Unique among its
plant life is the pundi grass, which is native to Caladan; it resembles Terran
wheat in height and life cycle, with a smaller, elongated grain that grows in
clusters like sorghum. Domesticated varieties routinely yield 500-1 per
agricultural cycle, using modern methods. Pundi rice is chaffed, then sifted
(the smallest grains are used as seed), then ground into meal, or fried lightly
in butter or oil, or popped inside a clay jar then boiled into mush. Pundi rice,
and dishes prepared with or from it, are ubiquitous in the Caladanian diet, from
sharecropper to Siridar. Every Caladan-born person is weaned on pundi mush
(pempos), gorges as a child on candies made from pundi and yam-sugar (caramela),
gets drunk as an adult on fermented pundi spirits (iskoinos), sops up whalemeat
or cabbage-and-cheese soup with pundi bread (fomi)... the versatility of the
starchy, slightly salty grain is enormous. It has been jokingly said that a
Caladanian must always carry with them a pouch of pundi in case they were
stranded in the wilderness, as without it they would certainly die within the
week; the Caladanians present smile self-deprecatingly and nibble on their pundi
cakes (pita).
Other, less
essential products and industries of Caladan are: citruswood, a beautiful timber
of intricate swirls and patterns, used as furniture paneling and the raw
material of an almost infinite number of Caladanian crafts; whaleskin, used in
apparel and musical instruments; glazed pottery, stoneware and mosaics; writing
instruments; kokkinos, a prized red dye; hydroponic fertilizers and high-grade
einsteinium, which provides most of the nuclear fuel used to power
Caladan.
The population of Caladan is of medium density. There are about twenty cities of important size, four major spaceports and nine cosmodromes for intrasystem commerce. Roughly 12% of the planetary surface is given over to ecological reserve, and another 13% is virgin wilderness.
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