CHAPTER XVIII 

 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED GRAINS AND GRASSES i 



Cultivated plants, like domesticated animals, originated in the wild • The 



grasses • Wheat • Barley • Indian corn • Oats • Rye • Rice • Sorghum • Sugar 



cane • Millet • Buckwheat • Timothy • Blue grass • Redtop • Orchard grass • 



The Festucas • Miscellaneous grasses 



Cultivated plants, like domesticated animals, originated in 

 the wild. The succeeding chapter will show briefly how it was 

 that the choicest plants, like the most useful animals, came to be 

 appropriated by man, — taken out of their wild surroundings and 

 more or less completely domesticated. The present chapter will 

 deal with a few of the more important of the cultivated plants, 

 some of which are not yet fully domesticated. 



By far the most useful of all plants is the so-called grass 

 family, used for grain, forage, and pasture. Botanically the 

 grasses are distinguished by narrow, parallel-veined leaves on a 

 jointed hollow stem bearing seeds on a more or less compact 

 spike at the top, like timothy and wheat, or, occasionally, at one 

 of the joints midway up the stem, as in Indian corn. These 

 plants are valuable, first, for their seeds, which are numerous and 

 large and distinguished for their starch content, and sometimes, 

 as in corn, for their oil. They are also valuable for forage be- 

 cause the immature stem and leaf when cured are eaten greedily 

 by nearly all domesticated animals.^ Besides this, many of the 

 smaller species, like blue grass and the so-called buffalo grasses 



* See Darwin's ''Animals and Plants under Domestication," Vol. I, chaps, ix, 

 X, and "Origin of Cultivated Plants," by Alphonse de Candolle, for additional 

 information about cultivated species. The latter volume has been freely drawn 

 upon for material in the present chapter. 



* Contrary to common belief, the pig likes hay, but he va.stiy prefers clover 

 or alfalfa to timothy or any of the grasses. See under Leguminous Plants. 



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