🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <changlab-0707941757560001@morg2mac21.berkeley.edu>,
changlab@nature.berkeley.edu (George W. Chang) wrote:

> In article <edgCsGC4q.rp@netcom.com>, edg@netcom.com (Ed Greenberg) wrote:
> 
> > We did a long auto tour this weekend (about 800 miles mostly
> > non-freeway) and on passing through the Sacramento Valley agricultural
> > areas we kept seeing fields of small yellow and orange flowered crops.
> > The plants were about 12-18 inches tall, kind of like fields of shrubbery,
> > but the distinguishing factor was the color. We saw tons of this north
> > of Sacramento, a few fields along I-5 near the SAC Metro Airport, and
> > one field of it along I-5 at the I-580 exit.
> > 
> > Anybody know what this might be?  Saffron?  Mustard?  
....................................................................... 
> 
> Ed,
>       
>          The plants you describe sound a lot like safflower.  There are
> scraggly looking plants whose seeds yield safflower oil.
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> 
> Best regards,
> George
........................................................................

Ed,
     I was just meeting with some agricultural folks at UC Davis
yesterday, and they tell me that you are probably a whole lot more correct
than I am.  They say that there is quite a bit of "Canola" planted in the
Valley.  Canola is a mutant mustard that produces an oil free of some of
the nasty stuff in wild-type mustard.  So if the yellow flowers weren't
too scraggly, and they looked like mustard, they probably were mustard!

George

PS  I wanted to include the old messages, but my server doesn't like it. 
So I'll delete some of the old text and put in some new filler.
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