Evening star., 1902-02-26
ETIoLoGY OF FOOD PLANTS.
Evolution of Wheat, Cabbage and Po.
tatoes From Weeds.
From the Boston Herald.

From the Boston Herald.
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 1t would give 1t a
second thought, or consider 1t anything but
a useless weed. Yet that weed is the an
cestor, in direct line Of the plump cab
bage, the tender Brussels sprOut and even
of the dainty caulifiower. All this SEEM
ingly miraculous change has been wrought
by the hand OF the patient gardener, toll
ing from generation to generation, and al
ways improving upon the original stock
till nature herself would hardly recognize
her offspring
The gardener has done more for the
world than the inventor or even the shep-
herd. Wheat was once mere wild grass,
but 1t Is so long since gardeners took 1t in
hand that its origin food plant is lost
in the mists of antiquity, But within the
last three centuries cultivators of the soil
have worked a bigger miracle than turn
ing grass to bread. Wheat is now no
longer the worlds biggest crop. 1t has been
beaten by a weed Spanish explorers found
near Quito. in the Andes. about the year
1o2o and which was brought to England
from Virginia in 1863.
The earth's annual potato crop Is now
four billions of bushels. wheat producing
two and a half billions only, and maize
hpout tne same amount. II was the gar
dener who turned those little, watery, bull
let-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. Gardeners
took 1t in hand, and the result is that the
price OF sugar has fallen from five pence
to two pence a pound, and Europe, instead
or importing all her sugar from the tropics,
makes for herself two and three quarter
million tons year from the root OF the
sugar beet.
The gardener does more than improve
plants in size and color. He makes new
ones. There are, for instance nearly
sixty varieties of orange. varying from the
es bahia to the M little
immense pOmelo, which Is a cross between
an orange and lemon. Other fruit grow
ers have succeeded in crossing the black
berry and raspberry, and producing a new
delicacy, twice as large and succulent as
either Of the older fruits.
AS for apples, there are said to- be 300
named varieties, and the gardener has
evolved them all from the sour little hedge
row crab. In similar fashion he has chang
cd 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 strk-
ing. Who could imagine that the massive,
fragrant glOire de dijon was once the
single-petaled, almost scentless dog rose;
or that the tiny hearsease Of the wheat
fields could have been changed to the i'm
perial purple pansy, with blossom three
inches across? 1t Is an almost bigger mir
acle that has turned the common hero
Robert and cranes bill Of our fields to
blazing geraniums and gorgeous pelargo-
NUNS
Farmers of today have a choice OF thirty
or more different grass seeds to SOW for
pasture or hay. All these tame grasses
have been evolved from Wild ones by the
experimental gardener within the last 13O
years. The result Is that millions Of acres
once considered useless, have now been
brought into cultivation. and that the per-
centage Of titled ground IN Europe has
grown in a century from less than two
acres in the hundred to nearly three times
that amount.