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Dear Zed: As I said, rainforest. I didn't know what environment eucalyptus required. Incidentally, I just found a new URL about Daniel Keith Ludwig, but it is in Portuguese, so I have begged AnnaStrophic to read it, to see if it tells why the project failed.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Ludwig acquired the project in 1967; it has been under way as a mining project for some 50 years prior to that. The Jarí project under Ludwig ultimately failed because of public outcry. The story doesn't tell us what kind of trees were planted (I would suspect eucalyptus, non-native to the area and not easily adaptable to a rainforest setting, though it is grown commercially with great success in more temperate zones of Brazil), but the main problem was the vast amounts of rainforest that had to be destroyed in order to build the cellulose pulp plants, the waste treatment operations, the railroads (which is what Dr Bill's link is really about) and all the other infrastructure necessary to maintain such an enterprise. In 1982 Ludwig finally sold out under pressure and the area is now used by a consortium of businesses. They're still growing trees (coals to Newcastle?), but in a less invasive way and to a much lesser extent. The project continues to be highly controversial. Here's the link Dr Bill provided, if anyone is interested. The pictures tell the story of devastation, even if the text doesn't: http://www.vfco.com.br/ferrovias/Jari/projjari.htmNow, then, back to words in English. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I know about those winged seeds, and have, too, seen the beauty in the trees--but almost immediately my blood runs cold, in spite of the beauty, because I realize how many of those seeds will take roots--and, once having taken root, will send up huge copsulations of ailanthus. Invasion of the Botany Snatchers.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Invasion of the Botany Snatchers.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear WW: I have read that beech trees somehow secret a hormone (I guess that's what it should be called) that inhibits the germination of beechnuts that fall close to the parent tree, which conserves nutrients for the parent tree.
Perhaps some clever research might devise a hormone that would inhibit germination of ailanthus seeds.
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Carpal Tunnel
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That's fascinating, wwh! And, oh, how true! We have many beeches that grow abundantly near water here in Virginia, and it is true that they do not grow right upon each other. I had assumed that the young beeches wouldn't be able to grow because the older, larger trees blocked the sunlight. This hormone information is news to me.
Here's a bit of beech trivia:
If you were to come across a very young beech in the winter--one so small that it had not developed the quite distinctive bark of the beech--you could immediately identify it by its bud. The bud on the beech looks just like a tiny cigar. And the mnemonic you use to recognize this bud is:
"Smoking on the beach."
It really works. I can spot an infantile beech every time by that cigar-dead-ringer bud. A doctoral candidate in dendrology taught me this bit of beech trivia.
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Carpal Tunnel
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You understand that the damage caused to the environment by the ailanthus isn't a pimple on the butt of the damage caused by this continent's ultimate invasive species.
H. sapiens
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this continent's
one might say this planet's...
actually, somewhere once I saw an article about humans as cancer. anybody else see that, or did I make it up? I'm not trying to bash us all, but there are some interesting parallels of resource usage.
sorry, don't want to hi-jack this thread...
formerly known as etaoin...
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