Important note: For the purposes of this thread, North America means North America north of Mexico. That is, Canada and the United States. So don’t be suggesting maize or Capsicum or other Central American crops.
I got to wondering what crops originated in North America. By “originated” I mean the plant was native to North America and the domestication occured somewhere on that continent. After some research, I found that the experts think there are four:
sunflower (Helianthus annuus var. macrocarpus)
squash (Cucurbita pepo ssp. ovifera)
marshelder (Iva annua var. macrocarpa)
goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri)
However, these experts were only thinking of crops domesticated by Native Americans before Columbus. Also note that only two of those (sunflower and squash) are still in cultivation. It occured to me that plant domestication did not stop just because some guy took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and ended up in the West Indies. So I did some more research and concluded there are a number of others. There seem to be four main ones:
cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) Cape Cod, early 1800s,
Concord grape (Vitis labrusca) Concord MA, 1849
pecan (Carya illinoinensis) Louisiana, early 1840s - 1880s
blueberry (Vaccinium section Cyanococcus) New Jersey early 1900s
Plus several minor ones whose cultivation status is not always clear:
western serviceberry (saskatoon berry) (Amelanchier alnifolia)
There are arguments that PNW natives had established gardens focusing on bulbs/roots, stuff like camas and lilies, and so could be considered another locus of agriculture. Here’s a dissertation from 2000 making that argument. But that’s not quite what you’re looking for.
I’m wondering how you define “crops” here. Do you mean something deliberately planted, bred, and harvest within a year? But wait - you mentioned pecans, that requires an orchard of sorts.
If you extend “crops” to encouraging the conditions for a particular plant even if not strictly speaking domesticated consider that Natives often used controlled fire to modify landscapes, particularly in areas of the West where acorns were a major food source. Oaks have a very long life cycle, so they aren’t crops in the sense of sunflowers, but the Natives did encourage conditions to favor them.
You also missed dragonfruit, which is native to the Sonoran Desert which extends into California and Arizona, and thus qualifies for your list. You also missed prickly-pear cactus, sometimes called nopales, which are also native to the desert/arid regions of the American Southwest and West.
The term is very often used in the sense of the OP. You cited Wikipedia to prove your point; I could just as easily cite its sister project Wiktionary to prove mine:
(US, Canada) Canada and the United States as a unit to the exclusion of Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean nations, and Greenland; roughly equivalent to Northern America. Often used to describe things in a context that includes only the US and Canada.
That paper convinced me. I guess I’ll add Pacific silverweed (Potentilla anserina ssp. pacifica) and springbank clover (Trifolium wormskjoldit) to the list.
I haven’t read the entire paper, but based on the Table of Contents, it doesn’t look like he discusses camas in any detail. But I’ve long wondered about it. From what I’ve read elsewhere, it seems like camas was very close to being cultivated and it could be argued that it actually was cultivated.
I also listed a couple species of grapes, which generally take a couple-three years to grow big enough to bear fruit. So no, there’s no requirement that domesticated crops be harvested within a year.
This page says that the domestication of the dragonfruit (pitaya) occured in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico.
It not only has to be native to North America† but also domesticated there. I couldn’t find who domesticated the prickly-pear, but my guess it was most likely in Mexico.
† I defined North America for this thread as Canada & the US. Let’s stop the hijack about that definition.
I’ve always thought a domesticated plant or animal was one that had changed in significant ways from its wild forebears, through artificial selection. Otherwise, it’s just tamed.
If we don’t insist on that, i thonk acorns would have to be on the list, as groups in many parts of the US, most notably California, certainly deliberately encouraged oak trees to grow and acorns were the main staple. But they didn’t develop a new variety with say, less tanin.
This is really different from say, wild almonds, which are toxic, and domeatic almonds, which are not.
The link you provide seems to define “pitaya” as all cactus fruit regardless of species, but the specific species referred to in the article is Stenocereus pruinosus. The species of the commercially produced dragonfruit is Selenicereus undatus. Same genera, different species. As I noted, Selenicereus undatus grows wild in the Sonoran Desert which does extend into the US. Nopales/prickly pear cacti were extensively used by the Pima people, whose territory extends into the southern US, as well as the Navajo, the Pueblo builders like the Hopi. I agree that these could have been domesticated in Mexico but I argue that there is also a strong possibility of one or more of them could have been domesticated in the US. And I’ll leave it at that.
Interesting coincidence there. I thought about boysenberries a few weeks ago for some random reason and realized I hadn’t seen or heard about them for years. Despite the year round availability of many berry varieties nowadays. A little wiki-ing explained that they were pretty much a one-farm invention in the 1960s that has since largely gone out of cultivation due to low efficiency.
I knew of them as a kid because Mr. Boysen’s farm was only a few miles from my house. Up until just recently I’d assumed they were at least a national crop, if a minority one. Sorta like kumquats maybe. I was wrong.
Anyhow, as applied to this thread, they certainly were developed in North America. And were commercially grown on a few farms in Southern California for a few years 50+ years ago.
But if they’re little more than a hobbyist curiosity now, are they a “crop” for the OP’s purposes? A resounding “maybe, but probably not.” IMO.