Posted on 12/23/2019 7:33:54 PM PST by BenLurkin
Writing in the Journal of Ethnobiology, Natalie Muellert, assistant professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences, describes how she painstakingly grew and calculated yield estimates for two annual plants that were cultivated in eastern North America for thousands of years—and then abandoned.
Growing goosefoot (Chenopodium, sp.) and erect knotweed (Polygonum erectum) together is more productive than growing either one alone, Mueller discovered. Planted in tandem, along with the other known lost crops, they could have fed thousands.
Archaeologists found the first evidence of the lost crops in rock shelters in Kentucky and Arkansas in the 1930s. Seed caches and dried leaves were their only clues. Over the past 25 years, pioneering research by Gayle Fritz, professor emerita of archaeology at Washington University, helped to establish the fact that a previously unknown crop complex had supported local societies for millennia before maize—a.k.a. corn—was adopted as a staple crop.
The lost crops include a small but diverse group of native grasses, seed plants, squashes and sunflowers—of which only the squashes and sunflowers are still cultivated. For the rest, there is plenty of evidence that the lost crops were purposefully tended—not just harvested from free-living stands in the wild...
Mueller discovered that a polyculture of goosefoot and erect knotweed is more productive than either grown separately as a monoculture. Grown together, the two plants have higher yields than global averages for closely related domesticated crops (think: quinoa and buckwheat), and they are within the range of those for traditionally grown maize.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
I’ll agree that it’s less work, but I have lamb’s quarters growing wild in my yard and it’s a lifesaver for me. The leaves are edible, do everything culinarily that spinach does, AND they dry for use over the winter. I’d be all over that even without the seeds.
As a leafy crop instead of a grain, I definitely agree! It’s higher in calcium than spinach, too. I’m not much of a spinach eater, but I keep several patches of lamb’s quarters for my chickens. They go nuts over it!
When comparing it to corn, I was focusing on the grain aspect alone.
Fascinating dream!
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