This chapter covers some well-known plant foods, including artichokes, avocados, beans (both dried and lima), chiles (both sweet and hot), lemons, peanuts, strawberries, and sweet potatoes. A few of these are new entries into this history while others are extensions of their history as given in previous chapters.

Additionally, within are the beginnings of soy processing, the origin of apple pie (nope, not “American”), mustard in the form of oil and as a beginning to “French’s,” hops as a beer flavoring, fico d’Indi (one of my favorite fruits), and CHOCOLATE and more chocolate.

There’s certainly more about tomatoes or, as the French would originally call it, “the pomme d’amour.” Some fun sub-stories here.

I’ve detailed the foods that made it to Hawaii in the canoes of the inadequately-credited uber-voyagers, the Polynesians.

Speaking of voyagers, there’s Marco Polo and his pasta story. With thanks to a Muslim and the Kingdom of Sicily (part of my heritage).

As with past chapters, there’s mentions of cookbooks (cooking books, recipe books, and just “lists”). The converse of that is a reference to KFC, also slipped in here.

The biggest theme included here (almost 40 percent of this chapter) is the half-century of what is called “The Columbian Exchange.” That’s a name that implies an industry of “trade.” But it doesn’t cover the mostly one-sided and often appalling implications of colonization and occupation. With that being said, I will keep to the details of food.

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THE FOOD HISTORY

25 – 220 CE – Soy milk and tofu processing.

1000 CE — Tempeh (fermented soy) Indonesia/Java

960 – 1279 CE — Soy sauce becomes a common flavoring.

1770 CE — Ben Franklin, while visiting London, writes about tofu.

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60s CE — Lingonberries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea). Native to boreal forest and Arctic tundra from Eurasia to North America. Wild berries (V. vitis-idaea var. vitis-idaea; “Cowberry”) have been eaten in northern, central, and eastern Europe, notably in Nordic countries and the Baltic states for centuries, probably millennia. Semi-cultivated through the Middle Ages.

Indigenous Alaskan and Canadian peoples used another subspecies (V. vitis-idaea var. minus; the “Mountain Cranberry”) as food and medicine, again for millennia.

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Read more

The teaser: Herein lies the timelines for a vast cornucopia of plant foods. It includes the agricultural introduction of many familiar items: coffee, tea, beets (plus its kissing cousins spinach beet and Swiss chard), broccoli, sweet cherry, chestnut, citron, cucumber, lettuce, mandarins, oranges, pineapple, plums, rhubarb, saffron, spinach, sugar, sweet corn, tomato, and the vegetable that triggers so many people to exclaim, “Kudos to the first guy who ate an artichoke.”

This chapter also looks at some unusual plant foods: carob, goosefoot, little barley, noodles (from millet!), pandanus nut, sapodilla, and wild rice.

There’s a bit on the spices of the Spice Trade: black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and turmeric.

Plus, so many familiar herbs that the Romans brought to Britan.

And a sequel to the on-going rice adventure.

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A little late but I’ll admit now that I have an American (U.S.) bias. A good many (majority?) of the food entries in this history somehow have their end time in an American context. I don’t think it’s a chauvinistic thing; it’s just that this history was originally written for an American audience and I have had access to more history of the foods of the U.S. I guarantee that there is a wealth of information available of the histories of food for other countries. Maybe much more than I’ve found for the U.S. And histories that can and should be put down by the writers native to those countries.

With that being said, if you missed my articles on edible plants originating in North America, start with a look at the first in a 4-part series “THE FRUITS AND VEGETABLES GIVEN TO US BY THE INDIGENOUS AMERICANS – Part 1.”

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LET’S START WITH A HISTORY OF RECIPE WRITING

4,000 BCE — Traces of cooking methods/instructions in ancient Egyptian tombs.

2,000 BCE — Instructions for a lamb stew written on cuneiform tablets (the Babylonian system of writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia). Not exactly a recipe, as we know today:

“Meat is used. You prepare water. You add fine-grained salt, dried barley cakes, onion, Persian shallot, and milk. You crush and add leek and garlic.”

500 BCE — A cookbook by Mithaecus; one of the earliest, but most of it has been lost.

1,279 BCE — From the “Papyrus Anastasi IV”: a description of a menu (or “grocery list”?) for a feast:

• 10,000 biscuits

• 1,200 Asiatic loaves

• 100 baskets of dried meat

• 300 cuts of meat

• 250 handfuls of beef offal

• 10 plucked geese

• 40 cooked ducks

• 70 sheep

• 12 kinds of fish

• fat quails

• summer pigeons

• 60 measures of milk

• 90 measures of cream

• 30 jars of carob seeds with carob pulp

• 100 heads of lettuce

• 50 bunches of ordinary grapes

• 1,000 bunches of oasis grapes

• 300 strings of figs

• 50 jars of honeycomb

• 50 jars of cucumbers

• 50 small baskets of leek bulbs, equivalent to 120 handfuls

Also from this menu in the “Papyrus Anastasi IV”:

• local oils: sesame oil, sweet ben-nut oil

• imported oils: Cyprus oil, oil from the country of the Hitites,

• nekefeter oil [a premium olive oil] from Babylon; oils from Amor, Syria, and Naharina, and beverages

• Syrian beer, Palestinian wine, and, for the servants, “paur”

200 BCE — Roman recipes, starting with Cato the Elder’s “de Agri cultura” (“on farming”). Many other authors of this period described eastern Mediterranean cooking in Greek and in Latin. Some Punic recipes are known in Greek and Latin translation.

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THE FOODS

Read more

This story is multifaceted and chronologically long. It’s about evolving human genes, getting intoxicated on rotting, yeasty things, having fun and doing sex things with wild species of grapes, and, finally, getting sozzled at an industrial level.

The format: The chronological order here is similar to that of the previous parts of this overall history of food. That is, it’s primarily and overall straightforward but it does become its own order within each subtitled section.

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IN THE WAY BACK

It was about 10 million years ago that humans not only had the ability to sense ethanol (the fragrance of ripe, edible fruit), they had also evolved to metabolize that ethanol better than earlier primates. They could tolerate it better and would eventually learn to enjoy it more.

Yeast, one of the earliest “domesticated” microorganisms, occurs naturally on the skins of grapes (kind of)., and that would eventually lead to the discovery of alcoholic drinks, including and especially wine.

A very deep detailed genetic study in 2025 (“Spontaneous Fermentation of Raisin Water to Form Wine;” published November 2025 in Scientific Reports) indicated that it wasn’t grapes, per se, that made the first wine (as popularly known); it was raisins. Turns out that although modern wine depends on Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the yeast that most dependably turns sugar into alcohol (it is, after all, called the “wine yeast”), when the researchers took a look at grape skins they consistently found none to very little of this yeast. They also found that S. c. isn’t very good at breaking through the grape skin to get to the fermentable sugars within. Grapes, as fresh and at least alone, simply can’t do the job of creating a spirituous product.

The grape skin, whether wild or in vineyard, supports a “carposphere” (the microbiome on the fruit) consisting of a few species of yeasts and non-yeasts. As just mentioned, Saccharomyces cerevisiae is rare to absent within the carposphere’s community. There is, however, plenty of other microbes, including the yeast-like ascomycetous fungi Aureobasidium pullulans and a bacterium Bacillus subtilis*. It’s the A. p. and others that do the bulk of the initial degradation and assimilation of the starches and cellulose of the grape skin. This A. p. and B. s. (and others) may also somehow protect what little S. c. there may be.

When the decaying microbes break down the grape skin, they expose the digestible sugars — the glucose, fructose, and sucrose — to make them available to S. cerevisiae and probably a couple of other “wine yeasts.” At this point, though, there still isn’t a lot of action by S. c. (if there is any S. c., at all); it still has to find its way, in numbers, to the grape.

The Aureobasidium (and others) also begin the “raisining process,” the sun takes over and shrivels the grapes and voilà, raisins. To achieve that step in the process, it’s all about the grapes being dried in the sun out in the open. It’s at this time and under these conditions that wine yeasts can inoculate the grapes (now becoming raisins). It’s theorized that S. c. as well as other wine yeasts including S. paradoxa, were found (and still are found) in woodlands and untouched old-growth forests (wherever they may be). From there, the wine yeasts may have been carried or to raisin drying mats (or to the vineyards directly, in advance) via wind or yeast-carrying animals (e.g., birds, mammals, or others that feed on such fruit). And S. c. et al now have the potential to kick into serious fermenting mode.

It was sometime before 2,000 BCE that the Egyptians and Phoenicians refined the raisin-making practice by harvesting grape clusters, laying them out on mats, and exposing them to the intense desert or Mediterranean sun for two to three weeks until the moisture dropped and the sugars concentrated.

When rehydrated, raisins, now loaded with S. c. and friends, easily ferment on their own. When soaked in water, they kick off the production of that desired C₂H₆O (also written as CH₃CH₂OH or C₂H₅OH) and they do so reliably. C₂H₆O is, of course, ethanol, the primary alcohol in wine.

There’s something important going on in this process that’s worth noting. The ethanol alcohol now being produced begins to suppress much of the microbes in the mix. Except for one: Saccharomyces cerevisiae, that scarce member of the carposphere. This microbe, THE wine yeast, not only tolerates a rising alcohol level, it multiplies itself and further ups the alcohol.

In ancient, pre-Louis Pasteur (1857 - 1859) times, the science behind soaking raisins for wine might have been known but there are no records of such. There is, however, a practical reason why raisins were used more often than grapes for making wine, microbiology aside. And it has to do with grapes spoiling quickly whereas raisins store well and travel easily.

Soaking raisins produced “raisin yeast” (more properly “raisin yeast water”). This liquid was used for millennia but pretty much vanished soon after commercial yeast was marketed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. Only recently has it started to make a comeback for making breads.

[If you’re interested in making bread or wine from raisins, you should know that most store-bought raisins are coated with oil to prevent sticking and this coating blocks fermentation. Only untreated, naturally sun-dried raisins will result in “raisin yeast.”]

Ancient texts describe wines made wholly with raisins, including passum, a wine consumed in the Mediterranean world during Roman times. Fermented grape drinks certainly did not require any deliberate or complex management of yeast. Fresh grapes can ferment under some conditions. But it was the ol’ dried up raisin that made for the rudimentary yet robust process that worked given the food preservation and widespread trade of ancient times, even before the Romans.

[* There’s an unsung hero among the kids on the carposphere block, albeit a different kind of hero. It’s the bacterium Bacillus subtilis. This little guy produces lipopeptides that inhibit Aspergillus carbonarius, a major cause of ochratoxin A contamination in grapes and wine via its start as a disease called “Aspergillus Bunch Rot.” Most wineries use sulfur dioxide (sulfites) in various amounts to fight Aspergillus. Once study showed that B. s. at 200 mg/L outperformed sulfur dioxide in reducing OTA and fungal contamination — without harming yeast growth or wine flavor compounds.

B. s. is also a member of the rhizosphere, essentially the soil microbiome, especially that which clings to the root zones of plants. In that capacity, it improves overall soil health, promotes plant growth, and enhances disease resistance.

Strains of Bacillus subtilis are currently being used against grapevine pathogens, making it a promising tool for sustainable viticulture. It’s also used on horticultural crops for powdery mildew, fire blight, potato scab, selected leaf spots, and various root rots and wilts. It works by both pathogen suppression (it simply overruns the disease organism) and by the production of the lipopeptides, as mentioned, which physically disrupt the cell membranes of pathogens, causing them to leak and die.]

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EARLIEST CULTIVATION AND PRE-DOMESTICATION

The original species of the grape that is highlighted in this article is Vitis vinifera. It separated from other Vitis species about 12 to 1.3 million years ago. The wild grape is now classified as Vitis vinifera var. sylvestris (what I use from here on) or, in some classifications, as Vitis sylvestris. Vitis vinifera var vinifera (what I use from here on) is the designation restricted to cultivated forms, the domesticated grape. Another name for the domesticated grape, V. v. ssp. sativa, although used by many, is considered obsolete.

Domesticated vines, Vitis vinifera var. vinifera, have hermaphrodite flowers, making them self-pollinating, while V. vinifera var. sylvestris is dioecious (male and female flowers on separate plants) and pollination is required for fruit to develop. This switch may have been the grease for the wheels of domestication; or was it vice versa?

A large and important genetic study in 2023 followed the evolution of V. vinifera var. sylvestris from the time wild vines (sylvestris) split into two populations about 500,000 years ago: a western population/ecotype and an eastern population/ecotype. Then, during the last glacial advance 20,000 years ago, the eastern ecotype of sylvestris split into two groups, each of which gave rise to independent domestication events at almost the same time, 11,000 years ago. One was in the near east, the Levant (which the study labeled as CG1 for “cultivated grape 1”) and one was in the Caucasus (CG2 for “cultivated grape 2”).

The most noteworthy finding from this study: the Caucasus/Georgian/Armenian CG2 varieties were the first domesticated but they did not migrate with the spread of agriculture to Europe and give rise to the grape varieties widely grown today. The CG2 cultivars would mainly be limited to both sides of the Caucasus Mountains with some spread into the Carpathian Basin. The CG2 varieties still around are genetically very different from almost all western varieties.

The CG1 domestication, initially selected for table grapes and not winemaking, would be the ones to influence modern winemaking. From the Levant, these domesticated V. vinifera grapes spread eastward through Central Asia into India and China, along the same pathways taken by other ancient crops. They would also be carried north across the Zagros and Caucasus mountains, and through Anatolia to the Balkans. Their Old World journey would eventually include Iberia and Western Europe. Along the way, there would be a good deal of cross-fertilization and introgression (“back-crossing”).

The finer details of these two starting points, along with the dates of the rest of wine’s history, follows.

9,000 BCE — Management (not yet “domestication”) of wild material (Vitis vinifera var. sylvestris). Most evidence suggests that initial domestication of grape vines took place in the Transcaucasian region (Iran, the Caucasus, and Anatolia) where current-day Georgia and Azerbaijan meet Russia at the very western edge of Asia.

The Levant line of Vitis vinifera would be split at a slightly later date, somewhere between this time and 6,000 BCE, into two horticultural divisions — wine grapes and table grapes — and the cultivation of these two lines would continue separately thereafter.

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ANOTHER WORLD, ANOTHER COURSE

7,000 BCE — Chemical analyses of ancient organics absorbed into pottery jars from the early Neolithic village of Jiahu in Henan province in China have revealed that a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey, and fruit (hawthorn fruit and/or grape) was being produced. These pottery jars were discovered in the grave of a shaman.

The grape that was found in these jars was probably Vitis amurensis. There are, however, somewhere between 40 and 70 species of wild grape that occur in China, about 20 of which are closely related to V. amurensis. Currently, native species such as V. amurensis, V. bryoniaefolia, V. davidii, V. heyneana, and V. pseudoreticulata, along with the many hybrids among them and with V. vinifera (THE wine grape), are used in the wine industry there.

ca. 1,200 – 1,046 BCE — (Late Shang Dynasty) In the earliest texts from China, at least three beverages were distinguished: chang (an herbal wine), li (probably a sweet, low-alcoholic rice or millet beverage), and jiu (a fully fermented and filtered rice or millet beverage or “wine,” with an alcoholic content of probably 10 – 15 percent; pretty much in the range of today’s actual wine).

1,000 BCE — Archaeologists have discovered wine production from native “mountain grapes” such as V. filifolia and V. thunbergii in China.

551 – 470 BCE — From “Confucius’ Discourses on Eating:” Don’t eat dried meat and drink wine bought from the market. (= Don’t eat processed foods. Know your farmer.)

300 BCE — A grape stem was discovered in the Yanghai Tombs, Turpan District in Xinjiang, China. It was determined to be a specific grape (Vitis vinifera). This is the earliest physical evidence of V. vinifera cultivation in China. Vitis vinifera is not native to China but rather to the Mediterranean region, East-Central Europe, and southwestern Asia (including the Levant and “The Fertile Crescent”).

200 BCE — Zhang Qian (a Chinese diplomat, explorer, and politician ) would explore the Central Asia “countries/kingdoms” of Dayuan and Bactria (Central Asia; the Empire of Alexander the Great; what is now modern Xinjiang,), as well as the Indo-Greek Kingdom (Northwestern India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan). These ventures would not only bring viticulture into Central Asia, it opened up trade that would permit the first wine produced from V. vinifera var. vinifera grapes to be introduced to China.

<618 CE — After many years of restricted foreign intervention, wine was imported again when trade with the west was restored under the Tang dynasty. It would, however, remain mostly imperial fare until the Song Dynasty (from 960 CE) when its consumption spread among those just a bit less fortunate.

1275 to 1292 CE — Marco Polo noted in his account the continuing preference for rice wines in Yuan, China.

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EARLIEST DOMESTICATED GRAPES AND WINE PRODUCTION

6,000 BCE —The earliest evidence of actual domesticated grapes has been found at two sites in the province of Kvemo (Lower) Kartli in southeastern Georgia: Gadachrili Gora, near the village of Imiri, Marneuli Municipality, and Shulaveris Gora on the Kura River. Dating was done by chemical analyses of ancient organic compounds absorbed into the pottery fabrics and corroborated by climatic and environmental reconstruction and archaeobotanical evidence, including grape pollen, starch, and epidermal remains from a jar of similar type and date.

ca. 5,400–5,000 BCE — Chemical residues inside pots from the Hajji Firuz Tepe site in West Azarbaijan Province, north-western Iran, northern Zagros mountains. The Iranian jars contained a form of retsina (resinated wine) and were sealed with a turpentine pine resin to more effectively preserve the wine.

5,000 BCE — The earliest evidence of charred grape seeds was discovered at Tell Yunnatzi (also, Yunatzi or Yunnatsite), a site in Bulgaria, on the opposite side of the Black Sea from the South Caucasus. In addition to grape seeds, this site contained fragments of ceramic vessels.

4,450 – 4,000 BCE — Seeds from what are believed to be domesticated grapes have been found at Dikili Tash from northern Greece (Macedonia).

ca. 4,100 BCE — So far, the earliest known winery, in the Areni-1 Cave Complex, in Vayots Dzor, southern Armenia along the Arpa River. The site contained a wine press, fermentation vats, jars, and cups. Archaeologists also found V. vinifera seeds and vines. The seeds here were from Vitis vinifera var. vinifera, the domesticated grape. The fact that enology (the science of winemaking) was already so well developed by this time would suggest that the technology probably goes back much earlier.

ca. 4,100 – 3,000 BCE — Changes in grape pip (seed) shape (narrower in domesticated forms) and distribution confirm or suggest that domestication has occurred in southwest Asia, South Caucasus (Armenia and Georgia), and the Western Black Sea shore region (Bulgaria, Romania).

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THE SPREAD OF WINE

6,000 – 5,800 BCE— As noted earlier, domestication of the grapevine (from Vitis vinifera var. sylvestris to Vitis vinifera var vinifera) most likely took place in two regions at about the same time.

First, in an area encompassing the South Caucasus (also known as Transcaucasia, or the Transcaucasus). It’s where southeastern Europe meets southwestern Asia and was once home to the ancient civilization of Anatolia/Asia Minor. It now corresponds to modern Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Iran. Wild grapes (Vitis vinifera var. sylvestris) still thrive in parts of this region.

The other site of origin was in the near east — the Levant (modern day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan), a key part of “The Fertile Crescent.”

These two origins gave rise to a multitude of new Vitis vinifera var. vinifera wine grape cultivars, all varying to some degree, but all sharing almost identical basic features.

The domesticated vines from the Levant are the ones that would make their way westwards with human populations and, through a series of introgressions (accidental and/or intentional cross-breeding with wild vines) in Europe, they would give rise to the ubiquitous Vitis vinifera cultivars (in this case “varietals”) of today.

The domesticated vines from the Caucasus, on the other hand, would stall in place; their genetics would never stray far from Georgia and Armenia. The vast majority of grapes in the world hold the genetic codes from the original domesticated Levantine grapes.

From the Levant, V. v. var. vinifera grapes and their genes, would spread first to Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Crete, and from there they would be carried to the west of the Mediterranean basin. The Phoenician-Punic, Greek, and Roman civilizations were the fundamental traders who spread these grapes to the west.

4,500 BCE — Production technology spread to other sites in “Greater Persia” (aka the “Iranian Cultural Continent,” covering much of the Caucasus, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia, with cultural influences extending to China and western India).

ca. 4,000 BCE — Archaeometric analyses of terracotta jars and amphorae from Monte Kronio in Sicily revealed distinct traces of tartaric acid and sodium salts, confirming the past presence of actual fermented grape wine. Archaeometric = combining various scientific techniques, including radiocarbon dating, Raman spectroscopy, x-ray fluorescence, and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, among others. This is 3,400 years before the Greeks were to introduce viticulture and enology to Sicily! 3,000 years before the Phoenician traders had come west! and another “!.”

ca. 3,300 and 3,000 BCE — Discoveries of wine jars at the Tell es-Sakan site of an Egyptian city near the Mediterranean coast, evidently exported wine.

>3,200 BCE — Domesticated grapes from the Levant had become abundant throughout the Near East, with increasingly substantial evidence for winemaking in Sumer and Egypt.

ca. 3100 BCE — Wine jugs discovered in Abydos, Egypt inside the royal Umm el-Qa’ab tombs of the Early Dynastic Period of Egypt. Wine offerings were a common feature of Near Eastern ancient worship.

ca. 3,000 BCE — A royal winemaking industry was established in the Nile Delta and wine would play an important role in ancient Egyptian ceremonial life.

2,700 – 2,200 BCE — Grapes (Vitis vinifera). In Egypt’s Old Kingdom (“The Age of the Pyramids”), both wine grapes and table grapes are grown. Along with figs.

>900 BCE — The ancient Egyptians used a “sack press” made of cloth that was squeezed with the aid of a giant tourniquet. The first wine press?

1,279 BCE — “Palestinian wine.” Included in a menu from the “Papyrus Anastasi IV” (a collection of hieratic and sometimes satirical “miscellanies” or sample letters used for training scribes; generally of a daily life record).

ca. 1,000 BCE — The Phoenicians actively exported the wines of Byblos (an ancient city on the coast of Lebanon; one of the oldest cities in the world), which were known for their quality, to Greece and the Latium and Etruscan lands that would soon become the Roman Empire. More importantly, they would bring grapevines for transplanting.

ca. 600 BCE — The Greeks would further advance viticulture and the production processes of wine and would further spread their knowledge to Sicily, north through the Italian peninsula, and to southern Gaul (France).

300 BCE – 300 CE — Grape seeds preserved in oxygen-free mud of deep wells, at Cetamura del Chianti, an archaeological site in Italy’s Chianti wine region. The majority of the tested seeds belonged to a single, identical variety from the time of the Etruscans and Romans that had been maintained for centuries. Most of these seeds were from a white grape.

200 (or 300) BCE – 220 CE — Grapes and wine are carried along the Silk Road.

ca. 70 BCE — Pliny the Elder, in his “Naturalis historia,” would write “In vino, veritas,” or “In wine, there is truth.” Is this the same as “A drunk mind speaks a sober heart?”

58 – 50 BCE — The ancient Romans further increased the scale of wine production and trade networks, especially in Gaul (Western Europe: present-day Belgium, France, Germany, and Northern Italy), eventually on to Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and parts of Switzerland).

862 CE — Staffelter Hof is built in the Bernkastel-Wittlich district of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The oldest known winery still in existence.

ca. 1000 CE — The vineyards of the Château de Goulaine, located in the Loire Valley of France, begins commercial production of wine. It is the second oldest wine-making business still in existence.

1450s CE — Zabaione (Zabaglione), an Italian dessert, appears for the first time, now found in a recipe in “Cuoco Napoletano.” It’s made with whipped egg yolks, sugar, and a sweet wine (usually Moscato d'Asti).

1773 CE — English merchant John Woodhouse discovered the local fortified wines of Marsala, Sicily. These wines were soon standardized and exported to northern European markets. The island’s viticulture was obliged to expand and modernize through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with new plantings, vine training systems, and vineyard co-operatives.

1530 CE — The Spanish and Portuguese carry wine grapes to the New World: Brazil and Mexico.

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WINE ADDITIVES

4,100 BCE — Persians began using pine resin to protect their wines from rotting.

800 BCE — The ancient Greeks blended their wines with fragrances, herbs, brines, and even seawater to enhance flavor, mask oxidation, and boost medicinal properties.

ca. 1st century CE — Sulfur candles were burned inside empty wine vessels to prevent spoilage and oxidation in Ancient Rome and Egypt. Pliny the Elder described how sulfur candles were used to stop vinegar aromas in the amphorae, a practice that secondarily created sulfur dioxide (SO₂) in the wine.

1487 CE — Earliest documented winemaking. A German law approved the burning of sulfur-treated wood chips inside wine barrels to preserve the wine burning sulfur-treated wood chips in barrels.

1777 CE — The formal method of adding beet or cane sugar to unfermented grape juice was first scientifically established by French chemist Pierre Macquer; although people have added sugar to wine since ancient times, initially in the form of honey.

Napoleon’s Minister of Agriculture, Jean-Antoine Chaptal, would popularize it in the early 1800s.

1958 CE — Dr. Harold Olmo (professor at UC Davis, viticulturist, and grape breeder) introduced ‘Rubrired’, a red grape with a red flesh, unlike all previous red grapes. It’s the grape used to help produce Mega Purple and Ultra Red, two dyes/colorants, which were introduced in 1992.

1988 CE — Velcorin (dimethyl dicarbonate or DMDC) is used at the time of bottling to prevent re-fermentation and sterilize the wine by destroying yeast and bacteria.

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WINE IN THE U.S.

8,500 BCE – 1,000 CE — Although Native Americans had been harvesting and eating wild grapes in North America for at least these 10,000 years, there is no evidence of grape cultivation/domestication before European contact.

8,500 – 8,000 BCE — Grape seeds and remains have been found in sites of this age, including at the Dust Cave site in northwestern Alabama.

8,000 – 1,000 BCE — Grape remains found in the American Bottom region, which stretches from the confluence of the Missouri and Illinois rivers, south to the Kaskaskia River. This floodplain lies directly across the river from modern-day St. Louis. Indigenous peoples consistently gathered and consumed grapes (along with persimmons and wild seed grasses).

16th Century CE — The first European explorers, such as those led by Ponce de León, attempted to make wine from these native grapes, but the results were often unsatisfactory due to their “foxy” flavors.

17th Century CE — European settlers began importing European grape varieties, specifically Vitis vinifera var. vinifera into the Americas. Almost all of these grapes would eventually fail in the Eastern America climate, which left nothing for winemaking.

1619 CE — The first legislation for wine in the US. England wanted wine from its American colony. So, they passed Acte 12, which required every male household in Virginia to plant ten vines of imported vinifera grapes for the purpose of growing and making wine. One of these household males, John Johnson, planted more than ten; he would plant 85 acres worth. This land now belongs to Williamsburg Winery; their signature wine is an Acte 12 Chardonnay.

1683 CE — The first possible recorded planting of a vineyard in western North America was probably by the Spanish Jesuit Missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino at Misión San Bruno in Baja California. He planted a variety named ‘Misionéro’.

Mid 1700’s CE — Benmarl Winery, the oldest vineyard in the United States (holds farm winery license number 1) is still active in New York.

September 17, 1787 CE — The first wine enjoyed after the signing of the Constitution. The signing was celebrated with a glass of Madeira.

1779 – 1781 CE — Franciscan missionaries led by Spanish Father Junípero Serra (Ferrer) planted California’s first vineyard at Mission San Juan Capistrano. Per their Journals, the padres supervised six campesinos (peasants/farmers) brought from Baja California in planting 2,000 grapevines at the new mission. The variety he planted, presumably descended from Spain, became known as the “Mission grape.”

1783 CE — Father Serra would supervise the build of (Alta) California’s first winery, this one in San Juan Capistrano. They would produce red and white wines (sweet and dry), brandy, and a port-like fortified wine called Angelica, all produced from the Mission grape. Father Serra has been called the “Father of California Wine.”

[Just in case you didn’t know, Serra was an appointed Inquisitor; he would file a report to the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico City on “evidences of witchcraft in the Sierra Gorda missions (of Mexico).” From 2015 through 2020, seven statues of Serra in California were either toppled or decapitated, and splattered with red paint; Serra was not popular with the Indigenous peoples.]

<1789 CE — Thomas Jefferson would become America’s first oenophile.

1801 – 1802 — The ‘Catawba’ grape is discovered growing wild in the Carolinas, likely along the banks of the Catawba River.

1830s — Nicholas Longworth (possible inspiration for “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”) planted a vineyard of ‘Catawba’ grapes in Cleveland, Ohio and began producing sparkling wines with traditional methods used in Champagne.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would write a poem dedicated to Nicholas Longworth: “Ode to Catawba Wine.”

1839 — Brotherhood Winery, still active today in New York, produces its first commercial vintage.

mid-19th Century — The golden age for New York wineries, with the establishment of major vineyards in the Finger Lakes region, the Hudson River Valley, and Long Island.

1851 —Starting in 1851, Jean-Louis Vignes would plant the largest vineyard in California (at the time), in Los Angeles. He would import vines from Bordeaux — Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc — and become the first in the U.S. to age wine.

1863 — Cuttings of species of native American grapes were taken to Botanical Gardens in England. They carried an aphid-like pest called phylloxera that attacks and feeds on the vine roots and leaves. Phylloxera is indigenous to North America and native vine varieties, although carrying the pest, had developed resistance. European vines, without such natural defiance, would surrender.

>1865 (just two years!) — The phylloxera had spread to vines in Provence, France. And in twenty years, 75 percent to almost all the vineyards throughout western Europe would be infested and ravaged. The pest would become known as the “Wine Blight.” No pest management practices proved more than temporary, and none were economical.

>1890 — An American horticulturist, Thomas V. Munson, suggested grafting the vinifera vines onto rootstocks of resistant American rootstocks (Vitis berlandieri, V. cinerea, V. cordifolia, and V. riparia, and hybrids thereof). Yes, it was a long, laborious process. But it worked.

1869 — Thomas Bramwell Welch, a supporter of the temperance movement, discovered a method of halting fermentation, hence producing a non-alcoholic wine.

1919 – 1920 — The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes. It was followed by the Volstead National Prohibition Act.

December 5, 1933 — National Repeal. But the wine industry had collapsed; production dropped 94% from 1919 to 1925.

1965 CE — South Australia (not in the U.S.) invented box wine.

1983 — A Phylloxera outbreak would hit Napa Valley and its 400 wineries/vineyards.

2008 — Robert Parker, internationally-renown wine critic, insures his nose and palate for one million US dollars.

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THE FUTURE OF WINE GRAPES

Under 50 percent of U.S. wineries utilize certified “sustainable” practices. But the numbers are increasing. With increased climate changes, sustainability has become less and “optional” agricultural and business strategy and more compulsory. Just the label and concept of “sustainable” must expand and mature; it must become the more fully integrated and productive “regenerative.” All of us must fix the earth, including viticulturists.

Climate change also demands a change in the plants themselves. Breeders must look at and incorporate the genetics of the more durable native species as well as non-native species from areas of the world that have been through the hotter, drier climate patterns. Breeders should also focus on creating greater diversity in the palette of cultivars (unfortunately, still called “varieties,” which are not to be confused with “varietals”).

Innovation is a good starting point. Regenerative viticulture will be the long-term solution and future of grape growing, whether for wine or table.

For more info on regenerative viticulture, take a look at the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation.

If you’re not a viticulturist, amateur or professional, buy wines labeled “Regenerative” (or at least labeled “Sustainable”).

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I’m having fruit salad for dinner. Well, it’s mostly grapes actually. Ok, all grapes. Fermented grapes. I’m having wine for dinner.

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NEXT TIME: Back to the regular installments of “20,000 YEARS OF FOOD” with Part 3 (of 7) – To 1 BCE.

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© Copyright Joe Seals, 2026

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Part 2 (of 7) – Through 3,000 BCE

This timeline of some four millennia starts with the beginning history of rice (now the most consumed food by caloric intake globally), offers just a teaser for the grape and wine record, runs through beer, wheats, peaches, peanuts, garlic, citrus, chocolate, sweet potato, and carrots, and ends with an explosion of agricultural firsts. Plus, an interesting teaser to “chewing gum.”

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A few things I should have mentioned in the beginning chapter…

“Speciation” — Plants, just as all living organisms, have evolved over millions of years. This happened in one of two ways or in both ways.

The first, called simply “speciation,” is when populations of the same species become isolated from each other and acquire independent traits, mutations, and adaptations until they can no longer interbreed to produce fertile offspring. This is the familiar, and somewhat simplified, strategy of evolution.

The second, “hybrid speciation,” begins when interbreeding between two different species creates a group of individuals with a new, distinct genetic coding, yet with the potential to further interbreed. The next and most critical step is isolation from the parent plants to prevent regressive interbreeding with those parents. This is where the nomadic hominids came in. They carried the seeds of the hybrid plants far from where the parent plants exist. Then they culled each of the new generations of the plant, selecting those plants that adapted best to their new environments and those plants that suited the needs of the humans who planted them. Over time, the new plant became stable, that is, Unlike ordinary speciation, which could take millions of years, hybrid speciation might get it all done within a millennia (gross simplification to illustrate a point).

It can happen much faster. Sometimes a hybrid can inherit multiple sets of chromosomes from both parent species (it’s called allopolyploidy, a say-it-fast-three-times kind of word). In such cases, it pretty much creates a potential new species right away because that new plant cannot breed again with either of the parent species. This, too, is a human-induced “evolution” due to two plants being planted in a place where they do not naturally overlap, or one plant being planted close to another species of the same genus that evolved in another direction many millions of years ago. Or, more radically, being planted next to a plant that evolved in isolation into another genus. Both happen commonly in plants today, albeit the two-genus crossing is not so common.

In botanical nomenclature, a hybrid species is also called a nothospecies (“notho” meaning hybrid in this new word, although “notho” is from the Greek for bastard).

You’ll find the word “cultigen” smattered throughout these chapters. It refers to all the plants that humans have altered or selected in some way. That includes conventional plant breeding and any form of genetic modification. If the cultigen has a commercial name, it’s usually the nothospecies name. Human-made plants, essentially.

This is not to be confused with the term “cultivar,” which is a selected and almost always commercially named cultivated variety of a plant species or a hybrid of two species; it is recognized as a formal category in the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants. Cultivars are one of three categories of plants within the term cultigen; the other two categories being “Group” and “Grex.” I’ve opened that door and I just might close it. Later.

The abbreviation “ca.,” as used in the historical context here, represents “approximately equal to” or, simply, “about.”

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MORE PLANT FOOD CHRONOLOGY

ca.7,000 – 4,000 BCE — Brown-beard rice (Oryza rufipogon) grown somewhere in the Yangtze River valleys of China begins its way toward becoming fully domesticated modern rice. The following history includes some hypotheses (not mine, of course).

There was an intermediate stage, maybe two, starting with the non-wild version of O. rufipogon that has also been called Oryza nivara. Oryza nivara (the next stage?) is an annual plant that has been considered:

• a synonym of O. rufipogon (a perennial plant), and

• an ecotype — the more cultivated and evolved/adapted form of O. rufipogon, having the distinctive expression of a useful, annual growth cycle.

It’s this annual growth cycle of the latter that would characterize the future ancestry of the yet-to-come common domestic rice: Oryza sativa. This new species/form was already being grown (“cultivated” but not “domesticated” or at least not the definitive signs of domestication) well before the first signs of farming villages in the Yangtze River valleys.

Two villages in China, Bashidang and Pengtoushan, would begin actual rice farming in 4,000 BCE.

This Oryza sativa from China would take on the variety name of Oryza sativa var. japonica or O. s. var. sinica. This natural variety is the sticky, short-grained type familiar to Asian populations and those who like good Asian food.

6,400 (probably) but 7,250 (maybe) – 1,500 BCE — Rice. New findings at the Lahuradewa archaeological site in Sant Kabir Nagar district, Uttar Pradesh, India. Still in discussion: did the dated/tested samples come from wild stands (of Brown-beard rice [Oryza rufipogon]), cultivated stands (of Wild Indian Rice [sometimes recorded as Oryza nivara]), or stands (of a domesticated Oryza sativa)?

5,440 – 4,530 BCE — Rices (Oryza rufipogon and, maybe, O. nivara) were cultivated within the Vindhyan Ranges along the Ganges River Valley (earliest) and the Belan River in northern India at sites such as Chopani-Mando and Mahagara.

3,500 BCE – 2,000 BCE —Migrations of the Austronesian Dapenkeng culture into Taiwan, introducing rice culture.

Sometime between 3,500 and 1,200 BCE — Domesticated rice would be introduced to Korea and Japan.

ca. 3,000 BCE — Rice found in the Mekong River basin, Vietnam.

ca. 2,500 - 2,000 BCE — Asian rice (Oryza sativa var. japonica) arrived in India and Oryza sativa var. indica rice arose when japonica hybridized with the wild Oryza nivara (if there is such a thing) or an undomesticated “proto-indica” species akin to O rufipogon. This is considered “full domestication.” T

Indica is another modern version of rice via further hybridization and speciation. It is the non-sticky, long-grained rice variety. Its strains/cultivars are mainly lowland rices grown on very wet lands throughout tropical Asia.

A short list of modern-day rice selections within each variety:

Japonica types:

• Arborio, Carnaroli (risotto rices)

• Black rice

• Calrose (medium-grain)

• Koshihikari (Japanese short-grain)

• Mochi rice or sweet rice (a glutinous form)

• Sushi rice (labeled)

Indica types:

• Basmati

• Jasmine (Thai hom mali)

• Long-grain white

• Thai sticky (a glutinous form)

2,000 to 1,500 BCE — Austronesian settlers from Taiwan moved south to colonize Luzon in the Philippines, then westwards to Borneo, the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, and then southwards to Sulawesi and Java.

2,000 – 1,500 BCE — Many of the Tai peoples (an ethnolinguistic group) likely originated in southwestern China, possibly in the Yangtze River Valley, as well as in northern Laos, and/or Vietnam with later settlements in northeastern India. They migrated in waves into Southeast Asia beginning ca. 2,500 BCE.

>1,500 BCE — The first evidence of domesticated rice (possibly both var. japonica and var. indica) in Thailand is from the coastal site of Khok Phanom Di (Chonburi Province, Central Thailand, on the eastern margin of the Bangkok Plain, in the lower Bang Pakong River basin; not far from what is now Bangkok).

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“THE WINE STORY” would begin about here….but…

As I was writing this chapter that covers 7,000 BCE to 3,000 BCE, I had originally included the origins of grapes and wine — or wine and grapes, a chicken-or-egg thing. But this one entry in the chapter became so big unto itself, even in its abbreviated version, that I decided to post it separately very soon after this post.

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Read more

[Part 1 (of 7): 20,000+ through 8,000 BCE]

“Know where your food comes from.” This is a great suggestion often offered to those whose knowledge of food source ends with the supermarket. Yes, the food we consume ultimately comes from ranches, orchards, greenhouses, farms, and the ocean. And we, the consumers, need to know that.

There’s something else that I think is worth knowing and that’s the more thorough version of the “where your food comes from.” This series — in seven parts — goes beyond the food sources of today. Way beyond that. It goes to where your plant food ORIGINALLY came from and, moreover, WHEN it came.

One of my favorite sports, as my readers should know, is playing with plant food history, particularly food origins, when I focus on the earliest species from which food plants originated, the countries of origin, their human-attendant archaeological sites, and the peoples who did all the manipulating along the way. This extended version of my playing is the emphatic epitome of that.

I began this article on plant food history as a slide show for a two-session presentation to students at Western Washington University a few years ago. I’ve revised and updated the slide show and added to it over those last few years. That slide show, with its lecture notes, is now very long. So, I abbreviated it for this series, keeping the key points (dates, sites, species) while, sometimes seriously, condensing text. Even then, it had to be broken up into seven chapters, this being the first (it, alone, is long so don’t go TL; DR on me).

Although I’ve attempted to make this a simple-to-follow, straight-forward linear chronology, I’ve done some jumping forward and backward in spots in time to elaborate not just on the time but on the species.

I’ve also included snippets of the history of recipes in future chapters. In a sense, recipes influenced what we grew and how we grew it.

The Chronological acronyms I’ve used in this presentation: BCE stands for “Before the Common Era” and CE stands for “Common Era.” They represent the exact same timelines as the traditional “BC” (Before Christ) and “AD” (Anno Domini) systems, but they serve as a secular, religiously-neutral alternative used in modern academia, science, and global contexts.

I’ve done my best to find the most up-to-date information on edible plant origins. I have no doubt that timelines will change as further research studies the historic backgrounds of these plants, whether through archaeological digs or advanced genetic work.

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“IN THE BEGINNING”…

100,000+ years ago — Before there was barely a hint of the agricultural progression to come, the human diet consisted of:

• Water and ice

• Salt

• Oysters and other mollusks

• Fish

• Eggs

• Insects

• Dead animals

  …and the plant things…

• Mushrooms

• Wild roots, bulbs

• Wild rices

• Wild fruits, nuts, grains, seeds

From this simplicity, humans increased their menu exponentially as their populations increased and as they migrated into different ecospheres where available foods were different.

Which leads to the common question about the dietary evolution of humans, and it goes something like this: “How did early humans know which foods were ‘safe’ to eat?” The question is sometimes manifested, jokingly, as “Kudos to the guy who first ate an artichoke.”

The better question is: “How did the first humans know which ADDITIONAL foods to eat?”

Answer: Humans weren’t humans overnight. There was a slow evolution from other primates and pre-humans and all of these earlier creatures survived by eating something. Homo simply ate what it saw its predecessors eat and Homo’s children ate what their parents ate. As humans migrated to new lands, it was undoubtedly a matter of trying those things that looked similar to what they ate as well as watching what other mammals ate. Of course some died trying something new.

Along those same lines, when people become aware of a multi-millennium “evolution” of edible plants, they begin to ask other questions. The most common of these questions fall in the general areas of:

• Q: Why then?

• Q: Why there?

• Q: Why that? …

The “THEN” are during these three (or just two) Climatological/Geological Ages. They are the background before “The Beginning”.

1. PLEISTOCENE (“GLACIAL”) EPOCH 2,600,000 to 9,700 BCE. The period of critical human evolution. Highlighting the key developments of the Homo species that supported future “agricultural” skills:

• Homo habilis (ca. 2.0 to 1.5 million years ago) emerges in Africa as an early ancestor; develops the earliest stone tools.

• Homo erectus (ca. 1.8 million to 100,000 years ago) bears a significantly larger brain, uses fire and complex tool technologies. The first hominin* to migrate out of Africa into Eurasia.

• Homo heidelbergensis (ca. 700,000 to 200,000 years ago) is the transitional hominin, bearing a large brain case, that served as the common ancestor to both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.

• Homo neanderthalensis (ca. 400,000 to 30,000 years ago) evolved in Eurasia, enduring the harsh glacial climates. They had robust builds, complex social structures, buried their dead, and coexisted/interbred with modern humans.

• Homo sapiens (ca. 300,000 years ago to Present) began major migrations out of the continent approximately 60,000 years ago and into what would become the agricultural crucibles. This (“our”) species developed highly advanced symbolic thought, art, and complex regional tools.

[* This statement about hominins isn’t thorough. Although we did, indeed, “leave” Africa, there is significant fossil evidence suggesting that the ancient ancestors of African apes as well as humans evolved outside of Africa, specifically across the Mediterranean and Europe. The taxonomic Tribe Hominini, that which includes humans (Homo) and chimpanzees (Pan), first “came” to Africa and then Homo “left” it. This is kinda just fun to know but I threw it in primarily because someone not long ago made a big deal out of it when I was speaking on the “out of Africa” concept. I don’t want that to happen again.]

2. HOLOCENE EPOCH (9,700 BCE to present; or maybe further). The Holocene Epoch is our current geological time period (although see number 3, just below). It started about the time of the last major ice age continuing with a warm, stable climate that enabled the rapid proliferation of Homo sapiens, the agricultural revolution, and thence the rise of all recorded human civilization.

3. “ANTHROPOCENE” EPOCH (1950 to present). This is an unofficial but widely used term that is acknowledged as the most dramatic surge (“The Great Acceleration”) in Homo sapiens’ impact on the earth, especially as it influences climate change. This period saw a massive spike in human population growth, industrial production, and resource consumption. As much as anything, it has seen disturbing declines in healthy food, healthy food production, and healthy soils — pretty much the rise of modern agriculture. It started the year I was born; connection?

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THE HUMAN-RELATED AGES

There is another way of looking at and measuring such huge timespans and it involves what are called “Periods.” These three Periods cover the “Stone Age” and they encompass human development, along with additional key advancements of the Homo species that supported future “agricultural” skills:

1. PALAEOLITHIC PERIOD (2,800,000 BCE to 12,800 BCE). This period begins with Australopithecus and evolves through several species of Homo (as above). All stone tool makers (hence the name the “STONE AGE;” palaeo = ancient and “lithic” = stone). Key developments:

• >2,800,000 years ago — Wild food is collected (tapering off until the late Anthropocene Epoch when foraging has become a growing pastime).

• 1,400,000 BCE — Fire (Africa). Fire good.

• 790,000 BCE — The earliest known evidence of controlled use of fire for cooking at the Daughters of Jacob Bridge archaeological site in the Golan Heights, Israel.

• 500,000 BCE — Use of fire for cooking, in Asia.

• ca. 400,000 years ago — Oldest definitive evidence of making fire (igniting a new flame) found at a Neanderthal site in eastern England. Fire very good.

Cooking with fire was a major evolutionary milestone. It allowed migration into colder climates, sustained larger brains by providing more energy from food, and encouraged social gathering around the fire. The latter would shape early human culture.

• 20,000 – 18,000 BCE – Hunting in packs (maybe with wolves). Pack hunting made hunting larger animals possible and that, in turn, accelerated tool advancement. It fostered egalitarian decision-making and reinforced cooperation, a basis for “civilization.”

This Period also includes the crucial dates when humans had to make radical and challenging changes in their diets. They would continually leave biomes where they had become familiar with what to eat and what not to eat and into biomes drastically different in their edible palettes. This corresponds to the “THERE:”

• 900,000 years ago, climate changes (that glacial thing that left Africa dried out) put Homo species on the brink of extinction. The glaciers sucked up the ocean water, leading to a large sea level drop, and leaving not-wet, walkable areas between Africa and Europe. That’s the escape route from what was once a land of plenty.

• Evidence of Hominin occupation was found at Sima del Eliphan, an archaeological site of Atapuerca, in the Burgos, Spain; jawbone fragments from at least 800,000 years ago and upwards of 1.4 million years ago. Similar evidence discovered in the site’s Gran Dolina cavern, over 160 bone fragments of at least eleven hominids were found, between 850,000 and 780,000 years old — they are likely the oldest known evidence of hominid settlement in Western Europe. Other sites in the area would turn up bone fragments from 530,000 to 430,000 years ago.

• Later on, humans left Africa in several waves (at least five) between 100,000 years ago and 60,000 years ago. They must now ingest and swallow plants they have never put into their mouths. This wave would channel through the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant; in this “bottleneck,” they would leave behind vast quantities of evidence of plant food consumption and, in many cases, cultivation and domestication of plant species.

• Another wave would venture on to India and the Southern edges of Asia between 70,000 and 60,000 years ago. Humans would reach the Malay Archipelago and New Guinea about 50,000 (maybe 60,000) years ago.

• Very quickly thereafter, maybe 50,000 years ago, they would find Australia. This is a continent where almost no living thing matches what Homo found on the previous continents.

• 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, humans spread throughout Southern Europe.

• Northern Europe and Northern Asia would be populated about 45,000 to 35,000 years ago.

• Walking across ice through Siberia, they would reach the North American continent 38,000 to 15,000 years ago. In waves, of course.

• Going south, they would reach the last continent that they would inhabit — South America — at least by 15,000 years ago and maybe as far back as 23,000 years ago.

  [These Paleolithic time spans of the human journey are very round numbers, of course, and are based on recent paleo-archaeological finds and genetic sequencing.]

• Around 23,000 years ago, humans made grinding stones and left behind starch from the processed wild cereals, as evidenced at the Ohalo II site, on the southwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. This is important in that it puts food preparation technology well before farming. They were already making tough-to-chew and digest plant foods a greater part of their diets.

2. MESOLITHIC PERIOD (12,800 BCE until “Agriculture”). Last of the major glaciers. A more stabilized climate. More advanced tool/weapon making (yet still stone age). Settlements, albeit not exactly civilization. More intensified food collection. Incipient agriculture. (“Meso- = middle.)

• 12,800 BCE and earlier. Wild food is “maintained,” starting with gathering seed yet leaving some behind.

• “Ancient technology:” Meat is preserved.

• Vegetables are peeled.

• Nuts/seeds are roasted or boiled or fermented.

• Many things are cooked.

• Later: Wild food is “managed.” Fire is used to reduce overlay plants; essentially non-food competitors are eliminated/minimized. Some plants are moved to concentrated food areas; this begins the concept of “Food forests.”

3. NEOLITHIC PERIOD (9,400 BCE to 4,500 – 2,000 BCE). One human: Homo sapiens (or, more completely, Homo sapiens X H. neanderthalensis + H. longi). Bigger brain. The beginning of actual Agriculture (generally in disturbed areas of seasonal rains, along with incentive). (“Neo-” = new.). This Period is sometimes called the Neolithic Revolution (or the First Agricultural Revolution).

• Wild food “improved/enhanced” (10,000 BCE±). Leaving behind the best (e.g., non-shattering wheat) in situ. Leads to change in gene count. Leads to “domestication” (kind of).

• The megafauna begins to vanish in North America and Eurasia, being overhunted to extinction, plus climate change, disease, a supposed extraterrestrial impact??

• Wild food accidentally planted (10,000 BCE±). Trash after dinner is tossed outside the abode and seeds from that trash sprout in place. Because much of dinner was gathered far from the abode and because the sprouted plants are beyond happy in this disturbed location, these are considered “proto-weeds.” Due to the small scale growing ground, these plots are probably better labeled as “horticulture” rather than “agriculture.”

• Wild food intentionally planted. Land cleared. Irrigation. “agriculture.” “Feasts”

• Wild food naturally hybridizes. From the beginning of plant life and now, with the advent of agriculture, more regularly due to human transference.

• Planted food selected (8,000 BCE±) THIS is “domestication.”

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THE FOOD PLANTS, BY DATES — THE “THAT”

More than 20,000 years ago — Taro (Colocasia esculenta), thought to be native to Southern India but widely naturalized, is first spread by early peoples eastward into Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific Islands. The question is whether it was truly “cultivated” (by definition) or just maintained. Archaeological traces are included in the Niah Caves of Borneo (early estimations at <38,000 BCE!) and the Kilu Cave in the Solomon Islands (26,000 to 18,000 BCE!!).

There is evidence of formalized agriculture/cultivation emerging by about 8,000 BCE, with evidence of cultivated plots, though which exact plant was cultivated remains unknown, at the Ille Cave of Palawan (>9,000 BCE) and the Kuk Swamp of New Guinea (8,200 to 7,910 BCE).

>1,000 CE (maybe as early as 300 CE?) – Polynesian voyagers bring taro to Hawai’i. Taro root when crushed and lightly fermented yields poi.

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28,000 BCE — Wild Einkorn Wheat (Triticum boeoticum*). Hunter-gatherers in the Fertile Crescent may have started harvesting einkorn around 21,000 BCE and as early as 28,000 BCE, according to archaeological evidence from Syria. Actual domestication occurred about 8,000 BCE in farming villages near Karaca Dağ in southeast Türkiye. About the same place and time as Emmer. Although this is considered “humans’ first wheat,” neither einkorn nor emmer would be an important part of the human diet at this point; that would happen about 20,000 years later, around 8,500 BCE.

[*Wild einkorn is a bit confusing taxonomically. The wild species/form is generally accepted as Triticum boeoticum. It also goes by the synonyms Triticum monococcum ssp. boeoticum (which some consider to be the proper designation of modern einkorn but that would be a flip from the accepted specific epithet) and sometimes noted simply as T. monococcum. It seems to be a natural hybrid (before humans got involved), made up of the single-grain T. monococcum ssp. aegilopoides (or T. aegilopoides) and the two-grain T. thaoudar (or T. boeoticum ssp. thaoudar). The various search engines will post a contradictory conglomerate of synonyms as their summary introduction before you find a list of links to academically-credible websites who, in turn, will offer up their own synonyms. Too many semi-academic websites, as well, give this wheat more than one botanical name within the same article; makes me wonder if they’re AI. It’s a mess.]

Wild Einkorn is closely related to T. urartu, the Wild Red Einkorn, one of the parents of emmer wheat and the eventual durum wheat and bread wheat; wild einkorn would make up but 1 percent of today’s modern wheats.]

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ca. 23,000 BCE (> 20,000 BCE) — Archaeologists have found evidence at Ohalo II, an important archaeological site at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee, that humans were grinding grains -- barley (Hordeum spontaneum) and maybe a wheat (Triticum spp.) — into flour. Grinding stones with traces of starch were found. These two plants were not “cultivated,” in the accepted sense. This was most probably a case of “proto-weeds” germinating from the trash thrown out the door after dinner, a major step toward actually cultivation (as horticulture, not yet agriculture).

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21,000 – 17,000 BCE — Inhabitants of Ohalo II were also making other wild cereal seeds (including brome grains [Bromus pseudobrachystachys] and millet grass grains [Piptatherum holciforme]) a major part of their diets. These, too, were simply horticultural (small-scale) “proto-weeds.” But, importantly, they, too, were processed.

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17,000 BCE -- Grains of Wild “Emmer” (wheat) (Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccoides) at Ohalo II. Emmer was collected from the wild and eaten by hunter-gatherers for thousands of years before its domestication. The origin of this wild emmer is often given as the Karaca Dağ* mountain region of southeastern Türkiye; that’s some 700 miles from Ohallo II.

The subsequent domesticated types are Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccum and T. t. conv. durum. Although called “wild,” it is, in fact, a hybrid, albeit a semi-natural one (some nature, some human manipulation). Moreover, it’s a bigeneric, triploid hybrid (a Triticum crossed with an Aegilops). It’s the primary ancestor of bread wheat and durum wheat.

The location of the earliest site of emmer domestication is still unclear and under debate. Although there are earlier sites with “possible indirect evidence” for emmer domestication, definitive evidence for the full domestication of emmer wheat is not found until 10,200 to 9,500 BCE at various sites: Abu Hureyra (Syria), Beidha (Jordan), Cafer Höyük (Euphrates Valley, Türkiye), Tell Aswad (near Damascus, Syria), Tell Ghoraifé (near Damascus, Syria), Tell Halula (near Aleppo, Syria), and Tell es-Sultan (Jericho, Palestine).

>7000 – 5000 BC — Emmer is cultivated on the Indian subcontinent.

[*Karaca Dağ, in southeastern Türkiye, is the most probable origin of several domesticated crops. The most important of these are wheat(s), lentils, and chickpeas. It’s also home to early farming civilizations and it just might be the original “Garden of Eden,” having inspired the “Garden of the gods (Sumerian paradise),” which, in turn, inspired the biblical story of the “Garden of Eden.”]

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16,300 – 15,000 BCE — Mortar and pestle, grinding stones, several harvesting implements have been found at Wadi Kubbaniya, on the Kom Ombos plateau, of Egypt and charred wheat and barley grains — which may have been introduced from outside the region.

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15,000 BCE± — According to early Greek storytellers: In a burst of goodwill, Demeter, goddess of crops, bestowed wheat seeds on a trusted priest, who then crisscrossed Earth in a dragon-drawn chariot, sowing the dual blessings of agriculture and civilization. And THAT is how it all started.

Triptolemus, the inventor and patron of agriculture, is credited with being the first to sow seed for cultivation after being taught by Demeter.

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12,600 BCE and 9,600 BCE — Bread (made from wild oats [probably Avena fatua], wild barley (H. vulgare ssp. spontaneum), club rush [Scirpus sp.]), and/or tuberous bulrush (Bolboschoenus glaucus) tubers; as evidenced from charred “toaster crumbs” found in sediment samples of an oven/fireplace at a site named Shubayqa 1 in the Black Desert of Jordan. The crumbs and structure were made by Natufian* hunter-gatherers (albeit semi-settled). It would seem Palaeolithic humans ate “processed” carbs.

These flat breads were most likely unleavened (without yeast) and may have been made as early as 15,000 BCE. Although it’s likely ancient peoples had already discovered the fermentation process caused by wild yeasts with grape juice earlier than this, taking the next step of using those yeasts to ferment breads (and beer) was yet to come.

The Natufian culture (15,000 – 11,500 BCE) may have been the ancestors of the builders of this region's first permanent settlements and these possibly the earliest in the world.

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THE BIRTH(S) OF AGRICULTURE

>15,000 – 7,000 BCE — “Cultivation” (true “agriculture”) may have been born first in the Near East, but some fairly recent evidence suggests that people on other continents began to domesticate the plants they lived with at almost the same time or even earlier:

• In southeastern Europe, along the Danube River and in Macedonia, Thrace, and Thessaly.

• In southeastern Asia, in what is now Thailand.

• In the Huang He (Yellow River) area of China.

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ca. 11,500 - 9,500 BCE — Banana (probably Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana). Evidence of exploitation/maintenance of early wild forms of bananas at the Beli-Lena site in Sri Lanka (Ceylon). Further such evidence:

• >9,500 BCE — Poyang Lake, China

• >8,700 BCE — Gua Chwawas in Malaysia

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11,000 BCE± — The popularly accepted “Birth of Agriculture:” In the “Fertile Crescent” (southwestern Asia in what are now Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Türkiye) and maybe Egypt through Sudan to Eritrea and Ethiopia.

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11,000 BCE — From Tell Abu Hureyra, an archaeological site east of Aleppo, Syria: among the plant remains are seeds of cultivated rye (Secale cereale; distinguished from grains of wild rye [Secale montanum or S. segetale] by their plumpness and much larger size).

The site is significant because the inhabitants of Abu Hureyra started out as hunter-gatherers, but gradually moved to farming, possibly making them the earliest known farmers in the world.

Domesticated rye also occurs in small quantities at a number of other Neolithic (ca. 9,000 BCE) sites in Asia Minor (Anatolia, now Türkiye).

Additional archeological evidence of this grain has been found in Roman settings along the Rhine and the Danube and in Ireland and Britain.

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11,000 BCE — Lentils (Vicia lens [formerly Lens culinaris/esculenta]) are the oldest pulse (legume) crop known, and among the earliest crops domesticated in the Old World, having been found as carbonized remains alongside human habitations in Greece. Derived from its wild subspecies V. lens ssp. orientalis; other species may also have contributed some genes. Indigenous to Western and Central Asia.

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10,000 – 7,000 BCE — Other “Centers of Agriculture:”

• In the Tehuacán Valley of Mexico, northwest of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and the Balsas River Valley in south-central Mexico.

• In coastal Ecuador and in mountainous Peru, in South America.

• In eastern North America.

• In the Indus River valley of India and Pakistan.

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10,000 – 8,000 BCE — Chili Habanero (Capsicum chinense). Also known as “aji.” Genetic studies show that this species originated in the Brazilian Amazon area of South America but spread through Central America into Central and East Mexico and thence to the Caribbean islands (or directly from SA to the Caribbean islands). Evidence found in cave dwellings in Central America, as well as the Yucatan Peninsula, Tamaulipas, and Tehucán in Mexico indicate that domestication might have taken place this far back. Natives have certainly been consuming peppers much longer. It was “the world’s hottest chile” (per Guiness Book of Records) until 1999.

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10,000 – 7,500 BCE — Archeological excavations in Thailand (Spirit Cave, Non Nok Tha) and northern Vietnam (Dongson, Hoabinh; both part of the “Hoabinhian culture”) indicate that cucurbits*, legumes*, and water chestnut (Eleocharis dulcis) possibly cultivated. Nut trees and black pepper vines (Piper nigrum) “tended.” Some evidence now suggests a possibility that rice was grown here long before it was grown anywhere else (maybe before China).

*Probably:

Cucurbits

• Asian cucamelon (Zehneria bodinieri) (the closely related Melothria scabra is the now fairly commonly grown cucamelon, Mexican miniature watermelon, or mouse melon).

• Spiny cucumber (Cucumis hystrix).

• Snake gourd (Trichosanthes cucumerina).

  Legumes

• Winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus).

• Mung bean, green gram (Vigna radiata).

• Long bean (Vigna unguiculata ssp. sesquipedalis).

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10,000 – 7,000 BCE — Settled communities in Japan. Although the Jomon people primarily relied on foraging, hunting, and fishing, they also “cultivated” (?) plants such as nuts, wild grains, and tubers. But no evidence of plant domestication is found here (yet?). It seems these early peoples (the Jomon) were only semi-permanent and the introduction of agriculture wouldn’t happen until the Yayoi period (900 BCE – 250 CE).

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10,000 – 3,600 BCE — Pea (Pisum sativum). The wild pea is restricted to the Mediterranean basin and the Near East, where it had been collected and selected since before 10,000 BCE. The earliest archaeological finds of peas date from ca. 5,000 BCE in what is currently Greece, Syria, Türkiye, and Jordan. In Egypt, early finds of cultivated peas date from ca. 4,800 – 4,400 BCE in the Nile delta area, and from ca. 3,800 – 3,600BCE in Upper Egypt.

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9,400 – 9,200 BCE — Figs (Ficus carica, but possibly Ficus sycomorus). Early Neolithic village Gilgal 1, the Jordan Valley, 8 miles north of Jericho. The first “orchard?”

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9,000 – 7,000 BCE — Barley (Hordeum vulgare ssp. spontaneum). At Jarmo, an archaeological site in the Kurdistan region of present-day Iraq. This barley is the first evidence of actual cultivation.

Evidence of Barley (Hordeum vulgare ssp. spontaneum), as well as Wheat (Triticum species and/or hybrid) cultivation is also found at Mehrgarh on the Kachi Plain of Kurdistan (now Baluchistan, Pakistan).

Another barley, one cultivated in Eritrea and Ethiopia, is two separate subspecies (multi-row barley [Hordeum vulgare ssp. vulgare] and two-row barley [Hordeum vulgare ssp. distichon]) indicating that a separate domestication (pre-3,000 BCE) may have occurred in eastern Africa.

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9,000 BCE — Avocado (Persea americana) plant fossils and avocado remains found at the El Gigante Rockshelter in the tropical highlands of western Honduras. Originally evolved as a food source for ancient megafauna such as giant sloths and mammoths that lived in the Americas during the last ice age; these animals ate the fruit and dispersed the seed. When these giant animals disappeared, humans filled the ecological niche by managing, cultivating, and spreading avocado trees through traditional forest management practices. Not only did they spread the species, they changed the species.

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8,750 – 8,000 BCE — Cucurbita moschata, one group of squash/gourd, grown by peoples of the Las Vegas culture in southwestern Ecuador. Seeds identified as derived from domesticated plants (considerably larger than those from wild taxa) — some 5,000 years earlier than some archaeologists thought. Did actual farming in South America begin there?

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8,300 – 6,700 BCE — Proso Millet (Panicum miliaceum). Cultivation in China was found at Cishan (north) in storage pits along with remains of pit-houses, pottery, and stone tools related to millet cultivation.

Several other millet species were developed independently in other parts of Asia as well as in India and Africa.

From 7,000 BCE there was Little Millet (Panicum sumatrense) found in Neolithic settlements in Madhya Pradesh, India and Kodo Millet (Paspalum scrobiculatum) from various archaeological sites including Hallur in Karnataka, India.

Between 5,000 and 3,000 BCE, millet cultivation in India branched out. Foxtail Millet (Setaria italica) was the chosen crop in South India and Barnyard Millet (Echinochloa frumentacea) was grown in the Himalayan foothills and east. Farmers selected Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana) for the environment of the interior of most of south India, the area known as the Deccan plateau.

During the time of the Indus Valley Civilization (also known as the Harappan civilization), in Northeast India into Pakistan, lasting from 3,300 BCE to 1,300 BCE, three other millets came to the subcontinent via introduction by trade. These were Proso Millet (Panicum miliaceum), Brown-top Millet (Urochloa ramosa), and Pearl Millet (Pennisetum glaucum).

From 6,000 BCE. Possibly in West Africa, there was Pearl Millet (Pennisetum glaucum).

Carbonized millet remains discovered in the Heungsu Cave Site in Cheongju, Korea dated to around 4,000 BCE. Coexisted with hunting and gathering tools.

Further evidence of Proso Millet and Foxtail Millet cultivation from 3,500 to 1,500 BCE on the Korean Peninsula dating to the Middle Jeulmun pottery period. Millet cultivation continued and was refined through the Mumun pottery period (ca. 1,500–300 BCE) in Korea.

By 1,600 BCE, Proso Millet (Panicum miliaceum) made its way from East Asia to Ukraine. Around 1,500 BCE, it would reach Italy and southeastern Europe. Millet made it to central Europe about 1,400 BCE and northern Germany around 1,200 BCE.

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8,200 – 5,000 BCE — Arrowroot (Maranta arundinacea) in the Americas. The oldest discovery (8,200 BCE) at the San Isidro archaeological site in the upper Cauca River valley of Colombia near the city of Popayán. Other “arrowroots” of historical significance:

• Tapioca, also called arrowroot (Manihot esculenta, West-Central Brazil)

• Polynesian arrowroot (Tacca leontopetaloides)

• East Asian arrowroot, aka kudzu (Pueraria montana var. lobata).

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>8,000 BCE – Hemp (Cannabis sativa). Excavations in regions that span modern-day China and Taiwan have unearthed remnants of cannabis fibers that were used in pottery and as part of the domestic tools. Analysis of phytoliths — microscopic silica structures from decaying cannabis plants — confirm early use but also suggest a sophisticated understanding of crop management and fiber extraction techniques by Neolithic people.

The Vedas, sacred Hindu texts written around 1,500 BCE, mention cannabis as one of five sacred plants. It was used in religious ceremonies aimed at alleviating anxiety and promoting transcendence. Not yet a “food.”

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8000 BCE – Sugarcane first domesticated in New Guinea by its indigenous inhabitants, who would slowly spread their knowledge across Southeast Asia, southern China, and India.

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8,000 – 7,000 BCE — Agriculture is believed to have become widespread in southwest Asia by this time. Agricultural “technology” from this area migrated to Japan and Australia.

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8,000 (10,000?) – 6,700 BCE — Maize (Zea mays ssp. parviglumis [and several other notho-subspecies]). Genetics centered in South-Central Mexico. Various cultigens (“proto-corn”) of this subspecies went in different directions. So much more to come on this plant; here’s a teaser:

6,700 BCE — The lowlands of the Balsas River valley, Mexico, stone milling tools with maize residue found in a layer of deposits. Surprisingly, this residue included genes from a corn/maize type that had been domesticated 1,500 years earlier in the SW Amazon Basin!

Much more to come about corn.

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8,000 BCE — Domestication and widespread cultivation of Einkorn wheat (Triticum monococcum or T. monococcum ssp. monococcum).

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8,000 BCE — Domestication/cultivation of Emmer wheat (the “wild” emmer, Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccoides, becomes the domesticated emmers Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccum and T. t. conv. durum). The evolution of emmer is part natural hybridization and part human domestication forces. And it’s quite complex and confusing and still unsettled (I say that after just reading a dozen papers on the evolution of the genetics of this wee beastie).

The intergeneric hybridization between Triticum urartu (“einkorn”) and/or T. turgidum and Aegilops tauschii (itself a bigeneric hybrid) and/or A. speltoides was a significant event in the evolution of wheat. This hybridization eventually led to the formation of the hexaploid bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) genome, which is a result of the combination of the tetraploid Triticum turgidum/urartu and the diploid Aegilops speltoides/tauschii. Such intergeneric crossing with subsequent spontaneous chromosome doubling is a rare natural occurrence. It has been crucial in the development of wheat as a major cereal crop, providing the genetic diversity necessary for improving wheat varieties to withstand various environmental stresses.

Called “farro” in Italian, emmer is the most common of the grains called “farro,” which is generally a word used for the hulled version of all the ancient wheats.

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8,000? BCE — Apple, (Malus domestica; from Malus sieversii X Malus sylvestris). M. sieversii is originally native to somewhere in the Tien Shan mountains of Central Asia (most likely Kazakhstan). M. sylvestris, the European crabapple, is found scattered throughout Europe/UK. Plus, later, hybridized with two or three other species.

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8,000 (maybe) – 5,000 BCE — Potato (Solanum brevicaule “complex;” “complex” being a group of 20 species that are so closely related, they may be the same thing). Located in the region of modern-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia, around Lake Titicaca. This is the single ancestor of all domesticated potatoes, which are now complex hybrids considered, as a whole, Solanum tuberosum. This may be the region’s first domesticated root vegetable. There is some indirect evidence of potato domestication going back this far but because potato tubers do not preserve well in the archaeological record, identification has been difficult. The earliest potato tuber remains that have been archaeologically verified were found at the coastal site of Ancón in central Peru, dating to 2,500 BCE.

There is some evidence of potato domestication in the Peruvian archaeological record as a design influence of ceramic pottery/vessels; this pottery has been dated as far back as 3,400 BCE. Actual potatoes dating to about 2,000 BCE were found at Huaynuma, in the Casma Valley of Peru, and early potatoes dating to 800 – 500 BCE were uncovered at the Altiplano site of Chiripa on the east side of Lake Titicaca (Peru).

Did today’s potatoes evolve from a tomato? Not really. Just as humans didn’t evolve from apes, potatoes are not in the same evolutionary line as what we know today as tomatoes. Humans diverged from apes 6 to 8 million years ago. Their common ancestor is, so far, unknown but the fossil record, though incomplete, gives us a good clue as to the ape/human common denominator: Sahelanthropus tchadensis from ca. 7 million years ago. This species was neither human nor modern ape as we now recognize them, but its successors did finally branch, with one branch leading to apes and one to humans (and probably multitudes of deadends).

As for the potato, its ancient ancestor (Solanum etuberosum; “etuberosum” meaning no tubers!) met up some 8 or 9 (or maybe 14) million years ago with an equally ancient tuber-forming ancestor to our modern-day tomatoes and, hocus-pocus, hanky-panky, there were potato plants that grew, well, potatoes. But the ancient ancestor to the potato was not really a potato nor was the tomato ancestor really a tomato. That ancestral “tomato” may have been Solanum who-knows-what (or probably not a species of Solanum at all). The modern domesticated tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) appeared no earlier than 7,000 years ago (probably much less) when Indigenous Peoples of South America began to domesticate the small, wild currant tomato (Solanum pimpinellifolium), leading to the larger, edible fruit we now know. That cherry-sized ancestor itself had evolved only around 80,000 years ago; not 8 or 9 million years ago.

The two ancestors simply shared genes, one gene (from the “tomato” side) that triggers tuber formation and one gene that controls the growth of underground stems that can develop into tubers (from the “potato” side). Both genes needed to be present for potatoes to potato.

The eye-opening idea that potatoes evolved from a meetup with a tomato came from a paper published in the academic magazine Cell in September 18, 2025: “Ancient hybridization underlies tuberization and radiation of the potato lineage” by lead authors Zhiyang Zhang, Yiyuan Ding, plus twenty others. It was based on a multifaceted and vast genetic study. The paper would use the word “Petota” to indicate the modern potato lineage; “Petota” is the taxonomic Section under the genus Solanum that includes modern potatoes and its multitude of relatives (not all are “potatoes”). The authors would also use the term “Etuberosum” for the lineage of Solanum etuberosum (the spudless potato) and its few related species.

But when it came to the tomato lineage, the authors did not use “Lycopersicon,” the Section of Solanum which currently contains a dozen or so species, most of which are not “tomatoes,” nor any term based on the specific epithet of any proposed, potential ancient species. Instead, they go with “(hereafter referred to as Etuberosum and Tomato, respectively).” The familiar word “tomato,” used throughout the paper, is what caught the media’s attention.

You can find that study here: Ancient hybridization underlies tuberization and radiation of the potato lineage - ScienceDirect.

There is recently discovered evidence from the American Southwest of bits of starch from the “Four Corners potato,” Solanum jamesii, trapped deep inside ancient grinding stones and other tools from nine sites — starting as early as 8,950 BCE. This potato was likely cultivated to some degree and possibly even improved.

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8,000 BCE – 1500s CE — Cassava (Manihot esculenta, developed from ssp. flabellifolia). Centered in west-central Brazil. Other, later finds and relocation:

• 4,600 BCE — Gulf of Mexico lowlands, at the San Andrés archaeological site.

• 600 CE — Oldest direct evidence of cassava cultivation comes from a Maya site, Joya de Cerén in El Salvador.

• 1500s CE — introduced to Africa and Asia by the Portuguese.

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8,500 – 7,000 BCE — Various edible species found in the Guitarrero Cave, Callejón de Huaylas valley, Yungay Province, Ancash region of Peru — oldest dated first:

• 8,500 BCE — Aji pepper (Capsicum baccatum).

• 8,500 – 7,500 BCE — Oca (Oxalis tuberosa).

• 8,000 – 7,500 BCE — Pallar bean (Phaseolus lunatus).

• 7,000 BCE — Zapallo (Cucurbita spp., probably moschata).

• See also 10,000 – 8,000 BCE — Chili Habanero (Capsicum chinense).

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8,000 BCE — The small-seeded, or “Sieva,” type of Phaseolus lunatus domesticated in the Mexican lowlands. “Butter beans.”

2,000 BCE — The large-seeded type of pallar bean domesticated in the Andes. “Lima beans.”

>1 CE — Large-seeded pallar beans would be cultivated heavily by the Moche culture in northern Peru.

>1300 CE — Cultivation of small-seeded type had spread north of the Rio Grande.

1500s CE — Cultivation of large-seeded type now widespread in the Old World.

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8,000 – 2,000 BCE — Common Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris). While the exact date of domestication for these beans has not yet been determined, wild landraces (pre-domestication) have been discovered in archaeological sites dated to 8,000 BCE in Argentina and 5,000 BCE in Mexico. Evidence of domestication was found in the Guitarrero Cave (Peru); a genetic analysis of these Peruvian beans found show that it probably originated, at least in part, earlier in Mesoamerica (Mexico).

These three parallel, and probably intermingling, events led to a great diversity of the genetics in Phaseolus vulgaris. Recognized landraces from Mesoamerica include pinto, great northern, small red, and pink beans. Black, navy, and small white beans are from lowland tropical Central American landraces.

Andean landraces led to the commercial forms of dark and light red kidney, white kidney, and cranberry (borlotti) beans.

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ca. 8,220 - 7,910 BCE — Banana. Naturally(?) occurring parthenocarpic (seedless) individuals of Musa acuminata ssp. banksii (Musa banksii) were cultivated by Papuans in New Guinea before the arrival of Austronesian-speakers. Phytoliths (salicaceous mineral secretions from plants) of bananas have been recovered from the Kuk Swamp archaeological site in Papua New Guinea. This is the earliest unequivocal evidence for intentional planting/cultivation of banana.

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8,000 – 4,500 BCE — Hybrid Bananas (Musa acuminata X Musa balbisiana = Musa x paradisiaca). Evidence at Kuk Swam. New Guinea is a biodiversity hotspot for the genus Musa and it is likely that other species were later and independently domesticated in that area and elsewhere in nearby Southeast Asia. Almost all cultivated bananas and plantains are polyploid cultivars either of this hybrid or of M. acuminata alone.

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8,000 – 4,000 BCE — Sugar(cane) (Saccharum spp.). First domesticated in New Guinea and the islands east of the Wallace Line by Papuans, where it is the modern center of diversity. Saccharum officinarum was developed/created/selected by Papuans from the native S. robustum and, beginning around 4,000 BCE, it was probably crossed with S. edule.

Today’s commercial cultivars are complex hybrids involving additional sugarcane species, such as S. barberi and S. sinense.

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8,000 BCE — Traces of popped corn (Zea mays var. everta) found in tombs in Peru. Preview of further domestication (with much more to come):

3,600 BCE — The oldest ears of popcorn ever found were discovered in the Bat Cave of west central New Mexico in 1948 and 1950. Yes, THE Bat Cave.

1,000 CE — In southwestern Utah, a popped kernel of popcorn was found in a dry cave inhabited by Ancestral Pueblo Indians.

1500s CE — Popped corn was available to the conquistadors when they first came to Mexico.

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8,000 – 7,000 BCE — Avocado (Persea americana) domesticated pit (seed) from the Coxcatlan Cave archaeological site in the Tehuacán Valley in the state of Puebla, Mexico. Other caves in the Tehuacán Valley from around the same time period also show early evidence for the presence of domesticated avocado.

Later avocado finds from 8,000 – 1,200 BCE indicate a long history of avocado development and expansion, including:

• 2,500 – 1,800 BCE — at Caballo Muertoin Peru.

• 1,200 BCE — Norte Chico civilization sites in Peru.

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And there’s still 10,000 years of this to go. Part 2 (of 7) will cover “Through 3,000 BCE.”

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© Copyright Joe Seals, 2026

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As a California baby, I grew up with citrus. Literally; my grandparent’s garden, where I spent much of my time for many years, had a few trees in the ground. It was much later that I discovered the joy and ease of growing citrus in containers, even outside of California.

California certainly has the best climate for growing citrus, producing over 70 percent of the commercial U.S. crop, and hosts landscapes and gardens where citrus are regular features. Florida comes in second in production and gardeners there also enjoy the fruits of the labor involved in growing these shrubs and trees. In the southern parts of Texas and much of Arizona, combining for third place with just under 5 percent of the U.S. crop, citrus is fairly common in yards and landscapes. In Phoenix and a few other Arizona cities, citrus — specifically Seville orange (Citrus × aurantium; also called bitter orange, sour orange, and even marmalade orange) — are used as street trees.

A slight aside: During my first trip to Phoenix (1977?), while scouting for “garden stories” for a well-known magazine, the hosts treated me to a soda with a slice of Seville orange. The orange was used to cut the sweetness of the soda. And it did, fortunately — it was one of those soda brands that make the headlines in health reports, with 10 teaspoons of sugar per 12-ounce can. The sour orange didn’t make the sugar go away, but it did make the soda drinkable.

Even if you don’t have such idyllic climate conditions or if you have limited space (e.g., an apartment balcony), you can grow citrus. Just not outside in the ground. With a few exceptions (some oddball citrus types), citrus can survive only where temperatures never drop below 20°F and most are terribly unhappy even when temps drop below 40°F. The alternative is to grow citrus as semi-dwarf trees (on trifoliate orange or citrange rootstock) or as dwarf trees (on ‘Flying Dragon’ rootstock) planted in large pots on wheeled platforms. The semi-dwarf trees, which are more commonly available, require somewhat larger pots, of course, and a bit more care.

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THE CONTAINER

Plant new, small trees in a minimum of 12- to 14-inch wide containers. Starting with anything larger will make it more difficult to manage water levels and will waste water. Make sure the container has adequate drainage holes. The 12- to 14-inch container will hold your citrus for at least a year and probably two years. As the tree grows, increase the container size to 16 to 20 inches for the next 2 or 3 years of growth. Although ceramic, clay, and wooden containers are attractive, they are less mobile and more expensive than durable plastic; a consideration should either of those two factors be relevant.

There should be adequate drainage holes. Smaller containers are fine with one large hole (½-inch to 1-inch). Place a square of fine-mesh screening over the hole before you fill it; it will help keep out the larger insects, pillbugs, sowbugs, and slugs, who like to take shelter in the wet cavities. A large container should have 2 or 3 holes and up to 4 or 5 holes, with each hole ½ to 1 inch in diameter. I wouldn’t try to drill a hole or extra holes in a clay pot and drilling holes in a ceramic pot is a whole lot tricky. But if you have a plastic or wood container, and it needs a hole or extra holes, have at it. As the plant grows, increase the container size to 16 or 24 inches in diameter. That’s usually “the next size up,” but vigorously-growing citrus can safely go up two sizes.

You will need a saucer (preferably a deep one), of course, or, if and when outside, pot feet. Pot feet are shaped to fit under the bottom edge of the pot to hold the pot ½ to 1 inch above the floor. They provide air circulation below, minimize entry by tiny critters, and prevent staining of patios and decks.

Place gravel or decorative pebbles in the saucer to elevate pots above standing drainage water. The gravel/pebble layer can be kept nearly full with water to help raise humidity levels during winter when the plant is grown indoors.

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POTTING SOIL

Use a commercial OUTDOOR potting soil, which is heavier than indoor potting soil. Avoid potting mixes with fertilizers, peat, and wetting agents. I often add 1 part “calcined clay” to 4 or 5 parts potting soil to increase water-holding and nutrient-holding capacity. Calcined clay is the same as old-fashioned, unadulterated kitty litter or garage floor oil absorbing compound sold in hardware stores. It’s also available through specialty plant growers, especially bonsai specialists.

Do NOT use garden soil.

Do not put gravel or any other material (e.g., Styrofoam, plastic bottles, sticks and stones) at the bottom of the pot. It will negatively impact drainage in the long run. Fill the container from bottom to top with just potting soil.

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LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Because citrus are grown in greenhouses before retail sales, it almost always shocks the tree if it’s put into direct sunlight — whether indoors or outdoors — for too long the first week of planting or potting. The ideal location for the first week outside, with the plant still in its original container, is a spot by the house that has either indirect or dappled sunlight during the day or a spot by the house that gets no more than 2 or 3 hours of morning sun. After the first week, it can be moved to its final location, which ideally gets a minimum of 8 hours of full sun daily (almost sun-up to sundown), and then planted (in the ground or in the pot). You can expect new trees to drop some of their leaves during this transition period.

In marginally warm climates, select a site that gets reflected heat from sidewalks, houses, or walls on other structures. Also make sure the site is fairly wind free. In extremely warm zones, you will have to provide more consistent watering (citrus can handle temperatures over 100°F).

Potting up and placing a new plant indoors is even more unkind to the plant. Find a window with morning to midday sun; no more. Move it to a brighter spot in a week or two. Starting a plant in winter is especially difficult when it comes to adjustment. There will be leaf and flower drop. After a couple of weeks, you should be able to tell whether or not it is thriving or at least “settling in.”

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BASIC CARE

Citrus trees like moist soil overall with intermittent periods of dryness to help them stay at warmer temperatures. Water when the soil surface dries to about 1 to 2 inches down, depending on size of the container; deeper in really large containers. Actual watering frequency will vary with soil type, tree size, pot size, environmental factors, and phase of growth.

Always check the moisture level in the soil before watering. Use your finger to find where that moisture level is. Don’t let the pot go so dry that leaves wilt. Wilting indicates the root hairs have been lost and although the tree may perk up within 24 hours after a good watering, new root hairs must grow and that takes considerable energy on the plant’s part. On the other hand, a tree with yellowish or cupped leaves, or leaves that don’t look perky after watering can indicate too frequent watering that’s led to lost root hairs or even rotted roots.

When you do water, apply enough water so that excess runs out the bottom of the container (and, if indoors, into that saucer with gravel or decorative pebbles).

For outdoor containers, it’s best to water in the morning. But if plants are dry or, worse, wilted, water them right away, no matter the time.

Citrus should be out on the sunny patio or balcony all summer long (from late spring into earliest fall) in full, hot sun (sun-up to sundown). The less sun, the more the plant will develop a lankiness, the more it will struggle with excessive water, the less it will attract pollinators, and the more it will attract the very tiny insects that thrive where air circulation is poor: thrips, mites, whitefly, mealybug, and scale. If you plan on bringing such citrus into the house for winter, these pests, if you already have them, will then quickly go ballistic.

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AS INDOOR PLANTS

Citrus aren’t the easiest of indoor plants. But they are doable with a focus on these key care components:

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This is the final article on the plants that fed the Indigenous peoples of North America before the Europeans. In most cases, they still feed the Indigenous peoples. One, corn in all its new variations, feeds just about all of us today.

I’ve certainly indulged myself with this series of four articles in a trio of fields that I dabble in: ethnobotany, food history, and plant breeding. Along the way, I’ve tried to keep the focus on plants that one can (should?) grow in their home gardens, the home horticulture of it. As I said last week, “it’s good to know where your food [ultimately] comes from.” With the home garden in mind, these four articles are my way of saying that there are literally hundreds of plants, all of which are native to some part of the U.S., that can make up a grand “food forest,” the basis of a vegetable garden, or even an entire landscape (many of them are quite beautiful as landscape plants). Beyond that, they are heirlooms and part of our food history in America.

When I started this series — four now and three more to go — I had thought about the many maps I had seen, the ones that show where in the world our plant foods originate. And I remember how minimal they were when it came to the U.S.. I’ve just revisited what I thought was a really thorough one. But it shows only seven fruits and vegetables from the U.S. and six from Mexico (oddly, it includes cotton[seed oil] from Mexico). To be fair, it does show a whole bunch of edibles from Asia.

Again, a big thank you to Gretchen (at Backyard Farming) for the kick in the pants to get this started and done.

And so, the rest of the alphabet…

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Viburnum

Viburnum edule (MOOSEBERRY, SQUASHBERRY) — Distributed across Canada, all

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[Up front (Again!): So I started writing this Part 3 (that was supposed to be Part 2) and I just kept writing. I kept thinking “At what point do I cut this off so that it doesn’t become a TL:DR article? Or at what point do I cut material at the risk of being too incomplete? Will it make for two worth-reading articles?” The last option won. I had a rough draft for wild rice and maize/corn (Zea and Zizania, the end of the alphabet) already worked out. Then I added a few bits of the “Part 2-now-Parts 2-and-this-one,-3” to the upcoming Part 4. Altogether this rice-corn-plus-bits of Part 3-etc. made a long article unto itself. The supplemental notes on “The Eastern Agricultural Complex,” “Cahokia,” “The Three Sisters,” and “Traditional Knowledge” will be a supplement. Are you still with me? Oh, and then there’s still the Central and South American stuff, which looks like, at this point, will become Parts 5 and 6! To be honest, I may put these last two parts on the back burner for a while; I suspect my audience may want to see articles on other gardening subjects for a while and these big ones take a great deal of my time. So, without further apologies…]

The Indigenous peoples of North America had been in place 20,000 years or so. They had found just about every plant that was edible and even found things that weren’t initially edible but discovered ways to make them edible. My listings — this article, the two before it, and two more to go — cover the key plant foods but not all the plant foods from Mexico into Canada. Nor do my articles cover other edible “plant” matter such as fungi, kelp/seaweed, ferns, lichens, cycads, pines, junipers, cattails, miscellaneous grasses, palms, and hundreds of other plants that were barely survival food and never became part of “native field management” or “forest farming” status and certainly didn’t become an “agricultural crop.” I’ve especially avoided plants that pose a poisoning risk and plants that are endangered or “of concern.”

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On to the plants…

Rubus many species (BLACKBERRIES, RASPBERRIES, AND THE LIKE)

Rubus allegheniensis (ALLEGHENY BLACKBERRY) — Eastern and central North America. Several Indigenous peoples ate the ripe berries fresh, ground with wild game meat to make pemmican cakes, or dried and stored for later consumption. The young, thornless leaves were used in “salads.” Thornier leaves were boiled before use to remove the thorns. The notable harvesters were the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee*, Cherokee, Ojibwe (Nakawē[-k], Chippewa), Menominee, and Meskwaki. The Haudenosaunee made a juice mixed with water and maple sugar. Seeds of possibly this Rubus species have been found at a 2,000-year-old archaeological dig in Cherokee, North Carolina.

Rubus argutus (SAWTOOTH BLACKBERRY, TALL BLACKBERRY) — Throughout most of the eastern part of the U.S.. Many Native American groups ate this blackberry’s fruits but the Cherokee took it another step and boiled the leaves and roots of R. argutus to create a treatment for hemorrhoids or piles (ostensibly because they ate too much fat and not enough berries).

Rubus chamaemorus (CLOUDBERRY) — Across Canada to Alaska and touching the very tippy-tops of a handful of continental states. The “Alaska Natives” (composed of eight groups who inhabit the southern-central coast of Alaska) had several ways to enjoy cloudberries. The Alutiiq (Sugpiaq, Pacific Eskimo) stored these berries in containers of seal oil for the winter. The related Yup'ik would mix them with whipped fat to make a dessert called akutaq (“Eskimo ice cream”). Iñupiat (Alaskan Inuit) mixed the berries with seal oil or sweetened milk; they also preserved them in seal pokes (a watertight container made from an entire seal skin) or barrels for winter consumption.

The Koyukon, those along the Koyukuk and Yukon Rivers in central Alaska, ate the berries fresh. In Labrador and Quebec, the Innu ate these berries fresh or dried, sometimes with meat or fish. The Inuit of Canada ate these berries (arpiqutik, in their language) fresh or stored them in the snow. Also in Canada, the Cree, the Naskapi (who called them sikutaw), and the Métis were fond of cloudberries.

Rubus leucodermis (WHITEBARK RASPBERRY, BLACKCAP RASPBERRY) — Western North America, Alaska to Mexico. Eaten fresh, dried into cakes, made into preserves, and/or soaked to make a beverage by many tribes: Bella Coola, Cahuilla, Coast Salish, Coeur d'Alene, Comox (who also ate the young shoots in the spring), Kashaya Pomo, Klamath, Nlakaʼpamux (also known as the Thompson), Okanagon, Puyallup, and Yurok (who called them “chkohpeen”).

Rubus nivalis (SNOW RASPBERRY) — Western North America, from British Columbia to very northern California. The Hoh and Quileute peoples of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state ate the berries fresh, stewed, or preserved for later use.

Rubus occidentalis (BLACK RASPBERRY, BLACK CAP RASPBERRY) — Eastern North America. Archaeological evidence suggests that these berries (or similar?) were gathered for food and medicine in the North America as far back as 8,000 BCE. The berries were and are eaten fresh, dried, or preserved by such tribes as the Anishinaabe (including the Algonquin Mississaugas, Nipissing, Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi peoples), Cherokee, Dakota, Omaha, and Pawnee.

Rubus parviflorus (THIMBLEBERRY) — Western North America from Alaska to Mexico. In the Pacific Northwest, thimbleberry was eaten by the Cowlitz, Hesquiat, Hoh, Klallam, Kwakwaka'wakw, Makah, Nlakaʼpamux (also known as the Thompson), Nuu-chah-nulth, and Salish. They ate the berries raw, dried them (albeit not easily), made them into jams and preserves, and utilized the young shoots as a spring vegetable. The large, broad leaves were also used for tea, steaming, and flavoring. The Kwakwaka’wakw used the large leaves to line steaming pits. The Nlakaʼpamux used the roots to make a sweetener.

Rubus spectabilis (SALMONBERRY) — West coast of North America from west-central Alaska to California. In addition to eating the berries, Indigenous peoples harvested the shoots early in the year, before they turned woody or tough, and then peeled, steamed, boiled, or pit-cooked them. The berries and cooked sprouts were eaten with salmon or mixed with rendered fat of the eulachon fish with or salmon roe. The Nuu-chah-nulth people of the Pacific Northwest boiled the leaves to flavor fish. The Kaigani Haida people (on some of the westernmost islands of British Columbia) used the leaves to cover cooking pits.

Salmonberry had as many names as there were different peoples: the Lower Chinook call it yunts; to the Cowlitz, it was e'twanac and the berry e'twan; to the Makah the plant was ka'k'we'abupt and the berry ka'k'we; to the Saanich, it is elile; the Squamish call the plant yetwánáy, the berries yetwán, and the shoots are stsá7tskaý (no, that’s not a misspelling).

The Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest had their own phenology, of course. In this case, they watched for the salmonberry bug (Elasmostethus cruciatus), who appear just as the salmonberry shoots were ready to harvest. It was the song of the Swainson's thrush that told them when the berries were ready to pick. This phenology helped almost all of the PNW peoples, including the ones just mentioned as well as the X̱aayda (Haida), Haisla, Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuu-Chah-Nulth, Ditidaht Oweekeno, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Straits Salish, and the Tlingit. I had a huge salmonberry colony in my yard in Washington; I never got any ripe berries because the Swainson’s thrush (and who knows what all else) got them well before me.

Rubus strigosus (formerly R. idaeus ssp. strigosus) (AMERICAN RED RASPBERRY) — Widespread throughout North America. Numerous tribes in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes region used these raspberries and parts of the plants for food. They were eaten fresh and they were dried and pressed into cakes to be stored for the winter, to be broken apart and added to meals later. Some mashed fresh berries to drink the juice and then dry what was left of the pulp or mix the pulp into pemmican. Fresh berries were put into soups. The leaves were dried and made into a tea. The tender new shoots were peeled and eaten raw or cooked. The Bella Coola cooked the berries to make jam and the Haudenosaunee* drank the berries that they mixed with water and maple sugar.

Rubus ursinus (CALIFORNIA DEWBERRY, PACIFIC BLACKBERRY, PACIFIC DEWBERRY, TRAILING BLACKBERRY) — Native to western North America, from British Columbia to Baja. It was eaten fresh, dried, and in pemmican by the Kumeyaay, Maidu, Pomo Salish, and certainly many other Indigenous peoples within its range. The Konkow call this plant “gol-lē'.”

This bristly, ground-flopping, ankle-grabbing plant would be used in the breeding of the ‘Logan’ blackberry (loganberry), the ‘Boysen’ blackberry (boysenberry), and the 'Marion' blackberry (marionberry). It adds the special flavor to these popular modern berries.

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Rudbeckia laciniata (SOCHAN, CUTLEAF CONEFLOWER) — widespread in wet sites

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[Up front: I estimated poorly. Very poorly. I last said this series (which I intended as two parts) would be three or four parts. Now, it’s going to be five. Turns out, there was a whole lot of important words to be said for beans and corn and even acorns. Then there’s the South American category, still to come, that includes some of my favorite edibles, especially that delicious tropical stuff and those “Lost Crops of the Andes…” I also figured this was going to be a long read for you at even this shortened length as much as it was a long write for me.]

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As with the first part of this series, in this second part I will cover the plants of North America that were eaten by the Indigenous peoples. I am providing their geographic range (at least in general) to give an indication of what gardening climate zone they would prefer, should anyone wish to grow these. I offer their histories, more importantly, their stories before Europeans came to the Western Hemisphere (although I do, every now and then, include notes on modern changes). I am specific about the peoples who ate or used such foods, where I found information, and I also provide some cultural references about these peoples (e.g., “THE GOSSIP STONE” and “THE OAK CULTURE OF CALIFORNIA”). As I usually do, these plants are listed in alphabetical order by their botanical names.

I very much like the idea of knowing where your food comes from. And that goes, in this instance, far beyond your local farmer.

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Phaseolus acutifolius (TEPARY BEAN) — This native of a bit of our southwestern states as well as Mexico (Jalisco and Sinaloa) has been grown by Indigenous peoples since before 500 BCE; cultivated beans have been found dating back to that time, in the Tehuacán Valley in Mexico. Wild forms are still found in the Sonoran Desert. They were probably domesticated in a single event in northern Mexico. In addition to being grown by itself in floodplains, it was often grown alongside squash and corn (yep, “the three sisters”). The Tohono O'odham (central area of southern Arizona and just into Mexico) the Hia C-eḍ O'odham (or “Sand Papago” or “Sand Dune People”) -- of the lands around the Gila River, the Colorado River, and the Gulf of California – although primarily hunter-gatherers, cultivated tepary beans and other crops when rains made it possible for them to do so.

The name “tepary” could be from the Tohono O'odham phrase “tʼpawi” (“it's a bean”). It might also derive from “tépar,” the accusative case being “tépari,” a word meaning “small bean” from the now extinct Eudeve (Uto-Aztecan) language of northern Mexico. Other names for this native bean include escomite, pawi (or pavi), yori mui (or yorimuni or yori muni).

[Side Note: this bean was the inspiration for a restaurant that I created at a resort in a desert community of California: the “Tepary Southwest Grill.” It featured dishes inspired by the foods of American Indigenous peoples, including a “Three Sisters Chili” of corn, squash, and tepary beans. The resort and the restaurant are gone now.]

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[Part 1 of three (maybe 4?) parts.]

I started writing about the gardens of the Spanish Missions. Growing up in Southern California, I was familiar with the Mission (horti)culture. The Spanish certainly brought a lot of fruits and vegetables to what would become the United States via the West Coast and the Southwest. Plus Mexico.

Even before they came to the Western Hemisphere, Spain had their own wonderfully mixed culture of foods, starting with their own pre-“Spain” indigenous finds: various nuts, acorns, and wild plants. The Phoenicians and Greeks then brought olives and grapes to what is now Spain. The Romans established the cultivation of wheat there, introduced pistachios, and brought more olives and more grapes. During 800-years of the Medieval period, the Moors introduced rice, oranges and various other citrus fruits, nuts (particularly almonds), and spices such as saffron, cumin, and ginger, as well as sugarcane. Through the many years of the “Colombian Exchange” (from the late 15^th century onwards), they would bring back tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, chocolate, and corn. They would take these back to Spain — eventually — but on the route back, they also happened to stop along the way, dropping off some seeds or plants to their other “colonies.”

Again, I started writing about the Spanish Missions and their gardens and their food introductions. I started. And I stopped. I was reminded (yeah, I already knew), with too many truths, that the Spanish colonization of the West was not a good thing for the American Indigenous Peoples. Pretty much everyone now knows that and I won’t somehow glamorize-romanticize it with tales of horticulture.

Instead, I will talk about the plant foods given to the rest of the world by all the peoples, the civilizations, of what is now “North America” and “South America.” The people who “gave” the tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, chocolate, and corn to the Spanish (and Portuguese) interlopers. In this article, Part 1, and in Part 2, I will cover the edible plants of what is now North America including northern Mexico. In Parts 3 and 4, I will tackle the plant foods of South America including Central America.

I originally intended this to be just one article on North America’s indigenous plant foods. But it got away from me. Or maybe I enjoyed it too much. Also, what was intended as part 2 (South America) became Part 3 and will now be Parts 3 and 4.

I am listing these plants in alphabetical order by botanical name. Others have done their classifying by agricultural categories, for example “grains,” “roots,” “solanums,” “greens,” and such. But there was too much overlap (some vegetables are eaten both as grain and leaf) and when it came to fruits (not tomatoes and tomatillos, of course), there is no good common-simple system of classification.

I suppose many of these plants, some obvious, would make articles exclusively to themselves. Maybe? Certainly corn, potatoes, sunflowers, avocados, …

I am making no suggestion to forage for these plants in their wild habitats.

NORTH AMERICA INCLUDING MEXICO

Acer saccharum (SUGAR MAPLE) — The primary species for maple syrup.

Acer nigrum (BLACK MAPLE) — Another maple syrup.

Acer rubrum (RED MAPLE) — A third maple syrup.

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I get it. It’s been a long summer of “enjoying” the garden and you’re exhausted. Or you live in the far north and it’s too much work to get a garden going beyond September. Or, for whatever other reason, you’d rather just let the garden sit, covered in a mounding mulch of dead tomato plants (or sheets of cardboard?!). Yes, there are plenty of good reasons to not encourage your vegetable garden to go further into fall or, heaven forbid, into winter. [An acknowledgement, of course, to gardeners in the deep south, the Southwest, most of California, and the west side of the PNW — gardening in the fall and winter there is just a thing you do because summer is for vacation.]

For the rest of us, fall and winter are prime seasons for keeping the edibles action going and, in many cases, a time to cover or otherwise protect veggies from the cold, hail, sleet, heavy rain, snow, and other weather sh*t that can be expected to beat up a garden, sometimes catastrophically.

Last week, I wrote about some basics — planning, timing, microclimates, succession sowing, filling in the gaps — along with various other principles, techniques, and tips of how to keep the planting, growing, and harvesting going. For many of us, all of that is a good start and a way of getting the garden going for at least a productive short time. But for almost all of us, there comes a time to protect the garden goodies from the serious bits of weather. Hence this part about season-extending structures.

There are several of these structures that can protect plants from cold weather and extend their growing season beyond that cold. Certain structures and materials allow gardeners to continue growing vegetables well past (or before) the frost/freeze dates. Maybe up to 6 weeks more. Examples of season extenders include:

• Cloches: A small cover, of mesh, solid cloth, or transparent material, to cover individual plants or just a few plants.

• Cold frames: Enclosed structures with a transparent top that trap solar energy and create a warmer microclimate.

• Hot beds: Take a cold frame and add bottom heat, either “naturally” (in the old days, it was a bottom layer of fresh manure) or with an electric bottom heat system.

• Row covers: Lightweight fabric that allows light and water to pass through, protecting plants from wind and lightest frosts.

• Low tunnels: A temporary, hoop-supported structure, often covered with spun-bond fabric or polyethylene film, usually in the 2- to 4-foot high range.

• Hoop houses: A fairly simple, unheated covered structure made with flexible hoops of pipe, usually PVC but can be steel ($$) and covered with a polyethylene plastic; built at a height to walk through. Essentially a greenhouse with no heating equipment. Sometimes called a “high tunnel.”

• Greenhouses: A permanent building (or at least until it falls down) with a rigid framing, covered in glass or, just as commonly, polyethylene (PE) and/or polycarbonate. It’s heated by passive solar heating, at the least, or, better, an active heating system, and, in an old-technology way, composting.

They all work in similar ways by maintaining a higher temperature during the day and protecting plants from wind and moderately low to very low temperatures at night. Your choice will depend on quantity of plants, size/height of plants, expected winter temperatures, other environmental stresses, and the amount of money in your bank account.

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Going into fall, with the warmth of summer beginning to wane and fall’s cooler weather approaching, it’s time to think about ways to get more and longer yields of what you’ve planted (or plan to plant). There are, thankfully, many ways to extend the growing season for selected garden edibles.

Considering that most gardeners stop gardening at the end of summer, the simple act of planting, again, in late-summer or early fall can be deemed “extending the season.”

A fall (and winter) vegetable garden offers several advantages over the summer garden. There are fewer pests and diseases, for one. There are many more vegetables than the summer assortment and those vegetables thrive on the cool weather (while also being less prone to bolting, which is an advantage unto itself). Plus, many vegetables develop sweeter, more complex flavors after a touch of frost; that includes beets, bok choy, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, collard greens, kale, leeks, parsnips, radicchio (and the other chicories), radishes, rutabagas, spinach, and turnips.

The following is not about growing plants that are not adapted to one’s gardening zone; this is not “pushing the climate envelope.” This is for people who have actual “cold” weather coming. Potentially damaging cold. Mayber ice or freezing hail or even frozen ground. Those with gardens where winters are mild, you probably don’t have to face this but I’ll assume you’ll be putting out cool-season vegetables, also, and not pushing it with warm-season stuff. Most of these practices, et al, may help you as well.

PLANNING

Most planning is about getting you into the most efficient and effective schedule in an effort to help you extend your season or at least get you ahead of the game a bit.

THE COOL-SEASON VEGETABLES

To reiterate, fall is all about cool-season vegetables. The leafy things, the flower-bud stuff, the roots, and a couple of legumes. These are the vegetables that are at their best when cooler temperatures prevail, especially if such temperatures hang around for a while (as in, at least two, three, or even four months). That’s why fall is probably the best time to sow, plant, and grow some of the most common vegetables. Although fall can certainly have its share of warm days, even Indian Summer days, it’s nothing compared to Spring’s guaranteed rise in temps as summer approaches.

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I think more gardeners should grow more kinds of edibles and I think they should cook those edibles. I also think those who cook — whether they garden or not — should try more edibles (of the “plant” kind). I’m certainly a big proponent of delving into ethnic cuisines beyond one’s own heritage, whatever that is.

I grew up in a Sicilian family and that’s my food heritage. Sometime in high school, I fell in love with Mexican food and I found myself cooking that, albeit very amateurishly (yes, it was during high school), more often than any Sicilian/Italian dish. When I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, I discovered Chinese food and that became my home kitchen immersion. Then there was several other Asian cuisines along with French, Spanish, Indian (yum), and on and on.

That’s why last April of this year, I posted “CULINARY HERB GARDENS,” a listing of the herbs and spices that should be included in various herb gardens, including seven gardens based on specialized use (e.g., for salads, for baking, and so on) and nine gardens based on ethnic cuisines (e.g., Italian, Mexican, and so on).

But I knew I had left out several cuisines. Intentionally or out of expediency or maybe I was just forgetful. So here’s twelve more. Also in that April article, I listed herbs for an “Asian Herb Garden” and I suppose that was just an introduction; but of course there are dozens of “Asian” cuisines so I’ve broken a few out here to refine the garden palette.

I’ve also included “flavorings,” the food enhancers that are neither herb nor spice. This includes banana leaves, dried mandarin orange peel, and a few others. Some of these are called “aromatics.”

This time, too, I’ve included several plants pretty much unknown to American gardeners and chefs/cooks. They are distinctive, almost unique, to each of their cuisines.

As always, these are the plants gardeners in the U.S. can grow in their gardens. All of the herbs, spices, etc. included here are hardy to at least USDA Zone 10. Hence why I’ve left off the most tropical of plants. Those left off include nutmeg, cloves, true cinnamon, vanilla, and black peppercorns.

Adding to all this, I’ve thrown in many more annotations and notes. Not fully detailed, mind you, but just enough to clarify a few things. The biggest add is an indication of hardiness zones (beginning with a “Z”).

Here they are, the new “herb and flavor gardens,” in alphabetical order by cuisine…

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CAMBODIAN

Cambodian cuisine deserves more attention. It’s like Thai food but a bit more exotic and a bit more reliant on “wild” flavors.

• Basil, Sweet (Ocimum basilicum). Warm-season annual.

• Basil, Holy (Ocimum tenuiflorum [O. sanctum]). Warm-season annual.

• Basil, Thai (Ocimum basilicum var. thyrsiflora). Warm-season annual.

• Cardamom, “Wild” (sometimes Elettaria cardamomum but mostly Wurfbainia vera and/or Wurfbainia villosa; the latter now restricted due to overharvesting). Z 10 to 12.

• Chilies (Capsicum annuum)

  — Bird's Eye Chili (Thai Chili)

  — Lady's Finger (a Cayenne Pepper)

• Garlic Chives, Chinese Chives (Allium tuberosum). Z 3 to 9.

• Coriander leaves and seeds aka cilantro in U.S. (Coriandrum sativum). Cool-season annual.

• Culantro (Eryngium foetidum) aka long coriander, Mexican coriander, saw-leaf herb. Biennial Z 8 to 11.

• Curry leaf (Bergera [Murraya] koenigii). Zones 9 to 12.

• Fingerroot (Boesenbergia rotunda) aka Chinese keys, Chinese galangal. Z 9 to 11, preferring humid summers. Can grow in a container.

  

• Garlic (Allium sativum). Hardneck type garlic is better suited for colder climates (Z 3 to 7) while softneck type garlic is more adaptable to warmer regions (Z 6 to 9).

• Ginger (Zingiber officinale). Z 9 (maybe 8) to 12.

• Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus). Z 9 to 12 but can be grown in containers or as an annual in colder zones.

• Mint, Cambodian (Persicaria odorata) aka Vietnamese coriander/mint and hot mint. Z 9 to 11, but can be grown as a warm-season annual elsewhere.

• Moringa/Neem Leaves (Moringa oleifera). Z 9 (maybe 8) to 11.

• Noni leaves (Morinda citrifolia). Z 10 to 12.

• Pandan leaves (Pandanus amaryllifolius). Z 9 to 11, preferring humid summers.

• Peppermint (Mentha x piperita). Z 3 to 9 (maybe 10).

• Rice Paddy Herb (Limnophila aromatica). Z 10 (maybe 9) to 11. Also grows in aquariums.

• Sour-soup Creeper (Urceola polymorpha) aka “la giang” or River Leaf Creeper. Z 10 and 11, but can be grown as a warm-season annual.

• Scallions (Allium cepa var. cepa and hybrids) aka “negi.” Not to be confused with what Americans call “scallions” (which seems to be synonymous with green onions) nor confused with “spring onion,” which is a term for a regular onion that’s been harvested in spring before it develops a “bulb” (even though many Asian countries call these – in their languages – “spring onions”). Z 6 (some varieties 4 and even 3) to 9.

• Shallots (Allium cepa Aggregatum Group). Z 3 to 10.

• Spearmint (Mentha spicata). Z 5 (maybe to 3) to 10 (maybe 11).

• Star Anise (Illicium verum). Z 8 to 10. CAUTION: there are several species of Illicium, including the two or three U.S. natives, that are used as ornamental garden plants. They all produce something looking like the pods of star anise but all are toxic.

• Tamarind (Tamarindus indica). Z 10 to 11.

• Thai/Makrut Lime leaves (Citrus x hystrix). Z 10 (and probably 9) to 12.

• Turmeric (Curcuma longa). Z 8 to 11.

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Europeans have been mixing fresh garden greens in salads for decades, maybe centuries. The ingredients and the process didn’t “officially” gain a name – and a formula – until 1976 when a top dictionary recognized the word mesclun (from mesclar, which, simply put, means “to mix” or probably better, “to merge;” of Provençal dialect).

In Italy, the comparable concept would be misticanza (meaning “a mixture of things,” usually garden-grown and foraged).

The classic Provençal formula is made up of four parts leafy lettuces, two parts chervil, one part arugula, and one part curly endive (4:2:1:1). The lettuce makes up the bulk of the salad mix and provides the sweetness. The chervil is the fresh herbal touch, of course, and it, too, adds a touch of sweetness with its subtle anise/licorice undertones and base parsley flavor. Arugula is in there to tingle your tastebuds with its peppery, oh-so-slightly bitter taste, and to provide a nutty background (all appropriate flavors in a well-rounded salad). Finally, the curly endive is the quintessential European touch of bitterness, although the inner leaves are usually milder, almost sweet. The base, then, is the lettuce, while the rest provides the complexity that a well-rounded salad needs.

Then there’s the “finish:” chopped walnuts or pecans, feta cheese, small-dice tomato, thinly-sliced red onion, plus a LIGHT dressing: a vinaigrette, of good olive oil, a vinegar (I like white wine vinegar but there’s always champagne vinegar), garlic or micro-diced shallot, salt, and pepper (freshly-ground, c'est sûr). And you can go crazy with avocado, chopped orange segments, thinly-sliced radishes, green onions, snow pea shoots (sweet, slightly grassy with a mild pea taste), roasted chickpeas, blanched haricot vert, cubed roasted beets, dried cranberries, chopped figs, sprouts (so many different kinds), edible flowers, foraged greens, and, and, and.

Obviously, the salad is versatile and indubitably* encourages adjustments and add-ons. Changes may be based on your personal preferences (most Americans shy from the bitter bits) or on the main dish to which the mesclun sits at the side (a delicate main calls for a delicate mesclun; a robust main screams for a robust mesclun). [* I’ve always wanted to use this word in an article. But yet it reminds me of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.]

It should be noted that beyond the flavors and textures of the various greens, there is color and just enough color to excite the palate. Our visual view of food does, indeed, influence the overall perception of our food and its ultimate enjoyment.

The US has had its own share of mixed salads for many years but in the early 80s, commercial vegetable companies, inspired by the rise of the mesclun concept, introduced “spring greens,” packages of mixed greens containing anywhere from a dozen to three dozen different varieties of, usually, baby greens, depending on the season.

My old friend Rosalind Creasy (author of “Edible Landscaping,” “The Kitchen Herb Garden,” and at least a dozen other books), summed it up by saying original mesclun used all parts of the tongue, with a range of textures from crispy to velvety and of tastes from tangy to bitter. With that in mind, I’ve organized my own formulas, below, based on these essential flavors.

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FORMULA OPTIONS

The original Provençal formula had four pieces: something sweet (the lettuce[s]), something herby (the chervil), the spicy (the arugula), and the bitter (the curly endive).

I’ve broken it down and, maybe, enhanced it with some refined division. Instead of the four pieces, I offer five. The fifth category includes the greens that aren’t lettuces yet are almost as mild as lettuce (no pepperiness, no heat, no tang, no overtly robust earthiness, and no bitterness).

Almost everything here is sown for and grown during the cool seasons (spring and fall). In mildest zones, these are also perfect for winter growing. There are a handful of greens here that are summertime growers, which is noted in their entry.

LETTUCES — 4 parts

• Batavian lettuces — somewhat more open than icebergs, but still form a distinct head; more flavorful than iceberg.

• Bibb — low-growing, tender, and sweet. They form small, loose heads as they approach maturity.

• Celtuce and “A choy” — although this is technically a lettuce, it doesn’t grow like a lettuce nor look much like a lettuce when it matures. It’s a lettuce that’s been selected for it’s tall central stem. With celtuce, it’s the tender stem that’s sliced and eaten; with a choy, it’s the small lettuce-looking head at the top of the stem that is eaten.

• Crinkle-leaf sorts — like smooth-leaf lettuces except that their leaves are frillier and their flavor is often slightly more pronounced.

• Oak leaf lettuce — probably the most traditional of all mesclun ingredients. It's not only delicious, but also pretty (comes in red or green).

• Red-leaf lettuces — they add the color with varieties such as ‘Ruby’, ‘Merveille des Quatre Saisons’, ‘Lollo Rossa’.

• Romaine types — upright and deep-colored, with a robust flavor and somewhat crunchy texture. This is my go-to lettuce for salads.

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SWEET(ISH) NON-LETTUCES

Can be subbed for all of or any part of the lettuce portion.

• Bok choy (pak choy) — mild, slightly sweet flavor, with the slightest hint of pepperiness, somewhere between cabbage and spinach

• Cabbages (including Chinese cabbages) — slice thinly a la chiffonade. Some types are less “cabbage” than others.

• Mâche (lamb's lettuce, corn salad) — mild, slightly nutty, and subtly sweet flavor with delicate, buttery undertones

• Miner’s lettuce — mild, slightly sweet, and grassy-earthy.

• Minutina (“herba stella,” buck’s horn) — succulent with a nutty, sweet, and sometimes pleasantly salty flavor.

• Orach — mild, slightly salty, and spinach-like flavor. Summer grower.

• Perpetual Spinach, Spinach beet — like beet greens but larger and a bit milder. Don’t use the leaf stems in salads.

• Spinach — the “baby” stage is prime for salads (and quicker, easier, from the garden) but not much wrong with regular size spinach.

• Swiss chard — youngest leaves for salads, otherwise slightly bitter. Remove stems and shred the leaves.

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MILD HERBS — 2 parts (or less)

• Anise — subtly licoricey. (Not the same as fennel, which is often sold as “anise” in supermarkets; they look very different.)

• Basil — comes in many “flavors” but overall sweet, with an oh-so-subtle peppery edge but sometimes lemony, minty, cinnamony. Summer grower.

• Chervil — piquant, subtly-parsley-like taste and grows well in the shade of the other greens.

• Fennel — another licoricey leaf (use the leafy fronds, not the “bulb” (although that wouldn’t be too bad, either.

• Leaf celery (smallage) — young leaves (not stems) are mild (celery-flavored, of course) with the slightest hint, to some people, of bitterness.

• Mint(?!) — not on my radar but I’m sure someone puts it in their salads. Perennial.

• Parsley — choose curled for mild or flat-leafed for robust (the robust Italian forms would maybe fit in the next category).

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SMALL, PEPPERY/TART GREENS -- 1 part

• Arugula/Rocket — the initial flavor is somewhat peanutty, followed by spicy-hot.

• Aztec spinach (Huauzontle, Quelites) — earthier, more robust than the familiar spinach, with a hint of pepperiness. Very easy to grow.

• Cress, Garden (common cress, curly cress, pepper grass, or simply cress) — tangy, peppery. Super-fast to harvest, with cuttable greens in two weeks. Hence, best to make successive sowings (short rows) every one to two weeks.

• Cress, Upland — peppery-tangy with a hint of watercress. This is a biennial that is sown in late summer or early fall to produce a good clump of foliage before winter; harvest any time before winter.

• Komatsuna (Japanese mustard spinach) — mild, slightly sweet, and peppery flavor.

• Malabar spinach, Ceylon spinach — mild, slightly peppery flavor with hints of citrus. Summer grower.

• Sorrel (French/“soup” type) — lemony tart with just a hint of pepperiness.

• Tatsoi — mild, slightly sweet flavor, maybe spinach-y, with just a hint of mustard-like spiciness.

• Tokyo Bekana — mild, slightly sweet flavor with just a hint of peppery zest. Use young leaves.

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BITTER GREENS — 1 part

• The Chicory group of leaf vegetables all have a bitter, tangy flavor along with their crunchy texture.

  -- Belgian Endive (witloof [“white leaf”]) — small head of cream-colored, bitter leaves; almost always “field blanched” to reduce its natural bitterness.

  -- Escarole (Batavian chicory generally refers to the broad-leafed forms) — the least bitter of the chicories; maybe the “training wheels” for those who don’t like the bitterness of chicories.

  -- Frisée (Riccia, Curly Endive) — the frilly stuff that became part of salads in fancy, continental-style restaurants for several years for its delicate looks and its crispy texture. In most cases, it has been replaced with any of several varieties of equally frilly lettuce.

  -- Leaf Chicory (Cutting Chicory) — the most primitive forms of the leafy type, all of which maintain the bitterness of the ancestor.

  -- Radicchio — bitter, slightly spicy, crispy, and colorful.

• Collards — only when very young; as they get older (up to a point), they can be “massaged” before eating raw. Forget eating the large leaves except when completely cooked (which takes about four days of continuous hard boiling with salt pork and/or smoked ham hocks).

• Chrysanthemum greens — grassy, slightly bitter, “herbaceous”, with a hint of sweetness. Used when very young; older leaves are cooked.

• Dandelion greens (cultivated types) — sharp, bitter, and a bit peppery with maybe the subtlest undertones of celery and lemon. Savory if picked when young, and they contain a bonus of vitamin A.

• Kales — varying in their degree of bitterness, kales are used for salads in their “baby” stage and/or “massaged” (rubbed/crumpled with oil) before adding.

• Mizuna (a Japanese mustard green) — mildly peppery and slightly bitter.

• Mustard greens — a large group with varying degrees of earthiness, piquancy, and bitterness.

• Watercress — peppery and slightly bitter flavor, similar to mustard greens or, eek, horseradish.

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GROWING MESCLUN GREENS

If you’re new at growing greens to be mixed for salads, especially if you’re trying types and varieties you’ve never eaten before, it might be best to sow individual types in individual — and labeled — rows. This way, you can taste each one at harvest to determine if that’s what you want in your salads, either by itself or mixed as a balance to other greens. By the way, you can do the same “mixing” with cooking greens, which would include a few of the above but it’s mostly a different palette.

You can buy already mixed “Mesclun Mixes” (it makes it easier for the gardener) but you will never know which of the greens you find most delicious. Plus, with some mixes, the different species may grow at different rates so you’ll never taste the whole mix all at once. It’s also difficult to know when to harvest.

Once you get the hang of it and know which flavors you like and, more importantly, which MIX of flavors you like, you can move on to the next level. And that is to mix the seed of those types/varieties you like and sow the mix as one.

Almost all of these greens and accents are fast growing and almost all are dependable germinators. Because of that, they are ideally suited to being sown in succession. It’s about sowing new veggies as older ones are harvested, usually at a young age. This insures a continuous, or almost so, supply. Added to this, the rows should be short in length rather than long, as is more commonly done. A common row length is about 8 to 20 feet. Depending on your salad cravings, you can do half or quarter that for each successive sowing and schedule each succession at two to three weeks apart. You’ll find your perfect length and schedule in time.

If you can manage, seeds are sown, and/or thinned to, 4 to 6 inches apart.

Salad greens are almost always (maybe best?) harvested/cut when young — anywhere from microgreens (once quite popular) to baby greens (3 to 4 weeks) to the prime (not mature) stage at 5 to 6 weeks. Use sharp scissors and snip each one at about ½-inch above ground or use a very sharp knife and run across their bottoms, again at ½-inch, for a length of them. I recommend never “pulling them out by their roots,” as is the most common harvest technique. With this old way you eliminate their ability to regrow and, more importantly, you’ve removed their roots from the ground and roots, dead or alive, in the ground are a key way of developing healthy soil. For crispiest greens, harvest in the earliest morning hours.

When cut early on (anywhere between baby and prime), many of these greens will regrow and can be cut again in 1 to 2 weeks. This can be repeated up to 3 times.

All greens need sunshine and plenty of water from germination through harvest. More constant moisture to help them germinate and then backing off on the frequency to maturity. As said, almost all of these are cool-weather lovers. They will struggle and in fact, most will bolt (flower before their time), which increases their bitterness (even in those not naturally bitter) and their chewability. If you spring sow these, make sure you give them several weeks of cool, not super cold, weather before any heat comes on. If hot weather begins unseasonably, stay on the watering and provide makeshift shade. I’m a big proponent of late-summer and fall sowing for these types of vegetables because of the lesser risk of heat. It also just so happens that almost all of the cool-season growers here are tolerant of cold weather, so there’s little chance of them succumbing to any late fall frosties.

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The growing process and the kitchen process in putting out a great salade mesclun is so easy, so quick, so healthy, and so gratifying, I’m pretty sure it will become a regular part of your life leanings. And your dining guests will be impressed.

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© Copyright Joe Seals, 2025

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Tomatoes have only started to ripen in many gardens and here I am talking about moving on to a fall (+ winter?) vegetable garden. But this is, of course, the time to at least start thinking about the scheduling of a fall garden and some seeds will have to be sown indoors very soon.

To i…

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The longevity times given in last week’s article on seed saving (“SOME SEED SAVING GUIDELINES”) are based on common basic measures taken by home gardeners who save seed: they clean, they thoroughly [?] dry, and they store seeds in a cool, dry, dark area. With a little finesse and a bit more care, those times will be increased. These storage practices apply to both self-harvested seeds as well as to leftover seed from purchased packets.

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CLEANING SEEDS

If you’re saving bulk quantities of seed, the technique called winnowing separates dried-on-the-plant seeds from the chaff and other debris left during harvesting. Basically, it’s tossing the seed and rubbish into the air and letting the wind blow away the rubbish, which is lighter, leaving the heavier seeds behind. Another way to winnow: Outside on a breezy day, drop seed from one container into another and let the wind blow away the unwanted chaff. Don’t use a fan for this; it can be risky.

You can also use a framed screen with holes just large enough for seeds to pass through, with the larger crud left behind. A second screen, one with holes just smaller than the seeds, can sift out the remaining small debris. The issue with this should be obvious: if you’re cleaning more than one kind of seed, you most probably have more than one size od seed.

If you’re cleaning small quantities of seed, you can certainly do it by hand but make sure your hands are clean and dry.

Seeds that are “wet” (surrounded by juicy pulp of some kind) should be cleaned of the glop. After somehow scraping out as much glop as easily possible, place the seeds in a large bowl or bucket and cover them by twice their volume in water. Stir vigorously. The viable seeds (weightier) will sink to the bottom of the container while the less hefty seeds will float. Then scoop them off (I like using a “spider” — a sieve-like kitchen cooking tool); you’ll get a bit of other floating debris. Repeat, with more water, until only clean, viable seeds remain. Strain the seeds, rinse them, and dry them.

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Whatever factors influence, inspire, or encourage gardeners to become seed savers, I’m all for it. It’s been going on since the beginning of gardening; in fact, it wasn’t until modern times that most gardeners had access to new seeds in packets. If you’ve been thinking about doing your own seed saving, now’s the time and here’s a starting point.

WHY SAVE SEEDS?

In no particular order (because everyone has their own priorities), from the indulgent to the political:

• To learn about nature, botany, biology, science, etc.

• To save time and money.

• To preserve biodiversity. There is a serious genetic erosion in commercial seeds and you can make a difference.

• To increase your (and our) available options.

• To help preserve your (and our) right to save seeds.

• To retain control of your food supply. It’s about food security and true self-sufficiency .

• To preserve, promote, and even develop local varieties adapted to your garden’s and your community’s growing conditions.

• To build community by sharing and cooperating.

• Climate change demands it. You might as well select the most adaptable each year to keep up.

• To renew your thousands-of-years-old partnership with plants. It’s a connection to humans’ ancient gardening heritage.

• To preserve your family heritage; whatever your ethnic background.

• To preserve the varietal characteristics you want. Select for flavor, size, disease resistance, or whatever YOU want.

• To improve the results with each harvest. To adapt the seeds to your own garden. To create new varieties. There are hundreds (thousands?) of vegetables that were created by an amateur gardener just like you.

Suggestion: If you’ve never saved seeds and are interested it doing it for the first time, start with the easiest: beans and peas. And start with “open-pollinated” seed varieties.

What about saving seeds from “hybrid” (F₁) vegetables? Go ahead. But keep in mind that what you get in the following years’ plants will be different, often very different, from what you planted. Subtle differences may be acceptable while major differences may make you feel like you’ve wasted time. But even amongst the majorly different offspring, there just might be something — maybe just one plant — that is worth saving again. That’s where you should jump in; it’s one of the most exciting parts of seed saving.

The basics of seed saving are pretty easy. There are some important details, however, that you need to understand first. I’ve arranged these points to coincide with the accompanying list of the most common vegetable types.

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Why? Because…

• They are a regular and dependable source of seasoning, year after year,

• They are easier than annual herbs to maintain,

• They are generally more culinarily versatile than annual herbs,

• Most look pretty darn good in the general landscape,

• They can save you money (yes, cheaper than store-bought).

So, I present my usual annotated and condensed botanical, horticultural, and culinary look at the subject in the title. The following is a listing of perennial herb species, including a few that are technically known as “subshrubs” (kind of like perennials that develop some woodiness). Some are evergreen, others are not. This listing does NOT include, although perennial,:

• Garlic (yes, a perennial-ish bulb)

• Crocus (a spice, really, but a story to come)

• Mints (a big story here: “THE MANY MINTS”)

• Trees and shrubs (hence no rosemary, bay laurel, etc.).

Many of the plants in this list are good-looking enough to be included in the general landscape along with all the other ornamental plants you might have in place. Makes it easy to get herbs in the garden without having to find space among the limited and precious vegetable/edible garden. There’s a more thorough article on this subject in “HERBS IN THE LANDSCAPE.” By the way, I strongly suggest NOT planting perennial herbs in your edibles garden(s), including raised beds, alongside annual herbs and vegetables. They can carry over shared disease through winter, they make it difficult if not impossible to implement rotation programs, and most of these perennials are light water users, making them incompatible with the heavy-water-using annual herbs and vegetables.

“Perennial” means that each of these is a plant that comes back year after year. Of course that’s dependent on where the garden is located. Hence why I’ve put the USDA Zone range for each of these immediately after the name(s) for the plant.

Almost all of the species mentioned here have been described in a different way in other articles I have posted. These other articles include photos of the plants, hence why I have not buried this article in photos of every plant listed.

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Why hasn’t any garden or food writer in the U.S. done a deep horticultural AND culinary dive into eggplants? I know why — because while potatoes came in with a whopping 430 million tons in their last worldwide crop count and tomatoes hit nearly 210 million tons, eggplants came in with a mere 66 million tons. Plenty of deep dive stories on tomatoes and potatoes. The U.S.’s production of eggplant, by the way, comes to just under 110,000 tons. Adding to that, China is the top producer and eater of eggplants. Following China, in order: India, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Iran, and, of course, Italy; then there’s thirteen other countries before the United States shows up at number 22 on the list. Eggplant is, simply, not an American food; we don’t grow it much, we don’t eat it much.

I, on the other hand, love eggplant. It’s easy to grow in the garden and it’s found in a myriad of dishes in all of my favorite cuisines: Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean. Growing up Italian included my introduction to this luscious fruit (yes, botanically that’s what it is). The Asian, Indian, etc. stuff all came into my life much later. So yes, I acquired the taste early on and now it’s full blown.

We Sicilians call them milinciana, pronouncing it milinˈt͡ʃana (maybe sounding like mil-lin-johnny). In Italian it’s melanzana. That comes from the Greek melintzana, which the Greeks borrowed from the Arabic bāḏinjān but the Greeks put an “m” at the beginning because they lacked that “b” sound in their language. Solanum melongena, as botanists have named it, is commonly called “eggplant” in the U.S., as well as in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, but it goes by many names elsewhere: it’s “aubergine” in France, Ireland, and the U.K.; in China, it’s qiézi (which sounds an awful lot like kuàizi, which is chopsticks), and “brinjal” (from the Portuguese “beringela!”) in India (although “baigan” is the word used for it culinarily), Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, and Sri Lanka.

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Tomatoes (and their very close cousins, the potatoes) are subject to several diseases, with the top three being Early Blight, Late Blight, and Septoria Leaf Spot. These three are fungal diseases, attacking primarily tomatoes and potatoes but they will sometimes go after other members of the Solanaceae family such as eggpl…

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