BREAD PLANTS 



55 



BUCKWHEAT 



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The most interesting thing about buckwheat 

 is that it is not wheat, nor even a grain or grass. 

 It is the seed of a plant of the Smartweed Family. 

 We all know this pink-flowered smartweed that 

 grows in swampy ground, and the knot-grass that 

 creeps around the back door. The dock, sorrel, 

 and pieplant belong to the same family. Buck- 

 wheat is an annual with slender, branching stem 

 two feet high, bearing white flowers and a three- 

 cornered, starchy "nut" in a brown hull. 



Because the seed looks like a beech nut, the Old 

 English "buck" (meaning beech), is combined 

 vvith wheat, which originally meant white, in the 

 name. 



The triangular kernel is white and rich in starch, 

 though deficient in other elements, and therefore 

 lower in food value than the true grains. Yet it is 

 grown .extensively in many countries of Europe 

 and Asia, ground into coarse meal, and made into 

 porridge or cakes. The buckwheat cakes of 

 winter mornings in the northern states consume 

 most of the crop raised in this country. Several 

 millions of bushels are thus used annually to make 

 our " flapjacks." 



The wild buckwheat grows on the banks of the 



