Silver Shells

With Thanksgiving behind us, the holiday season is in full swing. Adding to the holiday spirit for shellfish lovers is the start of peak season for oysters and oyster roasts, with "r" months stretching ahead into next spring. Some less traditional oyster lovers may scoff at what seems like another quaint custom, but there's actually some proof that this r-restricted dictum may not only be scientifically valid but quite ancient.

Fossilized snail parasites

Research conducted by the Florida Museum of Natural History at a 4,000-year-old shell ring on the Georgia coast shows that the native people responsible for these mysterious rings up and down the southeast coast were harvesting oysters during the fall, winter and early spring, but not during the summer. The timetable was determined by studying the remains of parasitic snails attached to oyster shells. The snails have a known life cycle of twelve months, so by measuring the length of the stylus the snails insert into the oyster shell, researchers could extrapolate when the host oyster had been collected and its shell deposited at the ring.

The ancient nomadic hunter/gatherers responsible for shell rings likely moved inland during the summer, the research suggests, partly because experience had taught them that oysters harvested in the summer months were watery and shrunken, although they might not have known the cause - that the oyster's reproductive cycle peaks during the summer and leaves the mature animals weak and emaciated. The harvesting cycle at these shell rings may be the earliest example of sustainable aquaculture, letting oyster populations replenish before returning to them in the autumn.

Oyster farmers keep sustainability in mind

Written cautions against eating raw oysters during the r-less summer months appear in an English cookbook of 1599, when reliable refrigeration methods were far in the future but sickness from consuming the food in the hot months was well-documented. Modern harvesting and icing methods help get around that danger; but, still, many oyster farmers suspend market shipments in the summer until young oysters spawned during the warmer months help re-establish populations.

So celebrate this r-marked holiday and new year, and be sure to sustainably dispose of oyster shells at designated collection points, where they'll be collected and used to seed new beds. There are two nearby sites managed by the SCDNR - on Wadmalaw Island at Bears Bluff Fish Hatchery, and on Johns Island at Gilligans Restaurant on Main Road.

THE NATIONAL BIRD

That's what Ben Franklin famously thought the turkey should be. It was, he wrote, "a much more respectable bird" than the eagle, which he considered to be "a rank coward". He thought the turkey to be "a true original native of America, and a bird of courage" that would willingly attack any grenadier of the British Guards who dared to invade his farm.

He was correct in thinking that the Tom turkey would aggressively protect itself, as many a stroller or golfer who has come too close to one can attest. But he was wrong in thinking that turkeys were native to the United States, although today they can be found in every state except Alaska. They were first encountered by 16th-century European explorers arriving in Mexico, where turkeys had been bred for centuries, making it one of only two birds native to the Americas (the other being the Muscovy duck). Imported to Europe and the Middle East, the birds reminded traders of the African guinea fowl that came to them along trade routes passing through Turkey, and thus came to be called "Turkey birds."

The bird that may be gracing your Thanksgiving table next week is a descendant of a millennia-long heritage, as fossil records from up to five-million years ago confirm. Although most consumer turkeys are farm-bred and raised, turkeys in the wild, as Franklin declared, are resourceful and agile. They can fly for short distances, with a flank speed of 50 miles an hour on the wing as they seek overnight roosts in trees. On the ground, they can run at 25 miles an hour when danger is sensed. They use their signature gobbles, that can be loud enough to be heard over a mile, to warn others of a threat; otherwise, the communicate with a series of clucks and purring noises. The poults that emerge from the hens' clutches of as many as eighteen eggs are up and foraging on their own within twenty-four hours and mature quickly, abandoned by the hen within a few days.

Lincoln proclaimed a national holiday of thanksgiving in 1863 as the Civil War neared its end, and presidents after him were presented with a turkey as a gift from the nation to mark the day. It wasn't until 1989 that President George H.W. Bush issued the first presidential pardon saving at least one turkey from the oven, a tradition observed by every president since.

Ancient Roots

Even though we live in the Palmetto State, we probably hardly notice that we're surrounded by one of the earth's oldest life forms - palms. Palm trees, along with related climbing or shrub-like cousins, are all descended from a common ancestor that first appears in the fossil record 80 million years ago, well before the arrival of flowering plants and grasses. (Also in the palm family are lianas and saw palmettos.) Humans have been cultivating palms for thousands of years, relying on them for wood, food, and shade.

A cabbage palm

Our most common forms here on the island include the cabbage palm (Arecaceae livistona), the palmetto (A. sabal) and the royal palm (A. roystonea). Like all palm trees, these varieties lack the ability to grow rings the way deciduous trees do, resulting in the palm tree's straight trunks of uniform diameter. Nor do they sprout branches, but produce spikes from their crowns from which the fronds develop. With deep, single tap roots, palms can withstand gale-force winds, find water even in desert climates and live more than a century.

Anthropologists theorize that the rise of human civilization in Mesopotamia was due in large part to the palm tree, especially the date palm, which not only provided a high-energy, easily transported food source but also served as an indicator of potential water sources. Palms were being cultivated five thousand years ago, and their importance can be measured by their association in human culture with peace and fertility. The Bible mentions palm trees more than thirty times; the Quran, more than twenty times.

Dates ready for harvesting

Today, palms remain a key cash crop, providing among much else palm oil, rattan for furniture, thatching for traditional housing, açai berries, coconut milk, dates, a number of dyes, and even wine produced from the fermented leaves of a type of Chilean palm tree. Here in the Lowcountry, the wood of the cabbage palm was used to fortify Fort Moultrie during the Revolutionary War, since the tree's soft, spongy wood was able to deflect or absorb British cannon fire.

Ubiquitous they may be, but palms represent one of nature's longest-running success stories, rooted deep in Lowcountry soil.