The news sec­tion on this web­site has been a bit negle­c­ted the last cou­ple of months. This is about to chan­ge now, as the tra­vel­ling sea­son is over, during which the­re was a clear focus on the tra­vel blog, for obvious reasons.

Let’s start with a litt­le artic­le about an inte­res­t­ing dis­co­very within bota­ny, which seems harm­less but nevert­hel­ess has a bit of an unp­lea­sant tat­se to it. Cloud­ber­ries were found in Coles­da­len, about 20 km sou­thwest of Lon­gye­ar­by­en – with fruits. The remar­kab­le dis­co­very was made by Stein Tore Peder­sen from Lon­gye­ar­by­en, who was the­re on a pri­va­te tour, as the Nor­we­gi­an Polar Insti­tu­te wro­te.

Coles­da­len. It is safe to assu­me that the­re are cloud­ber­ry plants some­whe­re in this pho­to 🙂.

The fruits of the cloud­ber­ry are rich in vit­ami­nes and well known from main­land Scan­di­na­via, whe­re they are very popu­lar. In Spits­ber­gen, cloud­ber­ries were found for the first time around 1908 by bota­nist Han­na Res­voll-Die­set, but this is now the first time that hard evi­dence for fruits could be secu­red. The­re are sto­ries about ear­lier finds of cloud­ber­ry fruits, but in tho­se cases, the evi­dence was quick­ly eaten by the fin­der. Some­thing that is, by the way, not allo­wed: in Spits­ber­gen, all vege­ta­ti­on is gene­ral­ly pro­tec­ted and no plants or parts of plants may be coll­ec­ted. This includes cloud­ber­ry fruits. Only mush­rooms and sea­weed may be coll­ec­ted.

It is assu­med that this first dis­co­very of cloud­ber­ry fruits is con­nec­ted to the record-warm tem­pe­ra­tures of lar­ge parts of the last sum­mer and thus to cli­ma­te chan­ge, which is fas­ter in lar­ge parts of the polar are­as than else­whe­re in the world.