Plant of The Week: Blueberry

Carbon Dioxide & Blueberry love each other.

A favorite of plants and a key ingredient in Pepsi Cola and a wide range of human favorites this noble simple piece of chemistry is in a bad publicity state. United States plebiscite 2012 will bring more attention to the 2 Oxygen and 1 Carbon atom gas. Blueberries are paying extra attention too.

Coal deposits worldwide can be hundreds and in some cases thousands of feet deep. Dramatic as this sounds consider they were once all trees and their smaller cousins. “Scientific consensus” is that the planet has gone through at least 16 cycles of dramatic warming brought on by carbon
dioxide trapped in plant material. The most recent example was 10,000 years ago. New York City is under fear assault that if all the water trapped in ice at the Poles melted high tide would be 20 feet higher than it is now. 10,000 years ago a mile and a half of ice sat over this know it all capital of the world. Which would you prefer? Too many trees are a possible threat to human life. Ask a dinosaur or two and they will agree. Spoiled by dining on carbon trapped in leaves they did not think humans would worship then vilify coal. Coal, nor humans were part of their planet saving efforts. How did a dino’s lunch become a tea kettle warming flame?

Blueberries are deciduous plants. That means through the course of a solar year they grow leaves that thrive on sunlight, as the sun days shorten they begin to fade until they fall off. Energy captured through
the process of photosynthesis captures airborne carbon dioxide, creates stems, leaves, flowers and berries and the byproduct oxygen. Evergreen plants grow leaves too, but they go with two sets. They drop one set of leaves as the days shorten and keep one set through the Winter appearing…evergreen. Like us, plants are close to 99% water.  The largest forests in the world occupy the lands across the upper reaches of theNorthern Hemisphere. It appears this has happened 16 times before. Add in the dominatespecies are evergreen. A water and heat trap during the Winter months with minimal oxygen production some dinosaurs are still mad at those little needles.

Severe weather patterns combined with prevailing Westerly winds may have created situations where millions of acres were converted from forest to snowfields, not overnight but in the course of a month. When I bring this up my blueberry buddies smile. Sunlight blocked and nutrients stolen by their much larger greenies they move back in and thrive on the ashes.

Vaccinium corymbosum L. (Highbush blueberries)  are proud members of the Heath family. Able to grow presently from Nova Scotia to Florida on the East Coast they are happy in salt water too. The only place they are unhappy are under dense tree canopy.

Mid- continent heat traps especially in North America,Africa and Asia have profound effects on global temperatures. Coal could be the answer to those problems. Electric generation by coal creates a carbon dioxide rich flume. Plants and trees thrive in such an environ. Saltwater input as coolant to coal fired power plant, desalinated and used to irrigate plantings whose shade will begin to cool the adjacent desert area which in a decade or two can provide a cooling strip in our hottest areas. As we add a billion people to share our incredible journey just adding taxes will not assure happiness for all. We need to plan based on the past. The past includes carbon dioxide as a friend not a foe.

Part of our civilizations’ incredible advances is through medical research and science. Blueberries have been popular with us since before we stood up. Information seems to be indicating that they fit into our internal system in a very beneficial way. According to a 1998 United States Department of Agriculture report:  “Antioxidants work to neutralize free radicals — unstable molecules linked to the development of cancer, cardiovascular disease and other age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s. Substances in blueberries called polyphenols, specifically the anthocyanin that give the fruit its blue hue, are the major contributors to antioxidant activity”. Planning our future should begin at home asin our own body and brain.

Blueberries can be grown inplanters or containers on your porch or deck. Modern scrubbing technology can yield flume from coal that is only carbon dioxide. Taking away harmful chemicals and leaving the blueberries favorite airborne growth helper at a scale that can help green deserts and cool the planet is a realistic
possibility compared to billions of people handing over control of their
futures to yet another money changing scheme.

A tasty way to a better future should include Blueberry after Blueberry.