8o 



History of Wheat. 



Both the Soft and the Dwarf wheats date back to equally remote 

 times, both show a similar distribution in the past, and their 

 general structural resemblance is sufficiently great to suggest a 

 common origin. What it was we know not. Their primitive 

 form will probably one day be traced back to a third species of 

 wild wheat and to an area not very far distant from that whence 

 the Emmer and Hard wheats came. Here, at any rate, is ample 

 scope for further exploration. 



The last of the wheats with which I have to deal is the Spelt 

 proper, Triticum Spelta. Its origin has so far been quite obscure. 

 It is mostly considered to have descended from Emmer, although 

 the structure of its axis and its glumes lend little support to that 

 theory, which probably had its origin in the early confusion of 

 the popular names of the Spelt wheats. Spelt has so far never 

 been found in any of the prehistoric settlements. Even its name 

 Spelta was unknown until a.d. 301, when it appears for the first 

 time in an edict by the Emperor Diocletian. It probably came to 

 the Romans from the Germans, as Gradmann suggested in 1901. 

 Since then, in a monograph, " Der Dinkel (Spelt) und die Ala- 

 mannen," he has produced strong evidence that Spelt was the 

 staple grain of the Alamans, who brought it with them into South 

 and West Germany from their old home east of the Elbe. From 

 there it would have spread to the Alps, Italy, France, and Northern 

 Spain. Gradmann's expression "east of the Elbe" has evidently 

 to be taken in a wide sense, as there is no grass in Eastern Ger- 

 many or Western Russia from which Spelt could have descended. 

 But still further east, or rather south-east, around the northern 

 shores of the Black Sea, whence the Alamans may very well have 

 come originally, a species of JEgilops occurs, A. cylindrica or 

 Triticum cylindricum, which comes structurally so near to the 

 Spelt that I feel almost convinced that it is the primitive form of 

 the latter. The usual slender forms of Triticum 'cylindricum are 

 perhaps not so suggestive in this direction ; but occasional stouter 

 specimens approach very closely to it in the nature of the spindle, 

 the texture and the cut of the outer glumes and the curiously pro- 

 truding inner or floral glumes. Moreover, there is at Kew a 

 specimen of Triticum, cylindricum raised from seeds found among 

 grain refuse in the Leith Docks, near Edinburgh, which might be 

 taken for a pubescent but otherwise almost typical Spelt, except 

 for the characteristic awns of the terminal spikelet. This theory 

 of the descent of Spelt from Triticum cylindricum does not exclude 

 the possibility of early crossing with true wheats, as some of the 

 peculiarities of Spelt suggest. For all we know, the Leith casual 

 may be a cross between Triticum cylindricum- and a pubescent 

 true wheat, similar to the hybrid of Triticum Spelta and a 

 pubescent unbearded wheat, described by Koernicke as Triticum 

 Spelta var. recens. 



