The Jennings daily record., 1902-05-29
erloLocy OF FOOD PLANTS
Evolution of Wheat. Cabbage and Potn-
& From Weeds.


Evolution of Wheat. cabbage and Pota-
toes From Weeds.
A large, ugly plant, with straggly.
pale green lea YES, grows here and
there along the coast of England. 1t
is nearly two feet high, has a 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, in direct line, of the plump
cabbage, the tender Brussels sprout
and even of the dainty caulihower.
All this seemingly miraculous change
has been wrought by the hand OF the
patient gardener toiling from genera
ton 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 it is so long since gardeners
took it in hand that its origin us 4
food plant is lost in the miSts of an
tiquity. But within the last three
worked IL 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 Viz
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 tive pence to two pence 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 more than i'm
prove piaats i'll size and cClor. He
makes new ones. There are, for in
stance. nearly sixty varieties OF Or
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. ana
producing q new delicacy. twice as
large and succulent as either of the
older fruits.
As for apples, there are said TO be
three hundred named varieties. and
the gardener has evolved them all
from the sour little tedgerow 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; OF that the
tiny heartsease of the wheat fields
could have been changed to the im-
perfal purple panSy, with blossom
three inches across! 1t Is an almost
bigger miracle that has turned the
common herb K, nert and cranes bill
of our fields to blazing geranirIrns and
gorgeous pelargoniums.
Farmers of to-day have Il choice OF
thirty or more different grass seeds
to SOW for pasture or hay. All these
tame grasses have been evolved from
f,, No t,I
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
percentages of TILED ground in Europe
has grown in Il century from less than
two acre; in the hundred to nearly
three times that amount.-BoSton
Herald. e
Outdoor woddings In NAV and Juno.
4 fS