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A member of the nightshade family, eggplant counts tomatoes, potatoes and peppers as cousins. The only member of the Solanaceae family to come from the eastern hemisphere, eggplant was probably first cultivated in India 4000 years ago. The plant probably developed from one with tiny egg-shaped fruits and large spikes.

Genus of plants belonging to the gourd family, with large elongated fruits. Cucumbers originated in the north-west of India where they grow in a wild state. They have been cultivated in Hindustan for three thousand years.

Russia's upper chamber of parliament on Friday passed a new forestry code that has been severely criticized by environmentalists. The Federation Council voted 128-10, with four abstentions, to approve the code, which would remove forests from private ownership and transfer responsibility for their protection and maintenance from the federal to regional governments.

With a potentially huge supply of woody material thinned from Washington forests, the state's pulp and paper mills could become the "biorefining" backbone for turning woody plant material into fuel and other products, a University of Washington professor says.

Timber exporting and importing nations set themselves a tight agenda for action on Monday, giving themselves barely 18 months to produce tough new tactics to tackle illegal logging.

Slim budgets, overgrown forests, climate change and the penchant among baby boomers for expensive, unprotected retirement homes in western woods threaten the nation's firefighting capacity, officials have warned Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

Are healthy forest profits and forest health mutually exclusive? Bill Ginn, The Nature Conservancy's Director of Global Forest Partnerships, says no. Ginn lines up as the latest co-chair for the now-biennial Small Log Conference, coming to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, March 28-30. Registration is currently under way, with an attendance cap of 200 participants.