The differences between wild and cultivated plants

Plants we grow to eat have not arisen completely naturally.  Instead they have been bred over thousands of years.  Shrubs and trees with nuts have been bred for larger seeds.  In the same way fruit trees and shrubs with berries have been bred to give larger and sweeter fruit.  Same applies to herbs having eatable fruits and berries.  Herbs have been bred for larger buds, leaves and stalks too.  This way many vegetables have arisen.

In some cases cultivated plants have entirely lost their ability to reproduce on their own.  Bananas don’t grow on a tree but on a type of oversized herb.  The wild form’s fruits are full of seeds as large as peas.  Through millennia they have been bred to have smaller and smaller seeds.  Eventually a variety arose which entirely lacked seeds.  It can only reproduce though cuttings.  As such it has become dependent on humans for its reproduction.

Humanity’s biggest food source is today cereals.  In principle they consist of grasses cultivated for their seeds.  The first difference arising when they started being cultivated was the seeds not falling of by themselves.  Since then they have been bred to have more and larger seeds.  Which may also mean their seeds being closer.  In maize they are so close people have to separate them.  Otherwise they germinate so close to each other the nutrients are insufficient to any.

Breeding for more and larger seeds have been done to herbs too.  Some can be mistaken for cereals since they are used in the same way.  Examples are buckwheat (no real wheat), chia and quinoa.  No-one of these counts as a cereal since they are not grasses.  Others are called legumes because they belong to this family.  Such includes beans, lentils and peas.  In contrast cocoa and coffee does not belong to this plant family.  They are just called “beans” because they vaguely resemble such.

Moreover, there are herbs having eatable roots.  Some of them have been bred to make the root bigger.  Tastier roots they have been bred for too.  In some cases their use has changed in historical times.  For examples beetroot and sugar beet are the same species.  The later has been bred as late as the 19th century from the wild form of sea beet.  Earlier forms of sugar beet are today used for animal fodder.

Finally, there are plants cultivated for their fibres.  The most important today is cotton which consists of shrubs with hairy fruits.  Over thousands of years they have been bred for the fruit to be bigger.  Otherwise plant fibres mostly come from herbs.  Examples are flax, hemp, jute and ramie.  In these cases herbs have been bred to have thicker stalks.  Extracting fibres from wood is a modern phenomenon.  I don’t know how it is with bamboo which are woody grasses.  Were there fibre extraction before the industrialism it was not very widespread.

 

Uploaded on the 13th of February 2025.