At 13:26 1998-07-12 -0400, Don wrote:
>Growing wild there doesn't mean they are indigenous there.

You havent seen in what places they grow here, pure wilderness.
Of course they probably are new since the ice-age, everything (almost)
that grows is that.

>was originally called a crane berry because the fruit hung from the
>multiple little stems or cranes, each berry by itself, and also from the
>appearance of the delicate flower with its long central stamen which bears
>a real or fancied resemblance to the long bill of a crane.

In swedish they have the same name "tranbär". Some people think thats
because they look like tears, and tears is "trähnen" auf deutsch.
But they survive the winter under the snow, and is the first food for
the cranes when they return to their breeding places in the spring.
The craneberries grow on the same distant bog that the cranes breed on.

>My information on bananas says they were discovered along the Indus River
>three centuries before Christ and brought to the New World in 1516. I find
>the Indus River in Pakistan.

I think I got my information from Microsoft Encarta, but that one is full
of misinformation. But also at 300 BC bananas could have been brought
by humans to Indus from Mekong or whatever river it originated from.
They are nice food anyway :-)
I was allergic to them earlier but that disappeared very soon after
I started paleodiet. All other allergies are still there.

- Hans