Dear Laurie:<div><br></div><div>The article on "Autumn's Fruit" should be treated with suspicion. It's the word of some armchair naturalist commenting on a situation he did not investigate months in advance. Does he know the ploidy (chromosome number) of his blackberry patch? Many Rubus species have such high chromosome numbers they make seeds without sex (agamospermy). You can't blame poor fruit set on pollinator decline every time. Furthermore, shrubby berry fruits have a number of fungal diseases that probably found those "drupelets" before he did. The unusually wet, pre-Olympic, English summer would have helped spread spores. A colleague in Kent complained about the rain this summer.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Peter <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 1:11 PM, <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Ladadams@aol.com" target="_blank">Ladadams@aol.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<u></u>
<div style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial"><font color="#000000" face="Arial">I thought you might be interested in this link
from the Guardian: Autumn's fruit can tell us much about the health of our
insect pollinators - <a href="http://gu.com/p/3b2ja/em" target="_blank">http://gu.com/p/3b2ja/em</a>
<div> </div>
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<div><font lang="0" face="Arial">Laurie Davies
Adams<br>Executive Director<br>Pollinator Partnership<br>4</font><font lang="0" color="#000000" face="Arial">23 Washington St.
5th Fl.<br>San Francisco, CA 94111<br>T: <a href="tel:415.362.1137" value="+14153621137" target="_blank">415.362.1137</a><br>F: <a href="tel:415.362.0176" value="+14153620176" target="_blank">415.362.0176</a><br><img src="cid:X.MA1.1349979097@aol.com" border="0" width="319" height="173"></font><font lang="0" color="#000000" face="Arial"><br>
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