Another great find from the recent issue of The Plant Press I blogged about yesterday is the Smithsonian’s website on Edward Palmer:
Edward Palmer (1831-1911), often regarded as “the father of ethnobotany,” gathered extensive natural history collections in North and South America during the late nineteenth century and established standards for plant collecting and reporting, particularly for plants useful to people. His scientific framework is still used today. This new Botany website, Edward Palmer Collections provides a window into the Palmer Collection to communities where Palmer originally collected, as well as to scientists and the general public.
Palmer held posts both as ethnologist for the Smithsonian and as USDA plant collector, and the connections between his botanical and anthropological materials are fascinating, and nicely highlighted on the website. Now, is anyone going to try to get DNA out of his corncob?
Luigi: Thanks for the post. I browsed and found a crop new to me: Distichlis palmeri. Palmer found it in the `delta’ of the Colorado River in Sonora in Mexico. It grows in pure sea water, is now being selected for yield (up to 2t/ha at present), has a large, nutritious grain and even a patent for its protein quality.
It once was a staple food, found growing naturally over thousands of acres in salt marches but is now a very rare endemic as water extraction from the Colorado river has stopped the siltation needed for salt marsh persistence.
I was interested that it fits with my ideas on criteria for cereal crop origins: a large seed used as a gathered food; growing in massive monodominant stands in nature; and in ecological conditions quite free from tree competition (too much salinity and too far north in the `Sea of Cortez’ for competition from mangroves). But it was never a native domesticate.
Is there any data-base for these kind of species that missed early domestication? They would seem to be of equal or greater value for conservation and food security than most crop wild relatives or many `underexploited crops’ that are getting lots of attention
This story has a similarity with the use of Cordyline australis (cabbage tree) stems as a source of fructose in prehistoric New Zealand. They were baked for long periods in earth ovens, to convert stem polysachharides/sugars into sweeter forms. As monocot trees resistant to fire, they were favoured by pre-European forest clearing activities, but were never domesticated. They represent a plant form that has never been subjected to modern selection, and could prove to be productive, low-input crops for no-till, polycultural forms of organic farming.