an andean leitmotif

this post has sprung from yesterday's rant about quinoa and some thinking about what "native" means...there are native plants in my yard ( jerusalem artichokes are an abundant example ) however the corn in a bucket and its ancestor teosinte are not...neither are quite a few of the others...quinoa is andean ( and something i have not grown yet...but may )...and so are the potatoes and yacon in the first photo....the potato fruit in the second can trace its genetic make-up back to one of the micro-climates andean elevations provide for potato diversity..the nasturtium in the third photo has descended from incan gardens and has produced flowers ( which are very peppery..spice blooms..i ate one a while ago..the taste, and a lingering bit of burn, are still in my mouth..i did not eat the one in the fourth photo though ) and seeds ( fifth ) and a vine ( sixth ) that is pushing seven feet or so in length...the bogota market mashua in the seventh photo has produced a vine about five feet long ( eighth...pardon the gardener's presence for scale ) and another even longer ( ninth )...i searched the vines for signs of anything that might resemble a mashua seed and found none ( in fact i have not seen anything that would pass for a mashua flower ) so we will be propagating the mashua by cloning tubers ( or purchasing more..incidentally they have every bit as much a peppery taste as the nasturtium flower when eaten raw...when cooked however they turn sweet )...while i was looking for seeds i noticed that the mashua and nasturtiums have a common behavior...they both vine but do not produce tendrils...the stems of the leaves do double duty as both support for the leaves and as tendrils to support the vine ( tenth and eleventh )...finally a group protrait of fruit from andean imports from my back yard...the geographer alfred crosby called the importation of european plants tot he new world by the western usurpers "ecological imperialism" which has its merits as a concept...the columbian exchange wasn't one way though...who doesn't associate potatoes with ireland or tomatoes with italy? maize is not andean in origin so we haven't touched on that plants impact yet..maybe later.