Glossary

alley cropping

noun: the practice of planting rows of one or more support species between rows of fruit trees or other “production” crops for the purpose of shade, erosion control, chop-and-drop, et cetera

Babylon

noun: the entire matrix of the financial, legal, industrial, military, media, medical, education, entertainment, transportation, technology, religious, and virtually every other man-made complex

noun: human civilisation in general, or any example of it

bullshit

noun: the foecal matter of a male domesticated bovine mammal

noun: any object, event, or idea that defies rationality or common sense

noun: any blatantly false, intentionally misleading, or otherwise obviously disingenuous statement

noun: any nuisance with no useful purpose, arising through no fault of one’s own, with which one must contend, especially requiring an extensive amount of difficult or tedious labour in order to resolve

noun: all non-tree matter that grows or in-migrates to fill the vacant space left when a forest or part of a forest is cut down

chop-and-drop

noun: the practice of pruning a plant repeatedly, especially coppicing or pollarding in order to provide mulch

noun: any species or specimen of plant that is used primarily for the aforementioned practice

to coppice

verb: to cut back (a tree or shrub) to a stump near ground level in order to control height and encourage a more bushy habit with multiple smaller stems growing from the stump or roots; a form of pruning

fruiterrarism

noun: the act of blatantly planting as much fruit as possible, regardless of what non-fruitarians may think, with the aim of creating an alternative to Babylon

fruiterrarist

noun: someone who practices fruiterrarism

Fruiterrarist

noun: a member of Terra Frutis

fuckery

noun: any malicious action, or any action that results in bullshit

grass

noun: a narrow-leaved herbaceous plant belonging to any species in the Poaceae family

noun: the monocotyledonous scourge that has invaded the Amazon since the arrival of humans and has greatly accelerated since the industrial revolution

humus

noun: partially decomposed organic matter; the organic component of soil

mulch

noun: an accumulation of plant matter placed on the soil surface in order to protect the soil from erosion or sun exposure, to add nutrients, to retain moisture, and to suppress undesirable vegetation

to pollard

verb: to cut back the limbs of a tree, usually at or near the point at which the stem first branches, in order to control height and encourage a more bushy habit; a form of pruning

pruning

noun: the process of removing some of a plant’s vegetative tissue (without killing the plant) in order to train the plant to a particular shape, to control the size of the plant, to clean the plant of undesirable (dead, diseased, et cetera) parts, to induce flowering or other new growth, or any combination of these

selective deforestation

noun: the process of removing (or cutting back) trees that are dead, dying, diseased, precariously situated, or clearly dangerous to the survival of other trees (especially fruit trees);

the act of cutting only as much forest as necessary in order to allow sunlight to reach other trees (especially fruit trees);

an integral part of syntropic agriculture, in which certain plants are grown only to form a canopy which shades out the bullshit and are later cut out entirely or pruned repeatedly in order to provide mulch

transpiration

noun: the emission of water vapour from the leaves of plants