I was doing some research on food plants that originated in North America and read that the pecan is one of the most recently domesticated food plants. Later I read the same thing about the blueberry. Of the two, blueberry is more recent, having been domesticated in the early twentieth century (1910s if you need to narrow it down), while the pecan became a crop in the 1880s.
So what is the most recently domesticated food plant? I realize that this may not have a clean answer, since it usually takes a while (several years, sometimes more) to establish a new food crop. But what other candidates are there?
ETA Note: I’m not interested in new cultivars of established crops unless they’re radically different like Brassica oleracea variants (cabbage, brussel sprouts, broccoli, etc.).
Finger limes, I’d say the 1990s is recent. They used to be just bushfood, but now they’re planted and new cultivars being developed and all the other hallmarks of domestication.
They are smaller than either sweet cherries or sour cherries. Both the fruit and the plant are much smaller. The fruits look like small sweet cherries. You’d never mistake the plant for a cherry tree, if that matters.
There are several other species of bush cherries that are older to cultivation. It’s certainly not a brand new thing. But it’s genetically different from anything previously on the market, it grows father north than any other cherry in cultivation. And it tastes a lot better than cloud berries, IMHO.
(Yes, i like to try new-to-me fruits, and made a point of buying some cloud berries in a farmers market when i visited Finland.)
I’m not sure they do. The research mentioned does exist, but the conclusion at the end of one large project, which at the end of the 2003-2007 project was down to 10 growers, was that it was not yet commercially viable. There appears to be very few sellers of plants and seeds and what I’ve found is aimed at hobbyists who want to spend an inordinate amount of time maintaining a peat bog in their garden for a handful of berries.
Wild blueberries (mentioned in the OP) are still harvested in large numbers in northern Quebec. They’re smaller (and, IMO, sweeter) than the cultivated kind.
Yeah, I was going to ask how blueberries were recently domesticated, because I’ve camped in Michigan’s U.P. In September and there are millions of ripe wild blueberries as far as the eye can see. Ate gallons of them. Got a camp turnover maker- a metal mold on a long handle, and made blueberry turnovers over the fire. They may be a bit smaller than what you get in the grocery store, but not really.
Maybe TMI but I’ve found bear scat in the woods at that time of year and it’s purple-blue in color and consists of 95% blueberry seeds.
Re Macadamia: I looked at a number of pages on them and they all talked about domestication in Hawaii (from seeds brought from Australia) in the 1920s that led to worldwide expansion of domestication. None of them mentioned earlier domestication in Australia, although the trees were scientifically described in the 1800s.
Plants still growing in the wild has nothing to do with whether they’ve been domesticated or not. Previous attempts to domesticate them all failed. One of the key discoveries by the guy who was successful was that the soil needs to be much more acidic than for other domesticated plants. The usual practice was to plant them in typical crop soil and the plants would die.
Note that macadamia trees still grow wild in Australia, although they’re now considered endangered because so much of their habitat has been destroyed.
I see. By ‘domesticated’ I was thinking along the lines of ‘altered to improve for human consumption’ like domesticated corn, for example. And since wild blueberries hardly seem different than what you get at the store, I was confused. But blueberries are domesticated in the sense that they can now be farmed.
The plants are different – wild blueberries are lowbush, growing low to the ground, and need to be picked bending over; the domestic are highbush, maintained generally at 5’ to 6’ tall for easier picking – some of the berries will be lower down, but most can be picked while standing.
The berries are somewhat different: domestic blueberries are larger, and overall have a blander flavor, though some domestic varieties have a flavor nearly as good as the wild ones.
These, or a very similar species, also grow wild in woods and moors all over northern Europe. I’ve noticed the wild ones stain your hands and mouth much more than the shop bought ones.
There’s also a type of cranberry that grows wild in Europe, often alongside wild blueberries (AKA blaeberries or bilberries). My mum used to make sauce from them, and jam from the blaeberries.
