Bookshelf
Bookshelf
Biological Exchange and Biological Invasion in World History
by J. R. McNeill
A brief introduction to biological exchanges in world history. A later version of this draft appeared in the Oxford Encyclopedia of World History (2011).
International Congress of the Historical Sciences, Oslo, 2000
Bon Appetít
by Joe Roman
A modest proposal to confront invaders by eating them, with recipes for kudzu sorbet and nutria eggrolls.
Conservation in Practice, January-March 2006
Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants
Based at the Institute for Food and Agricultural Science at the University of Florida. The resources here are mind-boggling. Wander in and days later a search party will have to be mounted!
http://plants.ifas.ufl.edu/
A couple of the field guides that you’ll find at the center
Invasive Aquatic and Wetland Plants Field Guide
With a focus on Illinois and Indiana, 21 invasive aquatic species of great national or regional concern are identified through color photographs, line drawings, and descriptions of growing conditions in a binder containing 42 waterproof pages. $15. Go overboard.
Invasive Aquatic Plants of Connecticut
Connecticut’s brochure, which contains local and national invaders, is available for free.
http://www.ct.gov/caes/lib/caes/aquatics_guide.pdf
Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health
Based at the University of Georgia
http://www.invasive.org/
Cooperative Weed Management Areas
CWMA Cookbook: A Recipe for Success. How to put together a Cooperative Weed Management Area, or CWMA, a partnership of federal, state, and local government agencies, tribes, individuals, and groups to manage noxious weeds or invasive plants in a defined area.
Eccles Centre for American Studies.
Euell Gibbons: Author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus
Interview by Hal Smith
It has been 40 years since this wide-ranging interview was published. None of the issues Gibbons addresses–pollution, kids’ alienation from nature–has gone away. His books are all still in print, and Gibbons became a household name (at least for an older generation). Foraging’s hot. But has his open-armed embrace of nature, and mistrust of authority, been lost sight of–or does it continue with writers such as Pollan, Brill, and Moore Lappe?
Mother Earth News, May/June 1972
Florida Invaders
A brochure produced by the National Park Service and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. It contains excellent suggestions on what you can do to stop invaders. (Prevention is mightier than the knife and fork.)
http://www.floridainvasives.org/toolbox/FloridaInvaders.pdf
Flying Fish, Great Dish
USGS fish biologist Duane Chapman shows how to debone the Asian carp step-by-step, as well as how to remove bones after the fillets are cooked. Available as a DVD and in three parts on Youtube.
http://www.iisgcp.org/catalog/ais/greatdish.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1NVUV8yhmU
Foraging with the Wildman
Wildman Steve Brill, a New York City institution, teaches foraging and identifying wild plants and mushrooms. (He’s a vegan.) As an urban forager, many of Brill’s plants and recipes focus on invaders.
wildmanstevebrill.com
Invasive Plant Atlas of New England
Recipes using invasive species
Invasivore.org
Run by a group of graduate students out of Notre Dame, invasivore.org has dozens of invasive recipes. And boy do they walk the walk. From bullfrogs to autumn olive, they’ve been cooking up species since early 2011.
Lake Champlain Basin Invasive Species Guide
Helpful, nicely illustrated guide to established and potential invaders to Vermont and New York’s “great” lake.
Larousse Gastronomique
First published in 1938 and last revised in 1988, Larousse Gastronomique is one of the culinary world’s most familiar reference sources. And oh, my, it’s fabulous! For the invasivore, there’s a nice little entry on the Burgundian way with the rat. And, of course, all those North American invasive weeds are in there. Surprisingly cheap copies languishing on Amazon.
Lionfish Cookbook
by Tricia Ferguson and Lad Akins
Recipes, background on the lionfish invasion, and information on how to safely catch, handle, and prepare the fish. Sale of this book supports REEF Environmental Educational Foundation.
Nonnative Species of Lake Superior
Tidy but awesome list of the invasive species of Lake Superior, compiled by Minnesota Sea Grant.
Troublesome Plants
In 1759, the American botanist John Bartram, a native of colonial Pennsylvania, published a list of “Introduced Plants Troublesome in Pennsylvania Pastures and Fields.” The list, which included dandelions and docks, can be found here.
Why Not Eat Insects?
by Vincent Holt, 1885
Holt celebrates the consumtion of invertebrates and other exotic foods. Though not pitched toward invasives, Part III is especially good.
bugsandbeasts.com
Wikipedia’s List of Introduced Species
A good, if incomplete, list to browse for new ingredients.
Wild Plants I Have Known . . . and Eaten
by Russ Cohen
Forager Russ Cohen did a nice thing for the Essex County Greenbelt Association in Massachusetts. His book is published by the association and proceeds from its sales support land conservation. The Association allows responsible foraging on its property. You can buy the book, which includes several invasives, here.
Land
Blue Plate Special: Garlic Mustard
It’s spring, and garlic mustard is sprouting up all over the East. Time to get out the food processor and pesto the invader. Alliaria petiolata Native range: Europe, Asia, Northwest Africa Invasive range: Much of the Lower 48, Alaska, and Canada. (See map.) Habitat: Moist, shaded soil of floodplains, forests, roadsides, edges of woods, [...]
EAT ME!
Burdock
Native to the Old World, burdock’s introduction to North America was noted in 1672 by John Josselyn, a sharp-eyed English visitor, who used Gerard’s Herbal: The Historie of Plants of 1597 as a field guide. . . .
EAT ME!
Purslane
George Washington ate weeds. That is, he ate what he thought of as garden vegetables: Martha’s Booke of Cookery and Book of Sweetmeats, includes a handwritten recipe for Pickled Purslane. The manuscript . . .
EAT ME!
Japanese Knotweed
It’s the 1880s. Frederick Law Olmstead, who, in his thirties, co-designed a little patch of ground in New York called Central Park, in his forties sells Boston on the Emerald Necklace, a whole new…
EAT ME!
Curly Dock
Stare out across the empty lots and fields on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado, and you will see scattered clumps of dark green leaves towering above the grass. In spring the…
EAT ME!
Sea
Wakame
Undaria pinnatifida Native range: Japan Sea Invasive range: Southern California, San Francisco Bay, New Zealand, Australia, Europe, Argentina Habitat: Opportunistic seaweed, can be found on hard substrates including rocky reefs, pylons, buoys, boat hulls, and abalone and bivalve shells. Description: Golden brown seaweed, growing up to nine feet. Forms thick canopy. Reproductive sporophyll in [...]
EAT ME!
Asian Shore Crab
The first sighting of the Asian shore crab in the United States was at Townsend Inlet, Cape May County, New Jersey, in 1988. Though the source is unknown . . .
EAT ME!
Periwinkle
The common periwinkle, which first appeared in New England in the 1860s, is now found along the coast wherever there’s hard substrate–rocks, riprap, broken concrete, or docks–from Labrador to . . .
EAT ME!
Lionfish
Some say it started in 1992 in Miami when Hurricane Andrew smashed an aquarium tank. Don’t blame the weather, others say; in the mid-nineties, disappointed yet softhearted hobbyists…
EAT ME!
Green Crab
Since the green crab was first recorded off southern Massachusetts in 1817, it has been hard to ignore. A few minutes of rock-flipping in Maine can turn up dozens of them, brandishing their claws as they retreat…
EAT ME!
Fresh
Bullfrog
“They live in a wide variety of habitats, colonize new ones readily, and eat everything that fits into their mouths,” says Dr. Peter Moyle of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC-Davis…
EAT ME!
Northern Snakehead
His sister was ailing, and the man in Maryland remembered that, back home in Hong Kong, there was a fish that was considered a delicacy and a restorative. He would make a fish soup…
EAT ME!
Common Carp
For a bottom-feeder, what is the good life? The common carp isn’t very demanding: any body of water that’s sluggish and murky will do. One catching sewage or…
EAT ME!
Nutria
Nutria, also known as coypu and river rat, is native to temperate and subtropical South America. It has been introduced to Europe, Asia, and Africa, mainly for fur farming. These voracious. . .
EAT ME!
Asian Carp
They can swim up the Mississippi River. They can fly over a fishing boat, ten feet in the air, hitting fishermen with the force of a bowling ball. They won’t take bait from hook, and they’re bony––what’s to like…
EAT ME!
Field Notes
Pathways to Invasion
How do invasive species enter North America? We bring them in. Our ancestors.The early colonists, brought pigs, which they let range free, and seeds to plant as crops. Others just hitched a ride: on their shoes, in fodder, on animals, on boat hulls, and stowed among ballast cobbles. Our tax dollars at work. Since the [...]
EAT ME!
Malicious but Delicious
What should we eat to save local ecosystems and the future of civilization? Frank Bruni discusses a recent event in Austin, Texas, that served up feral hogs, tiger prawns, and Himalayan blackberries, in the New York Times.
EAT ME!
New Requirements for Ballast Water
In a good move for our coastlines, the Environmental Protection Agency has issued new guidelines on ballast water. Incoming ships must continue dumping their ballast 200 miles from the U.S. shoreline, but they also must treat ballast water with ultraviolet light or chemicals to reduce the risk of transporting new invaders to the coast. Many [...]
EAT ME!
Eat the Invaders in Cape Breton
Steve Sutherland interviews Joe Roman about eating Maritime invaders on CBC Radio.
EAT ME!
Invasive Species Cook-off in Oregon
Earlier this year, the Institute for Applied Ecology held a cook-off for invaders in Corvalis. Dave Budeau won with his pulled smoked nutria. Read more about the event and the institute here.
EAT ME!
“It only takes one guy to move the [Asian carp] to a new place because he likes it. . . . A fisherman with a bait bucket intentionally stocking them in a reservoir would be a very bad thing.”
