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How many people know the Salicornia? How many people eat Salicornia? Not so much. Not so much.
For that people who didn’t know what the Salicornia is, it will be sufficient to know it is a genus of succulent that grow up everywhere (North America, Europe, Central Asia, and southern Africa … also … in New Zeland). It is small, simple, and strong. It is green (sometimes with other color, also rose-red, also brown-wooden) with small fleshy scales with a narrow dry margin, like a microscopic cactus without spines. They look like the number three being pointed with the fingers … They look like people with … with hands in the air. These are serial, frugal and basic like a sketch, like a draft of something … which is fine as it is. It is a plant of the Miocene. They absorb carbon dioxide from the surrounding atmosphere, and they are halophyte plant, that is resistant to soil and/or waters of high salinity. They can also tolerate a life underground, … with immersion in salt water! They are small, simple, and strong. And everywhere. They are one, none, a hundred thousand.
They know the boundaries, the inconveniences and the difficulties and dangers of when two different worlds meet, the world of water and the world of land. Two different cultures. The clash of two different ways of seeing things. Two different situations to see and face life. They are a bridge and a border garrison (a station troop in peace and without arms). They filter and absorb everything. they are empathic and resilient. They are always present but seem to be invisible, they seem … not to be there. The Salicornie are all those people who live in two different places in the world, on two or more continents. Glassworts are all those people who speak more than one language and who have more than one soul inside.
Usually they don’t tell nothing, but if you ask and try to insist, … maybe they will tell you.
We are the Salicornie … and we are many.
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The salicornie is a storytelling project on various topics with the aim of stimulating discussion and curiosity even on aspects of everyday life, to bring out as many cultures as possible.