Truffle: A Global History (Edible) by Zachary Nowak

Author:Zachary Nowak [Nowak, Zachary]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Published: 2015-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

Holm oak (Quercus ilex) seedlings inoculated with Tuber melanosporum spores.

The similarities of the two stories are striking: in Giono’s, a shepherd plants acorns and in the space of a decade reforests a whole area in Provence. In the parallel historical version, a prefect helps mayors plant truffle-inoculated acorns and, in less than a decade, reforests a whole area in Provence. There is no evidence that Giono ever read Saint Amand’s letter (he was born in 1895, forty years after it had been sent) or knew of the prefect’s work. Surely, though, he had heard stories of the incredible forest that had sprung up almost overnight where there had been only desolation. Giono grew up in the département of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, in the region of Provence, on the other side of Mont Ventoux from Vaucluse. Giono’s boyhood was spent in Manosque, just over 80 km (50 miles) as the crow flies from the seat of Vaucluse’s prefecture in Avignon. Whether The Man Who Planted Trees is purely Giono’s invention or a pleasantly garbled version of the events of the 1860s, we can never know, but Vaucluse became and remains the centre of French truffle production – all because of the men who planted trees.

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