The suburban citizen., 1902-04-12
ETIoLooY OF FOOD PLANTS.
Evolution of Wheat, Cabbage and POta
toes From Weeds.


Evolution of Wheat, Cabbage and POta.
toes From Weeds.
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 IA tough
woody stem and yellow flowers, which
turn TO pods filled with seeds. No one
looking at it would give it a second
thought or consider it anything but
useless weed. Yet that weed is the
ancestor, in direct line, Of the plump
cabbage, the tender Brussels sprout
and even Of the dainty caulifower
All this seemingly miraculous change
has been wrought by the hand of the
patient gardener toiling from genera.
tion to generation and always improv.
ing 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
shepherd. Wheat was once mere wild
sass, but 1t is so long since gardeners
TO-; it in hand that its origin as a
focd plant is lost in the mists of an.
tiqL... But within the last three
centu-. rs cultivators of the soil have
worked bigger miracle than turning
grass 10 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 1920, and which
was brought to England from Vir.
ginia in 1868.
The earth's annual potato crop is
now four billions Of bushels, wheat
producing two and a half billions only,
ana 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
threadlike, reddish root, grows on the
shores Of the Mediterranean. Gard.
eners took it in hand, and the result
is that tho price of sugar has fallen
from five pence to two pence a pound,
and Europe, instead Of importing all
her sugar from the tropics, makes for
herself two and three-quarter million
tons a year from the root of the sugar
beet.
The gardener does more than i'm.
prove plants in size and color. 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 a cross be.
tween an orange and 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.
As for apples, there are said to be
three hundred named varieties, and
the gardener has evolved them all
from the sour little hedgerow crab.
In similar fashion he has changed the
little black sloes which grew on the
blackthorn to glorious great purple
and yellow plums.
Perhaps it is in flowers that the
amazing achievements of gardeners
are most striking. Who could imagine
that the massive fragrant gloire de
dHon was once the single-petaled, al.
most scentless dog rose; or that the
tiny hcartsease Of the wheat fields |
could have been changed to the i'm.
perial purple pansy, with a blossom
three inches across! 1t is an almost |
bigger miracle that has turned the !
common herb Il, pert and cranes bill 4,
OF our fields to blazing geraniums and |
gorgeous pelargoniums.
Farmers Of to-day have a choice Of |
thirty CT more different grass seeds
to sow for pasture or hay. All these
tame grasses have been evolved from |
wild ones by the experimental gar.
dener within the last 130 years. The
result is that millions Of acres, once
considered useless, have now been
brought into cultivation, and that the
percentage Of titled ground in Europe
has grown in a century from less than
two acres in the hundred to nearly
three times that amount.-Boston
Herald.