The Jennings daily record., 1902-05-29
gT,oLocy OF FOOD PLANTS
Evolution of Wheat. Cabbage and Pota-
/, From Weeds. 49,

1
toes From Weeds. it 49,
A large. ugly plant, with straggly.
| pale green leaves, grows here and
there along the coast of England. 1t
| is nearly two feet high, has tough
| woody stem and yellow flowers, which
turn to pods filled with seeds. No one
looking at it would give it second
| thought. or consider it anything but
a useless weed. Yet that weed is the
ancestor, i'll Il direct line. of the plump
! cabbage, the tender Brussels sprout
ana even of the dainty caulitiower.
All this seemingly miraculous change
has been wrought by the hand OF the
patient gardener. toiling from genera
riOn TO generation. and always imprOy-
ing upon the original stock till nature
| herself would hardly recognize her
offspring.
The gardener has done more fer the
world than the inventor. or even the
shepherd. Wheat WAS once mere Wild
grass. but il is so long since gardeners
took it in hand that its origin as L
food plant is lost in the mistS of an
tiquity. But within the last three
centuries cultivatOrs of the soil have
worked =, bigger miracle than turning
grass to bread. Wheat is now no
| longer the worlds biggest crop. 1t
has been beaten by Il weed Spanish
explorers found near Quito in the
Andes, about the year 1920. and which
was brought to England from Nir-
ginia in 1865.
| The earth's annual potato crop is
now four billions of bushels. wheat
producing two and Il half billions only,
! and maize about the same amount.
1t was the gardener who turned those
little. watery, bullet-shaped roots to
the great tubers Of white elephants"
and '.magnum bonumS." a little plant
with glossy. green leaves and a
threadlike, reddish root, grows on the
shores OF the Mediterranean. Gard
eners took it in hand and the result
is that the price of sugar has fallen
from five pence to two pence Il pound,
and Europe, instead of importing all
her sugar from the tropics. makes for
herself two and three-quarter million
tons u year from the root of the sugar
beet.
The gardener does Elore than i'm
prove plants in size and cclor. He
makes new ones. There are. for in
ange. varying from the giant seedless
bahia to the delicate little kid glove
or tangerine. There is also the i'm
mense pOmelo, which is cross be-
tween an orange and II lemon. Other
fruit growers have succeeded in cross
ing the blackberry and raspberry. and
producing a new delicacy. twice as
large and succulent as either of the
older fruits .i-...
As for apples, there are said to be
three hundred named varieties, and
the gardener has evolved them all
from the sour little hedserow crab.
In similar fashion he has changed the
little black sloes which grew on the
blackthOrn to glorious great purple
and yellow plums.
Perhaps 1t is in flowers that the
amazing achievements of gardeners
are most striking. Who could Imagine
that the massive. fragrant glOire de
dijon was once the single petaled. al
most scentless dog rose; or that the
tiny heartsease of the wheat fields
could have been changed to the i'm
periaf purple pansy, with u blossom
three inches across! 1t Is an almost
bigger miracle that has turned the
common herb Il. oert and cranes bill
of our fields to blazing geraniurns aud
gorgeous peIargoniums.
Farmers of to-day havo a choice of
thirty or more different grass seeds
to SOW for pasture or hny. All these
tame grasses have been evolved from
wild ones by I'll" experimental gar
dener within the last 13C years. The
result is that millions of acres. once
considered useless. have now been
brought into cultivation. and that the
percentage of TILED ground in Europe
has grown in century from less than
two acres in the hundred to nearly
three times that amOunt.-Boston