the yema de huevos potatoes i got from the usda are classified as a "primitive cultivar" which means they are "unimproved"...domesticated, however the artificial selection that domesticated them had been pursued too deeply into domestication so that once they were harvested they quickly began to chit...so you ate them or replanted them...the ones i received ( which are doing well right now ) arrived already sprouted ( first photo ) and i planted them immediately...working from that i began to wonder about the wheat in my yard...the second photo is of hard red winter wheat and the next two are pacific blue stem...and the last is emmer
the hulls ion the emmer wheat are exceptionally thick compared to the other wheat i am growing and threshing the grain ( which i had to do before i planted it ) is a pain..and if you take a reasonably close look you'll see that the other wheat's ears contain more grain than the smaller emmer ears...so...smaller ears...thougher hulls...more work per calorie of food...emer is an old wheat, domesticated around ten thousand years ago and i wonder how much is actually grown each year...i got them as "heirloom" seed and i wonder if they would be classified as a "primitive cultivar"...it's easy enough to see why early agriculturalists would move on from emmer as other varieties of wheat we "improved" by artificial selection...as the grain ripens we'll see if fresher grain is easier to thresh than what i received as seed and we will compare it with the other varieties in terms of the amount of work threshing takes ( winnowing will always be a pain no matter what variety )
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