Roots

the roots on the left in this series of photographs are those of the annual winter wheat....the ones on the right are the perennial intermediate wheat grass ( which we will be planting in the spring...i've got something like 120,000 seeds...there will be wheat grass at home and anywhere else i can get away with it as well)...a graphic demonstration of why perennials come back every year...above ground dies back, but the roots are deep enough to survive most cold...it's also a graphic demonstration of one possible reason why early agriculturalists anuualized staple crops during the process of domestication...a lot of energy that could go into producing seeds goes to developing the roots instead ( the gama grass we planted isn't supposed to seed until the end of its third season...until then everything goes into the root system)...so, perhaps, there were more calories per unit of work with annuals...and perhaps that made saving and preserving seeds for the next planting season an attractive alternative to a less work/ less production of a perennial based agricultural system...the folks at the land institute ( which is where i lifted the photograph from) are trying to breed perennials with the grain yield of annuals in an effort to overcome industrial farming's dependence on huge infusions of petrochemicals...i'm curious to see what they'll find. http://www.landinstitute.org/vnews/display.v