weapon to combat brain drain.  obviously its not a secret weapon.  its not intended to be.  because the fact is, perhaps some of our biggest brains should be solving bigger problems than a shortage of rare fruit.  well, the biggest obstacle to the abundance of rare anything is the bad distribution of brains.  too many brains barking up the wrong trees!  this can be solved, by fixing how we engage in tug-of-war.  when its with clicks, we lose to kids and people who barely care.  and when we stand on the sidelines, we obviously lose.  the only way to win, for everyone to win, is when the incentive to free-ride is minimized. 

the grove next to jg is on the market.  whoever buys it will most likely develop it, based of course on their guess about demand.  ideally they wouldn’t have to guess.  they would just look at the jg homepage, where they would see the demand for a gas station relative to the demand for a wildlife sanctuary.  conservation and development would be, for the 1st first time in history, on a completely level playing field, since they would be equally weighed down by the incentive to free-ride.  hopefully the incentive is as small as possible, but whatever it is, it will equally apply to conservation and development.  people on team gas station wouldn’t be buying gas, they would be donating to credibly quantify their perception of its scarcity, just like the people on team wildlife sanctuary wouldn’t be buying wildlife, they would be donating to credibly quantify their perception of its scarcity.  its not buying gas vs donating for wildlife.  its donating for gas vs donating for wildlife. 

of course the new owner could still do whatever he wanted with the land, but at least he wouldn’t be ignorant of society’s true priorities.  if he learns that the demand for a garden center is way higher than the demand for a gas station, you’d figure he’d make the socially optimal decision. 

we all intuitively understand the idea of a kid being so happy in a candy store.  for us the closest equivalent is bellamy trees.  we happily scroll and scroll carefully considering each and every one of the numerous varieties of tantalizing options.  with this example in mind, we should all grasp the problem with inflation.  if inflation is 50%, we only get half the bang for our buck.  this makes our dollar half as useful.  however, the same thing would happen if the amount of options were reduced by half.  our happiness in this “candy store” would be reduced by half.  we’d only get half the bang for our buck. 

the point of money is to directly influence the rankings (society’s priorities).  the more things to rank, the more useful our dollar is.  the less things to rank, the less useful our dollar is. 

with the current system, there are way too many places and spaces where our money doesn’t have the opportunity to do what its meant for.  on netflix we don’t have the option to use our money to improve the ranking of garden content.  same on youtube.  same with google search.  same at a library.  same at a school.  in all these cases, and countless more, our money might as well be a chucky cheese token.  its useless.  we’re all getting far less bang for our buck than we should be getting. 

if anyone has any questions, comments, concerns, critiques or suggestions please reply with them.  freely chiming in should always be an option.  however, the more people who do so, the greater the chances that something valuable will be buried.  this is why its so important to have the option to chip in with your money to elevate anything you really don't want other people to overlook. 

i doubt anyone thinks this post is too short, but hopefully someone in the future will be interested in reading my previous version, a 33 page work in progress… rare fruit economics.

lastly here’s a pic i took today of one of the best looking seedlings of ficus racemosa x carica...



the pic really doesn’t do it justice.  it looks incredible, a really wonderful mix of traits from both parents.  i know that i shouldn’t get attached because i’m sure it will croak any day and break my heart like all the other seemingly vigorous seedlings of this cross. 

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