Tom Billings wrote:

> The topic of the excerpt below is blackberries, those delicious berries
> that grow on amazingly thorny plants. Picking wild blackberries, or at
> least nutritionally significant quantities of them, is a major challenge
> because of the far-too-numerous sharp thorns, the dense thickets they
> form (with undergrowth and plant debris that provides home to biting and
> stinging insects), and to some of the other "anti-social" :-) vines that
> may grow with them: poison oak, poison ivy.

In July-August, I went hiking in the "Massif Central" (mountains in
the center of France), and found many blackberries (or mulberries??
These two words have the same translation in French!!). Whatever,
these black berries (with a space) were delicious when ripe. In the
French Alps, you also find wild strawberries (really tiny) and
raspberries. All these fruits taste good, but to eat nutritionally
significant quantities, it would take hours, if not a whole day of
picking.

On the question "do fruits want to be eaten?", I will simply add
others: does grass want to be eaten by cows and other herbivores? Does
the tree want its leaves to be eaten by insects? If not, are insects
doing a "mistake"? Do insects want to be eaten (by birds, etc)? Or
does the tree want predators to eat insects that are attacking its leaves?


--Jean-Louis Tu <[log in to unmask]>