Some observations are grouped below according to general kinds of plant food resources.
Grass Seeds (Potential Cereals)
Seeds of wild grasses have long been an important source of food and are still harvested on a large scale in some regions. A.C. Gregory (1886) commented:
On Cooper's Creek (Australia), the natives reap a Panicum grass. Fields of 1000 acres (405 ha) are there met with growing this cereal. The natives cut it down by means of stone knives, cutting down the stalk half way, beat out the seed, leaving the straw which is often met with in large heaps; they winnow by tossing seed and husk in the air, the wind carrying away the husks. The grinding into meal is done by means of two stones—a large irregular slab and a small cannon‐ball‐like one; the seed is laid on the former and ground, sometimes dry and at others with water into a meal.
Stickney (1896) described methods of the wild rice (Zizania palustris L.) harvest by the Ojibwa of Wisconsin late in the 19th century:
Two women, working together in a canoe, took a large ball of cedar bark twine and tied up sheaves just below the panicles when the seed was in the milk stage. Later, they went back when the seed was ripe and beat the sheaves over the canoe. Each woman knew her own bundles and the right of ownership was scrupulously respected. Sometimes sheaves were not previously prepared and the woman in the back would pole slowly forward while the other reached out with a curved stick and bent a bunch of stalks over the canoe and hit them with a straight stick held in the other hand. About a gill is attached at each blow. When the canoe became heavily laden in the front, the women exchanged implements as they kept their places and the canoe was poled back in the opposite direction. When the canoe was fully loaded and low in the water it was beached and the wild rice removed. The wild rice was dried in the sun or on a platform over a fire. Dehulling was done by men who placed the seed in a skin bag and treaded it in a pit dug in the soil. Dehulled seed was stored in bark boxes or large skin bags; sometimes so much seed was stored that it lasted until the next harvest.
Wild races of common Asian rice (Oryza sativa L.) were once harvested on a considerable scale in northern Australia (Bancroft, 1884):
The wild rice of the Carpenteria swamps (Oryza sativa), however, needs to be carefully cleaned from its spiny chaff, which may be done by rubbing in wooden troughs. This must be the most important grass‐food in Australia, being little inferior to cultivated grain. The plant grows six feet (1.8 m) high, and produces a good crop even in the latitude of Brisbane. The “paddy” is black with long awns. It is interesting, in Australia, to find one of the original sources of a cereal that has been cultivated in Asia for thousands of years.
The wild races are still harvested in India despite the cultivation of domesticated forms for six or seven millennia (Roy, 1921):
In the Central Provinces the Gonds and Dhimars harvest this rice by tying the plants together into clumps and thus preventing the grains from falling. These grains have also got a certain demand in the market as they are often used by devout Hindus in these parts on fast days besides being sold to the poorer classes.
Burkill (1935) makes a similar observation:
The poor do not ignore it (wild rice), but tying the awns together before maturity save the grain for themselves, or they collect the fallen grain, which is made an easier process by the length of the awns.
Ping‐Ti Ho (1969) documented the harvesting of wild rice over much of southern and central China during a span of an entire millennium. One report, dated 874 AD, from Ts'angchou, Hopei Province, to the emperor may be paraphrased: “Wild rice ripened in an area of more than 200,000 mu (13,000 ha), much to the benefit of the poor of local and neighboring counties” (Ho, 1969). It is to be noted that rice had been a major crop in China for over 6000 years at the date of this report, but that the gathering of seeds of wild rice was still worth the effort.
I have observed other species of rice, O. barthii A. Chev. and O. longistaminata A. Chev. & Roehr., that are regularly harvested in Africa, sometimes in sufficient abundance to appear in the markets. The Africans sometimes also tie wild rice into clumps before harvest (Harlan, 1989). Claude Lévi‐Strauss (1950) reports the harvesting of O. subulata Nees [syn. Rhynchoryza subulata (Nees) Baill.] in Uruguay, Rio Grande do Sul, and the marshes of the upper Paraguay and Guaporé Rivers in South America. He also reports the technique of binding before harvest:
The Tupí‐Cawahíb of the upper Madeira River gather the seeds of an unidentified wild grass that grows in the forest, and to facilitate the harvest they tie together several stems before they are ripe, so that the seeds of several plants fall on the same spot and pile up in small heaps.
Panicum has been a favorite grass seed of gatherers the world over. In North America, P. capillare L., P. obtusum Kunth [syn. Hopia obtusa (Kunth) Zuloaga & Morrone], and P. urvilleanum Kunth have been listed as harvested in the wild (Yanovsky, 1936), and P. hirticaule J. Presl var (syn. P. sonorum Beal) was domesticated in Mexico (Gentry, 1942; Nabhan & deWet, 1984). Seven species are listed for Africa (Jardin, 1967), with the most important being P. laetum Kunth and P. turgidum Forssk. Four species are recorded for Australia, with P. decompositum R. Br. occurring in 1000‐ha fields. Two species, P. miliaceum L. and P. antidotale Retz. were domesticated in Eurasia and India, respectively. It appears that food gatherers are attracted to similar plants.
At least five wild species of Sporobolus were harvested in North America, three in Africa, and three in Australia. Species of Eragrostis were gathered in North America, Australia, and Africa. For Africa, six wild species are listed and one was domesticated as a cereal, Eragrostis tef (Zuccagni) Trotter in Ethopia. Eleusine and Dactyloctenium were harvested in Australia, India, and Africa with one species (E. coracana L. Gaertn.) being domesticated. Species of Digitaria were harvested in Australia, India, Africa, and Europe. Digitaria exilis (Kippist) Stapf and D. iburua Stapf were domesticated in Africa, D. cruciate Nees ex Hoff. f. in India, and common crabgrass [D. sanguinalis (L.) Scop.] was cultivated as a cereal in central Europe until the 19th century without actually being domesticated (Körnicke, 1985). The differences between cultivation and domestication will be discussed in Chapter 3.
Mannagrass [Glyceria fluitans (L.) R. Br.] was harvested in substantial quantities from the marshes of central and eastern Europe as late as 1925 (Szafer, 1966). The seed was even exported from the port of Danzig to countries around the Baltic. Yanovsky (1936) reports that the same species was harvested by Native Americans in Utah, Nevada, and Oregon. Wild oats (Avena barbata Pott ex Link and A. fatua L.) were harvested by the Pormo tribe in California after these weedy plants had been introduced from the Mediterranean (Gifford, 1967). As late as 100 years ago, wild grass seeds were harvested on a commercial scale in central Africa and exported by camel caravans into the desert and other food deficit areas (Harlan, 1989).
I once studied the amount of grain that could be harvested from wild einkorn wheat (Triticum monococcum L. subsp. boeoticum) in Turkey (Harlan, 1967). I found no difficulty in collecting over 2 kg of head material or the equivalent of 1 kg of clean grain per hour. On analysis, the grain contained about 23% protein as compared to about 11% for modern cultivated wheat (Table 1.2).
Table 1.2 Analysis of wild and cultivated wheats.
Source: Adapted from Harlan (1967).
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