spring wheat and landraces

"land races have a certain genetic integrity. they are often recognizable morphologically; farmers have names for for them and different land races are understood to differ in adaptation to soil type, time of seeding, data of maturity, height, nutritive value, and other properties. most important they are genetically diverse. such balanced populations-variable, in equilibrium with both environment and pathogens, and genetically dynamic- are our heritage from past generations of cultivators. they are the result of millennia of natural and artificial selections and are the basic resources upon which future plant breeding must depend."
j r harlan "our vanishing genetic resources" science vol 188 618-621.

"landrces are usually kept as populations rather than as carefully selected varieties or cultivars, and as populations landraces are characterized by great genetic and phenotypic variation within named types. thus , wheat landraces within a single village in turkey show traits such as black, white, or red grains; the presence and absence of awns; tightly and loosely packed seed heads; and different ablities to tolerate drought or poor soils. [seven different] wheat species and varieties...were collected in kutahaya turkey, in a single field that the farmer identified as having one landrace...in contrast maize landraces in mesoamerica show far less variation within a single named type, no doubt refelcting the fact that maize seed is selected from individual ears while wheat seed in turkey is usually selected in bulk from the pile of wheat on the threshing floor."
stephen b. brush. "farmers' bounty: locating crop diversity in the contemporary world."

i harvested the spring wheat on campus this morning ( the top photo is zea diploperennis and the bottom one is maize...the fourth photo is the spring wheat patch after i harvested it, turned in twenty pounds of compost, and replanted it with rutabagas...just to get that out of the way before i go on) because it was ready to come in ( as you can see in the third photo)...i have some in the back yard that isn't quite done yet...that seems to be the story of this season...the shade in my back yard has kept things at a bit slower pace than the one the full sun on campus has set...adjustments are in order...i have been reading some about landraces and folk taxonomies since i am not a botanist...or anything else beyond someone with a bit of grounding in anthropology...and so feels more at home with more generic names than with linnaeus' system. ( " the common warnings about the futility of using folk nomenclature in the systematic description of crop species should, therefore, be tempered with the appreciation that crops are as much cultural as biological artifacts" [brush 2004]) so spring wheat and winter wheat will do nicely..the second photo shows that they are cousins at least...the seed heads are very nearly the same size, and while the winter wheat ( on the left in the photo) seems to have seeds packed much more closely together it actually ( by my count) only has one more grain of wheat than the spring wheat seed head does...perhaps the size of the awns on the spring wheat has something to do with the seeming difference...once the grain is threshed and winnowed it is very difficult to tell one from the other by color or size...i can see why turkish farmers collecting grain from the threshing room would say that wheat is wheat...the only real way to tell them apart without a great deal of empirical knowledge about them ( which i do not have...i rely on labels and different containers ) would be to sow them in the fall and see which one survived...winter wheat germinates very quickly and establishes a root system before it goes dormant for winter...i doubt spring wheat would survive...that would tell the tale and would also be a waste...so the spring wheat and winter wheat folk classifications serve a very definite purpose that linnaeus's might not...culture is about local conditions and adaptation to them...something that gets lost in the age of the internet, electronic media, advertizing, consumerism, and "reality" tv...i'm using my backyard and all the books i can find to re-adapt myself to the idea.

jimbo lane paid a visit to the garden while i was on campus today...jimbo is an old and dear friend who has been unstinting in his support for whatever i happen to be up to...from music to labor studies to anthropology, not to mention hours of history...thanks jimbo!