Alternate Food History

A great many useful domesticated food plants come from a small number of source wild types that have been bioengineered through selective breeding and hybridization to produce the variety we see today. Many of the wild types involved in this process actually have a quite narrow geographic range in nature.

This post is a reminder to myself to follow up further to consider what other species of plants might have had similar domestication histories if these wild type plants had not been available.

One historical example is the alternate set of domesticates, now largely unknown to the general public, that developed in what is now the Southeast United States before it came into contact with the Meso-American domesticate package of maize, beans, and squash.

The family Rosaceae includes herbs, shrubs, and trees. Most species are deciduous, but some are evergreen. They have a worldwide range but are most diverse in the Northern Hemisphere.

Many economically important products come from the Rosaceae, including various edible fruits, such as apples, pears, quinces, apricots, plums, cherries, peaches, raspberries, blackberries, loquats, strawberries, rose hips, hawthorns, and almonds. The family also includes popular ornamental trees and shrubs, such as roses, meadowsweets, rowans, firethorns, and photinias.

From Wikipedia.

Brassica oleracea is a plant species from family Brassicaceae that includes many common cultivars used as vegetables, such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, Savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, and gai lan.

Its uncultivated form, wild cabbage, native to coastal southern and western Europe, is a hardy plant with high tolerance for salt and lime. However, its intolerance of competition from other plants typically restricts its natural occurrence to limestone sea cliffs, like the chalk cliffs on both sides of the English Channel.

From Wikipedia. 

Citrus plants are native to subtropical and tropical regions of Asia, Island Southeast Asia, Near Oceania, and northeastern Australia. Domestication of citrus species involved much hybridization and introgression, leaving much uncertainty about when and where domestication first happened.  

A genomic, phylogenic, and biogeographical analysis by Wu et al. (2018) has shown that the center of origin of the genus Citrus is likely the southeast foothills of the Himalayas, in a region stretching from eastern Assam, northern Myanmar, to western Yunnan. . . .

Ancestral species:

Citrus maxima – Pomelo

Citrus medica – Citron

Citrus reticulata – Mandarin orange

Citrus micrantha – a papeda

Citrus hystrix – Kaffir lime

Citrus cavaleriei – Ichang papeda

Citrus japonica – Kumquat

Important hybrids:

Citrus × aurantiifolia – Key lime

Citrus × aurantium – Bitter orange

Citrus × latifolia – Persian lime

Citrus × limon – Lemon

Citrus × limonia – Rangpur

Citrus × paradisi – Grapefruit

Citrus × sinensis – Sweet orange

Citrus × tangerina – Tangerine

See also below for other species and hybrids. 

From Wikipedia.