South Carolina 10: Trade

When South Carolina congressmen became more vociferous about the supposedly false theories of modern science, I began to wonder how Charleston had ever produced the important innovations in botany that underlay its lifestyle: the selection of new types of rice and roses. Periodically, I’ll be publishing the result of my inquiries into the lives of two innovative growers, Hezekiah Maham (rice) and John Champneys (roses). Previous entries can be found under "South Carolina" in the index at the right.

This entry looks at the spread of rice through trade to Madagascar where legend places Maham’s rice. Some of the history is preparing for more future discussions of Africa and Spain. The photographs are of another mystery plant.

Weather: Warmer afternoons; last snow 2/22/13; 11:30 hours of daylight today.

What’s green: Few rose stems; juniper, pine, and other evergreens; yucca, grape hyacinth, garlic, gypsum phacelia leaves; alfilerillo leaves greening.

What’s red: Cholla; apple, apricot, sandbar willow branches; Madonna lily leaves.

What’s grey or blue: Winterfat leaves; western stickseed leaves reviving.

What’s yellow: Globe and weeping willow branches.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia, petunia.

Animal sightings: Small brown birds.

Weekly update: Trade, historically, has fostered economic growth and then expanded to feed the needs it generated.

Africa apparently was a world of small communities who traded among themselves before Arab conquerors fanned out after the Sunni Umayyads deposed the established Moslem powers in 661. The Damascus caliphate spread to Egypt in 670 and across northern Africa to Spain in 711, then down to Mauritania in 734.

The Umayyads were deposed by the Shia Abbasids in 750, who moved the Moslem capital to Baghdad, and eventually established a trade network that spread from the Umayyad retreat in Spain across northern Africa and the middle east through northern India to the Tarim basin of western China.

Bernard Lewis has found the earliest reference to rice comes from the conquest of the Basra area on the Persian frontier by Moslem tribesmen in the 600's. They tested the unknown grain as food after a horse that had eaten some didn’t die.

It probably became more common as a luxury among the elite after the Abbasids developed Basra as an intellectual center. At some time it was introduced to Egypt, then Spain. The Ishmali Fatimids, who deposed the Abbasids in Egypt in 909, spread north to Sicily, taking rice with them.

Arab traders began moving down the east African coast to Manda island off Kenya in the 800's. Soon after items carved from chlorite schist quarried on the northwest coast of Madagascar appeared in east Africa. The success of a Yemeni clan at Mogadishu in the middle 1100's, brought traders from Shiraz to Kilwa, an island off Tanzania in the late 1100's.

In the early 1300's, the Mahdali, an Ishmali clan from southern Aden, took over Kilwa and then the east African gold trade. Arab traders weren’t as interested in developing new markets as they were in redirecting the existing trade in gold. Urban centers emerged as a consequence, abetted by the availability of surplus food to support urban populations and supply travelers.

Madagascar was drawn into the web of trade. Iharana, where Chinese export China was found in graves from the late 1300's, developed in the northeast as another source for three-legged bowls made from metamorphic rock. The growing port of Aden, with its community of Indian merchants from Gujarat, imported rice from Kilwa, which Richard Gray believes could only have come from Madagascar.

Mande speakers near the headwaters of the western branch of the Niger in west Africa grew glaberrima rice, which Judith Carney believes made possible the earliest sub-Saharan kingdom of Ghana.

Desert caravans, guided by the Sanhaja, linked the peoples of the Mediterranean with the savannah of the Mande, each of whom seems to have remained isolated from one another. The revitalizing Sunni Almoravids from Mauritania attacked Ghana’s main city, Awdaghost, in 1055, before they took Córdova in 1102, setting off the reconquest.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the southern Mande, the Malinke, moved along the Niger to establish the towns of Mali along the bend of the river. Timbukto became a center of learning for the Songhai empire to the northeast in the 1300's.

The exposure to Islam and the requisite trips to Mecca through Egypt, at least among the elite, provided the opportunity for people from the Sahel and savannah to travel to areas with different irrigation systems and different varieties of rice.

Notes:
Carney, Judith. Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas, 2001.

Garlake, Peter. The Kingdoms of Africa, 1978.

Gray, Richard. "Southern Africa and Madagascar" in The Cambridge History of Africa: From c.1600 to c.1790, volume 4, 1975, edited by Richard Gray.

Lewis, Bernard. The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years, 1995.

Photographs: I’ve been trying to identify this flower for years, with no luck. It has been difficult to take photographs that reveal detail, because the stems holding the flowers move in the slightest breeze. It grows along the roadside, often as a single plant.

1. Unidentified flower opens early, and closed by mid-morning. This picture taken on a cloudy day at 10:40am, 18 August 2013.

2. I call it madcap, because all I usually see are the flower’s remains. This picture taken at 9:15am, 23 August 2009.

3. It may be a biennial or a perennial that exploits winter moisture. Young leaves, 4 September 2011.

4. Young plant, 1 December 2011.

5. The stems have swollen joints, 11 September 2011.

6. The stems often turn reddish in summer. Blooming plant in the process of dropping its petals, taken at 6:30am, 5 July 2008.

7. Stems get to be three to four feet high in the summer. Characteristic growth, perhaps the same plant as #6, 5 July 2008.

8. Plant in full bloom, same time and day as #1, 14 August 2011.

South Carolina 9: DNA Studies

When South Carolina congressmen became more vociferous about the supposedly false theories of modern science, I began to wonder how Charleston had ever produced the important innovations in botany that underlay its lifestyle: the selection of new types of rice and roses. Periodically, I’ll be publishing the result of my inquiries into the lives of two innovative growers, Hezekiah Maham (rice) and John Champneys (roses). Previous entries can be found under “South Carolina” in the index at the right.

This entry looks at the mechanics of botanical change. Last week’s entry defined the species name. The photographs are of another mystery plant.



Weather: Maybe a quarter inch of snow Monday night, didn’t survive long the next day; 11:19 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Few rose stems; juniper, pine, and other evergreens; yucca, Madonna lily, grape hyacinth leaves.

What’s red: Cholla; apple, apricot, sandbar willow branches.

What’s grey or blue: Winterfat, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow: Globe willow branches; weeping willow branches much more yellow.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Small brown birds.



Weekly update: Gregor Mendel was doing his pea inheritance experiments at the same time Darwin was developing the theory of natural selection, but the monk’s work was not publicized until 1900.

Breeders already had enough experience with the variability of hybrids to recognize the statistical patterns he described, that people with blue eyes inherit their eye color from both parents because the blue allele is recessive, and that crossing a red and white pea would produce a red or white flower 25% of the time, and a pink the rest.

Rose growers confirmed his work, especially when they took a hybrid and backcrossed it with one of its parents. It’s easy for them to say Champneys Pink Cluster introduced a recessive gene for reblooming because their efforts produced results that confirmed their expectations.

In 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson published their work on the structure of DNA and scientists began using sophisticated instruments to determine exactly where each gene resided, and what each controlled.



Results for rice specialists have not been as satisfying as those for roses. Dormancy, that single domestication event posited by earlier researchers, was no longer simple because dormancy isn’t a physical trait like color, but either results from the structure of the outer layer of the seed or from the embryo. Its appearance isn’t tied to a single gene, but to areas of DNA that exists on several chromosomes.

A Chinese team found five quantitative trait loci have been identified on five chromosomes, and that dormancy increased in only four cases when they introduced an allele from a highly dormant indica cultivar. They learned the more genes they altered, the greater the dormancy.



A group in Korea found similar complexity when they looked at the literature on shattering, another trait hypothesized to have been central to domestication. The ability for the seed to separate easily at maturity without breaking is the consequence of hormonal processes that create a hardened abscission layer on the pedicel stem that holds the seed to the head.

They found reports that four alleles on four of rice’s twelve chromosomes have been linked to shattering, of which two are involved with the creation of the abscission layer. They also found six broader quantitative trait loci had been identified on six chromosomes.

The group created a shattering mutation by treating a non-shattering japonica variety with N-methyl-N-nitrosourea, then crossed it with five cultivars, including its parent. The results suggested the recessive sh-h gene on chromosome 7 was responsible for shattering. They noted that area was closely linked to the Rc location that controls red hull color and the qSD^s-7-1 experimentally tied to dormancy.



The level of amylose, a form of starch, is used to differentiate sticky japonica from fluffy indica rices. However, the tropical japonica javanica falls between the two.

In 1983, researchers for the Carnegie Institution discovered the Wx or waxy gene controlled amylose content in maize pollen and kernels. The gene has since been found in wheat, barley, millet and rice. In rice, the Wx^a allele is associated with dryland indica and Wx^b is found with wetland japonica.

However, a group of Japanese scientists found both existed in the two subspecies and that Wx^b predominates. The distinction between the two occurs during the encoding process when a nucleotide that follows the pattern AGGT in nirvana and rufipogon mutates to AGTT.

In other words, the causative agent isn’t the genetic allele, but something working on that allele during reproduction. Further, the change isn’t permanent, but can revert in the next generation. Another Japanese team found the same kind of change in the African glaberrima rice came from deleting and inserting a new unit in the nucleotide sequence, rather than substituting a T for a G.

Scientists now know a great deal more about rice, but without specimens with known provenance, they can’t say where Hezekiah Maham or John Joshua Ward got his seed. Richard Porcher has found the plats to Maham’s plantation and hopes to unearth some grains. Depending on the results, geneticists may be able to guess if Ward’s Carolina Gold was the direct, but mutant, offspring of Ward, or like the Blush Noisette, has another as yet unidentified parent that blew in from another field.



Researchers have, however, done something more extraordinary, unintentionally duplicated the daily experience of planters who were constantly surprised when their gold hulled rice turned white, or their white turned red. The very randomness of such traits forced them to become better observers, and thus more open to an explanation like that provided by Darwin when it became available.

Notes:
Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. “Searching the Origins of Carolina Gold,” The Rice Paper November 2009.

Ji, Hyeon-So, Sang-Ho Chu, Wenzhu Jiang, Young-Il Cho, Jang-Ho Hahn, Moo-Young Eun, Susan R. McCouch, and Hee-Jong Koh. “Characterization and Mapping of a Shattering Mutant in Rice That Corresponds to a Block of Domestication Genes,” Genetics 173: 995–1005:2006.

Shure, M., SR Wessler, N. Federoff. “Molecular Identification and Isolation of the Waxy Locus in Maize,” Cell 35:225-233, 1983.

Umeda M, H. Ohtsubo, and E. Ohtsubo. “Diversification of the Rice Waxy Gene by Insertion of Mobile DNA Elements into Introns,” The Japanese Journal of Genetics 66:569-86:1991.

Wan, J. M., L. Jiang, J.Y. Tang, C.M. Wang, M.Y. Hou, W. Jing and L.X. Zhang. “Genetic Dissection of the Seed Dormancy Trait in Cultivated Rice (Oryza sativa L.),” Plant Science 170:786-792:2006.

Yamanaka, Shinsuke, Ikuo Nakamura, Kazuo N. Watanabe, and Yo-Ichiro Sato. “Identification of SNPs in the Waxy Gene among Glutinous Rice Cultivars and Their Evolutionary Significance during the Domestication Process,” Theoretical and Applied Genetics 108:1200-124:2004.



Photographs:
1. A new, white-flowered nightshade appeared in my drive this summer. It either came in the gravel from northern Rio Arriba County, or in the tires of the back hoe that recently had been in the Four Corners area and southern Colorado. 25 August 2012. I now believe it is a Carolina Nettle, Solanum Carolinense

2. The leaves differ from the annual that showed in 2006 near my newly installed, cedar wood fence. That was probably Solanum triflorum. 13 August 2006.

3. This is probably some member of the Black Nightshade complex. Complex means botanists aren’t willing to commit themselves. A number of species names have been given, and they may all be variations on the same plant, or may be different. The one thing they agree is the berries are black. The alternative plant has red berries. 3 February 2013.

4. I don’t know if these berries were once black and faded with the snow, or if the weather turned cold before they could fully mature. I don’t look at every weed every day. 14 December 2012.

5. Blooming plant, 1 September 2012,

6. Closer view of flowers, 1 September 2012.

7. Berries forming, 30 September 2012.

8. Plant yesterday, 16 February 2012.



9. Closer vew of plant yesterday, 16 February 2012.

South Carolina 8: Genetics

When South Carolina congressmen became more vociferous about the supposedly false theories of modern science, I began to wonder how Charleston had ever produced the important innovations in botany that underlay its lifestyle: the selection of new types of rice and roses. Periodically, I’ll be publishing the result of my inquiries into the lives of two innovative growers, Hezekiah Maham (rice) and John Champneys (roses). Previous entries can be found under “South Carolina” in the index at the right.

This entry continues looking at the culture’s beliefs about the origins of its plants.

Weather: Some days warmer for a few hours, but cold before noon; last rain 1/28/13; 11:01 hours of daylight today.

The ruthless winds returned yesterday. First they suck up the moisture, then they remove the newly dried dirt and expose more moist ground to be raided. Los Alamos and Santa Fé have been getting snow showers, but we’ve only had clouds.

What’s still green: Few rose stems; juniper, pine, and other evergreens; yucca, Madonna lily, grape hyacinth leaves.

What’s red: Cholla; apple, apricot, sandbar willow branches.

What’s grey or blue: Winterfat, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow: Globe and weeping willow branches.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Small brown birds.

Weekly update: The facts about Carolina Gold rice and Champneys Pink Cluster rose are sparse. However, because each was important, others have created narratives that fit their beliefs. Not surprisingly those mythic explanations have changed with circumstances to fit our changing expectations for appropriate heroes.

Originally, people gave credit to John Champneys for the hybrid pink rose, but today people prefer Philippe Noisette. That’s not because of Champneys’ Tory leanings, which are largely unknown, but because Noisette married a mulatto in Haiti and lived openly with her and their six children in Charleston.

Earlier, people accepted the view that Hezekiah Maham’s rice, and that of early South Carolina, came from Madagascar. More recently, some scholars, especially Judith Carney, have taken the facts that the early methods for milling and winnowing rice came from Africa and that many of the slaves imported in the years when Henry Laurens was active in the trade came from the rice growing regions of west Africa, to suggest that not only was seed rice imported from Africa, but the entire agricultural tool kit, including irrigation methods, was introduced by Blacks in exchange for adoption of an easier task system of labor.

Few gardeners or farmers care about the origins of their plants, except as amusing trivia. However, the facts and the way they are interpreted can be important social indicators. The differences and similarities in the way two disparate plants are treated may go farther to reveal underlying cultural patterns.

The only facts we tend to accept today come from genetics. Recently, biologists at Florida Southern College have confirmed that all the DNA found in fragment bands in Champneys Pink Cluster is found in Parson’s Pink and existing musk roses. They also confirmed that only half the DNA found in Blush Noisette is shared with Champneys Pink Cluster, and the rest is from some unknown source. They made no attempt to determine which was the pollen and which the seed parent for Champneys’ rose.

Genetic interpretations of the origin of rice are more controversial, because honor is involved. Ya-Long Guo and Song Ge believe the rice genus, Oryza, diverged within the grass family about 15 million years ago during the Miocene and the African varieties separated from the Asian about 7 million years ago.

The closest relative of modern rice, Oryza sativa, is rufipogon, itself dervied from nivara, while the nearest species to domesticated African rice, glaberrima is barthii. Nivara and barthii share a common ancestor. All are considered be part of the same AA genome, distinct from five other groups of modern rice.

The Asian rice divided into two subspecies, wetland japonica and dryland indica, as a result of domestication and the subsequent movement of rice eaters into new habitats. Some, looking at the genetics, argue the one is derived from the other. Others, looking at the archaeological record, believe they resulted from separate events that occurred south of the Himalayas, one in India, Myanmar or Thailand, the other in southern China or Vietnam.

As rice moved from China through Korea to Japan and the Philippines, then southeast to Sulawesi, Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, another, more tropical, subspecies emerged, javanica. This was the one taken to Madagascar. Linguists have determined current Malagasy is closest to the Maanyan language of Borneo, while geneticists have found the DNA of modern residents owes its Asian component to Borneo.

Medieval trade with Arabs on Kilwa island, who had contact through Aden with Gujuart, may have first introduced dryland rice from India. As trade and contacts across the Indian Ocean expanded after Europeans appeared, more ways were opened for rice imports.

In 1986, Koji Tanaka discovered javanica is still grown on the southeast coast of Madagascar where it’s extracted by foot, and milled with a mortar and pestle. In the uplands and west, indica dominates and animals are used to separate the rice. The northeast grows javanica and uses animal labor.

Notes: Javanica is now treated as a subspecies of japonica.

Burney, David. “Finding the Connections between Paleoecology, Ethnobotany and Conservation in Madagascar,” Ethnobotany Research and Applications 3:385-389:2005.

Carney, Judith. Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas, 2001.

Garlake, Peter. The Kingdoms of Africa, 1978.

Guo, Ya-Long and Song Ge. “Molecular Phylogeny of Oryzeae (Poaceae) Based on DNA Sequences from Chloroplast, Mitochondrial, and Nuclear Genomes,” American Journal of Botany 92:1548-1558:2005.

Hurles, Matthew E., Bryan C. Sykes, Mark A. Jobling, and Peter Forster. “The Dual Origin of the Malagasy in Island Southeast Asia and East Africa: Evidence from Maternal and Paternal Lineages,” The American Journal of Human Genetics 76:894-901:2005.

Joshi, S. P., V. S. Gupta, R. K. Aggarwal, P. K. Ranjekar, and D. S. Brar. “Genetic Diversity and Phylogenetic Relationship as Revealed by Inter Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) Polymorphism in the Genus Oryza,” Theoretical and Applied Genetics 100:1311-1320:2000.

Tanaka, Koji. “Rice and Rice Culture in Madagascar,” Tonan Ajia Kenkyu 26:367-393:1989.

_____ “Malayan Cultivated Rice and Its Expansion - Part Three,” Agricultural Archaeology 97-107:1997.

Photographs:
1. Tis the season for going through the summer’s pictures to try to identify the unknowns. For years, I thought Green Flower was in the morning glory family, with its five petals joined into a plate. I found nothing. Flower taken 7 September 2008.

2. One day this summer when I was turning every page of Geyata Ajilvsgi’s Wildflowers of Texas, I saw pictures of False Nightshade that had similar flowers, but very dissimilar leaves. This plant has long, narrow, dark green leaves. Leaves taken 2 October 2011.

3. Sometimes they rise a bit and show wavy edges and a backward arch. Leaves taken 26 July 2008.

4. The Solanaceae connection isn’t obvious, despite those occasional leaves. It center doesn’t protrude and the petals are not pinned back like those of tomatoes. Flower taken 6 June 2011.

5. At least one plant has been growing in the gravel of my drive since 1997. Sometimes there were more, but usually only two or three. The leaves would spread into low, round masses, but would not leave the drive and would not accept transplanting.

This year, after I had work done on the drive, and more gravel delivered, the plants in the drive were larger. They also spread down the bank and provided ground cover for some annuals. I don’t know it they are the seed from the same plants, or if new seed was brought in from the north. Plants filling the spaces between larkspur, juniper, Shirley and California poppies, 13 August 2012.

6. The man doing the backhoe work said the plants were common in his area, but he had no name for then. They're just one of those things that grow, that serve no obvious purpose, but aren’t dangerous enough to attack. Plants around blue-gray California poppy, 10 November 2012.

7. I should have known they weren’t a morning glory. They’re cold hearty. After temperatures fell to 15 in mid-November, the leaves disappeared, but the green stems remained. It was only after the snow of mid-December, that everything died. Plant with cottonwood leaves, 21 December 2012.

8. So this week, I followed Ajilvsgi’s lead, and looked up Chamaesaracha in E. O. Wooton and Paul C. Standley’s Flora of New Mexico. It has no pictures and useless descriptions, but did list two species that grow in New Mexico. This is coronopus, even though the USDA doesn’t show it growing in Rio Arriba county. Flower buds, 24 April 2011.

9. The plant has sticky hairs, which is why the pictures often show more dirt than detail. The perennial has some kind of berry which has been used by the Hopi and Navajo, but I’ve never seen one. The common name, Green Leaf Five-eyes, is no more useful than the Green Flower I’ve called it for years, when I protected it. I’ll probably still call it that, at least to myself, and hope it comes back along the bare drive bank. It is one of those plants that may be insignificant, but give pleasure all the same. Plant and flowers, 11 August 2006.

South Carolina 7: Rice’s Tale Variants

When South Carolina congressmen became more vociferous about the supposedly false theories of modern science, I began to wonder how Charleston had ever produced the important innovations in botany that underlay its lifestyle: the selection of new types of rice and roses. Periodically, I’ll be publishing the result of my inquiries into the lives of two innovative growers, Hezekiah Maham (rice) and John Champneys (roses). Previous entries can be found under “South Carolina” in the index at the right.

Maham is not given credit for his discovery. This posting looks at the interpretations of the origin tale as evidence of South Carolina’s evolving attitudes towards its botanical innovators. It includes an interpretation of Maham’s own comments.

Weather: Warm temperatures during the week soaked up the snow protected by shadows; yesterday’s misting rain washed more away; last rain 1/26/13; 10:18 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Few rose stems; juniper, pine, and other evergreens; yucca. Moss is emerging in shadows where snow stayed long enough to melt into the ground.

What’s red: Cholla; apple, apricot, sandbar willow branches. Some pink leaves are a deeper maroon. Western stickseed leaves turned purple-gray.

What’s grey or blue: Snow-in-summer, winterfat, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow: Globe and weeping willow branches.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia, petunias.

Animal sightings: Small brown birds.

Weekly update: Alexander Salley, who became state archivist for South Carolina, reprinted eight versions of Fayrer Hall’s origin tale. Each has been retold by others. Still others have tried to combine them into a single tale, emphasizing different elements. The history of the history has moved from some attempts to explain a confusing situation, the varieties of rice found in South Carolina, to syntheses that compounded the confusion.

The first person Salley mentioned was James Glen, governor between 1743 and 1756, who reprinted Hall’s version in 1761. He emphasized chance and the irrelevance of the proprietors when he added (motif 3, see notes) “it was not done with any previous Prospect of Gain, but owing to a lucky accident, and a private experiment.” The (4) gift motif was expanded when he added it was done “for the benefit of Mankind.”

In 1766, when conflicts between the crown and the colony were escalating after the Sugar Act of 1764, Gentleman’s Magazine of London published an account by Peter Collinson, a friend of Charles Dubois, which contained many of the same motifs as Hall.

The (1) individual responsible for introducing the rice was the treasurer of the East India company, and the recipient was (5) Thomas Marsh, a Carolina merchant, after they (3) happened to meet in a coffee house. Dubois (4) gave Marsh (6) a “money bag” of (2) East India rice.

Since the quantity was so small, (9) more rice was brought by a Portuguese slave trader who (4) gave, but actually bartered, some of the ship’s provisions for fresh produce. The (3) unexpected rice (8) made men more sure rice could be a viable commodity.

However, (9) the planters still didn’t have enough, and, in 1713, the colony paid bounties to captains who brought rice. One shipment came (2) “from the Streights, probably Egypt” or Milan. Another bounty was paid for rice that came with a slave ship from (2) Madagascar.

Salley found no record of the bounties, and believed the London writer was thinking of the gratuity paid to John Thurber. What Salley didn’t mention was that the Portuguese and Madagascar ships were probably smugglers who provided cheap goods to Charles Town the way the pirates had. He did mention rice itself was smuggled to Portugal in 1708, and sold for fish that then was sent to London.

Collinson and Du Bois were both avid gardeners, active in exploring the natural resources of the colonies. Collinson imported plants collected by John Bertram, while Du Bois helped sponsor Mark Catesby trip to Charles Town in 1722. He also grew plants sent to him by his family from India.

In 1772, as rebellion against royal authority was brewing in France, a contributor to Guillaume Thomas Raynal’s history of European trade with the two Indies emphasized that the introduction was (3) “purely fortuitous,” the result of a ship returning from the (2) East Indies that (3) “happened to be cast away” and (6) “some bags” were (4) “taken from the ship.” Even so, “a trial was made of sowing them, which (8) succeeded beyond expectations”

During the war, in 1779, a Tory minister living in exile in London, Alexander Hewatt replaced the adventurer, Henry Woodward, with an idealized royal governor, Thomas Smith, who arrived in the colony in his mid-30's in 1684. When his wife died, he married Sabina de Vignon, the widow of Seigneur D’Arssens who had connections to William and Mary and the proprietors. When Sabina died in 1689, Smith petitioned the proprietors for rights to Van Arssens’ estates.

At the time the proprietors were having problems asserting their authority over the colony, and in 1693 transferred Van Arssen’s land to Smith and appointed him governor. Before he died in 1694, he tried to suppress the pirates who competed with the East India Company. I found nothing on-line about his life between the time he was born in Devon in 1648 and he appeared in the colony.

According to Hewatt, soon after Smith became governor, (3) a “fortunate accident happened” when (1) a brigantine from (2) Madagascar (3) touched on Sullivan Island outside the Charles Town harbor. Smith met with the captain who (4) “made him a present of a (6) bag of seed rice.” Smith (7) divided the rice between “Stephen Bull, Joseph Woodward, and some other friends.”

Hewatt then mentioned (9) DuBois to explain (11) “the distinction of red and white rice.”

The location of the accident and the identity of the planters have been elaborated. Sullivan’s Island was the location of the fort William Moultrie built that repulsed the first British attack on Charleston in 1776, while Hewatt was close to the last royal governor of the colony, William Bull, and probably heard family stories from descendants of Smith. Stephen Bull was William’s son, and his son, William’s grandson, also Stephen Bull, married Elizabeth Woodward. Salley couldn’t identify Joseph, who was not descended from Henry.

In 1798, after years of battle and intrigue to secure the French revolution, Raynal reissued his history and the current contributor said “opinions differ” on the introduction of rice, and he no longer thought it mattered if it came with a shipwreck, was sent by England, or brought by slaves, because what mattered was South Carolina was ideally suited to grow rice.

In 1802, another governor, John Drayton, published his version, which now gave “good government” a role. He said the first shipment of 1699 was an unprofitable variety, and it was only in 1696 that a larger, whiter variety was introduced The last is a trait associated with the rice of Hezekiah Maham, and Drayton may have been contrasting the rice that existed after the revolution, with that from before.

Drayton’s second introduction came when the (1) captain of a brigantine from (2) Madagascar (4) “presented” a (6) bag to the (5) governor (7) “who divided it between several gentlemen.” He adds, Mr. DuBois (9) “sent another parcel” which explains “the distinction which now prevails, between white and gold rice.”

In 1809, Henry Laurens’ son-in-law, David Ramsey deliberately introduced new elements. He suggested Thomas Smith “had been at Madagascar before he settled in Carolina” and that he was “an old acquaintance” of the captain of a (1) vessel from (2) Madagascar which (3) “being in distress, came to anchor near Sullivan’s Island.” The (1) ship’s cook (4) “presented” Smith with (6) “a small bag of rice.”

This time it’s Smith himself who (8) proved that rice could grow “luxuriantly.” He (7) distributed his “little crop” “among his planter friends” Salley said Ramsey went so far as to alter Edward Crisp’s 1704 map of Charles Town to mark the spot in Smith’s garden where the rice first grew, apparently unaware that the area could not have supported rice because it only had access to salt water.

Ramsey had been an active patriot during the war, jailed in Saint Augustine by the British. His more colorful version may have been influenced by Parson Weems’ attempts to create a dramatic past for the young republic with his books on George Washington and Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox. The later was published in 1805, based on notes by Peter Horry, but had been repudiated by Horry.

Salley’s last reference was to a genealogist, Guy Mannering Fessenden, who discovered John Thurber was buried in Warren, Rhode Island, and noted he had brought the rice (2) from India between 1694 and 1607.

David Shields of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation has since found another variant provided by John Legare in 1823. He told the South Carolina Agricultural Society (2) “the late Col. Henry Laurens “ (3) “imported” a (6) “small quantity of what is called the Gold-seed Rice, soon after the revolutionary war” which was (8) found to be so far superior to the white-hulled Rice before cultivated.”

Shields noted there was no evidence Laurens grew rice at Mepkin between the time he returned to Carolina after the war in 1784 and he died in 1892. Legare probably thought him as a better godfather than Maham, the way Hewatt thought the titled Thomas Smith was a more appropriate agent for change than the adventuring Henry Woodward.

Many recent writers have read some, or all of the accounts mentioned by Salley, and created their own syntheses, usually within a contemporary framework. For instance, Richard Schulze, who is growing heirloom Carolina Gold rice at his Turnbridge Plantation, has elaborated the accident:

“A Liverpool-bound brigantine sailing from (2) Madagascar was (3) badly damaged by a storm and blown off course; it set into the port of Charles Towne for repairs.”

and the nature of the gift

“Dr. Henry Woodward apparently (4) befriended the captain”

From there, the modern skeptic questions the traditional facts, noting “the ship, which was of American origin, was probably not trading legally as the British law at that time forbade trade outside of the colonies and the British Isles.”

He repeats Ramsay’s idea filtered through Salley that “Woodward proceeded to grow this in his garden in the city” before suggesting it was more likely he planted the seed at “the more suitable property on the Abbapoola Creek.”

He then notes not enough time passed between the summer of 1685 when the ship entered port and Woodward’s trip to the frontier where he died for him to (8) “produce a very good crop, which he then (9) distributed to his friends.” He concludes “he probably never had the opportunity to fully appreciate (10) the new industry that he was so instrumental in spawning.”

As for Joshua John Ward’s belief that Maham’s rice came from Madagascar, it may have. There were some relations with the island where André Michaux, who had left Charleston in 1796, died collecting plants in 1802. However, it’s more likely, Maham was simply saying his rice came from the black market and the origin is deliberately unknown.

Notes:
Motifs found in origin tales that explain the introduction of rice to South Carolina

1. Someone, usually unnamed
2. From Madagascar
3. Through some accident, usually a shipwreck
4. Gave, usually as a sign of gratitude
5. To Woodward, or some other prominent person
6. A peck or some other small amount of rice
7. Which was distributed free to the other planters
8. Who proved rice could grow in the colony
9. A second introduction
10. Is responsible for the spread of the crop
11. And the visible variations in the rice

Salley, A. S. Jr “The Introduction of Rice Culture into South Carolina,” Historical Commission of South Carolina Bulletin 6, 1919.

Schulze, Richard. Carolina Gold Rice: the Ebb and Flow History of a Lowcountry Cash Crop, 2005.

Shields, David S. “Who first planted Carolina Gold?,” The Rice Paper April 2008.

Photographs: More grasses, known, unknown, and guessed.
1. I think it’s blue grama grass, because it looks like a grama, doesn’t look like the grama growing wild in the yard, and that’s the name of the seed I planted in the area where it’s growing.

2. I think it’s buffalo grass, because I mixed buffalo grass with blue grama along the one walk, and it doesn’t look like anything in the yard. It never blooms, and reproduced by sending out runners.

3. But what is this? Is it the same as the “buffalo grass” at a different stage? Or, is it Bermuda grass? Or, is it something else. It also doesn’t seem to bloom, although there is sometimes a coxcomb growth associated with it.

4. They say Bermuda grass is hard to tell from crab grass, but I think this is crab grass. The seed stalk is attached to a clump of bunch grass.

5. When I wander on the prairie, I see grasses that resemble ones in my yard whose identity is only half guessed. What do you call a guess based on an associate with a guess? This grows like the grama grasses, with narrow, similarly shaped seed heads. Only, up close, they look more ragged.

6. This grows like a ring-muhly, only the dead grasses are at least six inches high. The new growth branches out from the side, and looks reddish.

7. Another of the monsoon grasses that emerges along the edge of the drive.

8. Another of the grasses that I think just appeared after the fire. It also seems to be a monsoon grass.

9. Another monsoon grass that looks so familiar, and yet I can’t identify it.

10. An annual monsoon grass that I call “barnyard grass.” The stalks are fuzzy, the seed heads shaped like sparklers.

11. And then, there are the grasses I know too well. Cheat grass is an annual that appears in the spring, then dies into mulch.

12. A brome grass plant showed up last summer. I don’t know if it’s going a be a pest or not. It’s in the same genus as cheat grass.

13. The biggest nuisance of all. An annual spring grass I call “three awn.” One friend of mine calls it squirrel tail. Another just says, ‘Oh That!” The segments fall apart when I touch them, and each causes an itching reaction if I pick them up to keep them from reseeding.

South Carolina 6: Rice’s Origin Tale

When South Carolina congressmen became more vociferous about the supposedly false theories of modern science, I began to wonder how Charleston had ever produced the important innovations in botany that underlay its lifestyle: the selection of new types of rice and roses. Periodically, I’ll be publishing the result of my inquiries into the lives of two innovative growers, Hezekiah Maham (rice) and John Champneys (roses). Previous entries can be found under “South Carolina” in the index at the right.

Maham is not given credit for his discovery. This posting gives the conventional history of the introduction of rice. I treat it as a legend.

Weather: Last snow 12/31/12; 10:03 hours of daylight today.

Afternoon temperatures have not risen much above freezing, but the sun has been bright and the snow has disappeared from open areas. Whatever moisture has remained in the air no longer has not been enough to provide cloud cover at night. Morning temperatures are getting lower and lower.

Clouds appear in late afternoon, but there are none showing on the weather maps. The moisture is not coming from an ocean. It’s been sucked out of the unprotected soil.

I begin to understand, the brutal winter climate is a much a reason only grasses grow here, as the lack of rain in summer. What else has adapted to zero air temperatures and a desiccating sun?

What’s still green: Few rose stems; juniper, pine, and other evergreens; yucca.

What’s red: Cholla; apple, apricot branches. Sandbar willow gotten redder.

What’s grey or blue: Snow-in-summer, winterfat, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow: Globe and weeping willow branches.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia, petunias.

Animal sightings: Small brown birds.

Weekly update: Rice was introduced at least three times into South Carolina: first in the early years of the colony, again after the revolution when planters needed to replace their lost seed grain, and then again when Joshua John Ward made his improved selection available.

The first occurred before there were many written records and has become the subject of folk history; the second is remembered in family tradition, and the third, a commercial transaction, was recorded for all to know by the participants.

Alexander Salley found the only public record of what became the folk tradition was a 1715 entry in the journal of the House of Commons noting the body had agreed to pay a gratuity of one hundred pounds to John Thurber for “bringing the first Madagascar Rice into this province.”

He found the first narrative explanation appeared sixteen years later in a pamphlet he attributed to Fayrer Hall, who had served in expeditions against pirates in 1718. Hall wrote the introduction of rice

“was owing to the following Accident. A Brigantine from the Island Madagascar happened to put in there; they had a little Seed Rice left, not exceeding a Peck or Quarter of a bushel, which the Captain offered and gave to a Gentlemen of the Name of Woodward. From Part of this he had a very good Crop, but was ignorant for some Years how to clean it. It was soon dispensed over the Province; and by frequent Experiments and Observations they found out Ways of producing and manufacturing it to so great Perfection, that it is thought it exceeds any other in Value. The Writer of this hath seen the Captain in Carolina, where he received a handsome gratuity from the Gentlemen of that Country.”

The basic motifs of the folk narrative, told in several variants, are that:

1. Someone, usually unnamed
2. From Madagascar
3. Through some accident, usually a shipwreck
4. Gave, usually as a sign of gratitude
5. To Woodward, or some other prominent person
6. A peck or some other small amount of rice
7. Which was distributed free to the other planters
8. Who proved rice could grow in the colony

In the first retelling, the identity of Thurber was reduced to a sea captain, who was now the one from Madagascar.

Between the time Charles II granted the land to eight proprietors in 1663 and Thurber’s petition, Madagascar was not controlled by any western power. Attempts by the British had ended in 1649, while the French were massacred in 1673.

The only westerners who visited the island after that were pirates, who exploited the slave trade after they’d been driven from the Caribbean. The British finally removed them from the island about the time Thurber made his petition. By then, the Sakalava had consolidated power, and the French had established their base on the nearby island of Bourbon, now La Réunion.

Hall used the word “accident” to suggest the introduction was a chance, not deliberate act. From the first the proprietors wanted to develop a colony and listed rice as one of the crops that was both suitable to the climate and congruent with the throne’s desire to establish a completely self-sufficient mercantile economy. In 1672, William Jeffereys sent a barrel of rice “for the prop. acct of the Lords Proprs of Carolina” which was received by the governor.

Many of the early settlers never accepted the legitimacy of the proprietors and had thrown off their power in 1720. The use of the word “accident,” like the hidden reference to pirates, may have been an attempt to suggest the proprietors had nothing to do with the introduction of rice as a crop and, by extension, the success of the colony.

The double reference to rice as a gift may have been another attempt to contrast proper behavior with that of the proprietors. The third governor of the colony, John Yeamans, shipped his surplus food to Barbados where he could make a profit rather than sell it to the settlers he’d brought with him who didn’t have enough to eat.

Woodward is assumed to have been Henry Woodward, who died sometime between 1685 and 1690. He had come to the area on the exploratory voyage of 1666 and stayed with the Cusabo on Port Royale sound. He was captured by the Spanish the next year. He escaped when Robert Searle raided Saint Augustine in 1668, and stayed with the pirates until shipwrecked on Nevis in 1669.

He returned to the area with the expedition that founded Charles Town in 1670, and explored the interior. His friendly relations with the Westbo opened trade with the Indians in 1674, an arrangement rejected by later settlers who precipitated a war that exterminated the tribe and replaced them with the Shawnee.

Disgraced, he went to London in 1682 to seek rehabilitation and returned as the official Indian agent for the proprietors with rights to a 20% commission on trade. He was in trouble again in 1685 for supporting the Yamasee and Scots settlers at Stuart Town against the proprietors.

His ambiguous loyalties to pirates, proprietors, rebellious settlers and native Americans made him a figure suspect to all. He’s the element in Hall’s narrative that became the least stable.

The quantity of rice usually struck the narrator as too small to explain the spread or variations in the crop, and so a second introduction was often mentioned, much like the story of Seth resolves problems of ancestry introduced by the fight between Cain and Abel. Hall suggested that

“Mr. Du Bois, Treasurer of the East-India Company, did send to that Country a small Bag of Seed-Rice some short Time after, from whence it is reasonable enough to suppose might come these two Sorts of that Commodity, one called Red Rice in Contradistinction to the White.”

This addendum introduces the remaining motifs in the origin tale:

9. A second introduction
10. Is responsible for the spread of the crop
11. And the visible variations in the rice

Notes:
Edgar, Walter. South Carolina: A History, 1998, on Yeamans.

Hall, Fayrer. The Importance of the British Plantations in America to this Kingdom, 1731, quoted by Salley.

Salley, A. S. Jr “The Introduction of Rice Culture into South Carolina,” Bulletin of the Historical Commission of South Carolina, no 6, 1919.

Photographs: The light on New Year’s Day was extraordinary. The sun was hidden behind clouds. Most came from reflections from the snow, which also provided a backdrop that made photographs unusually clear. All taken 1 January 2013.

1. Leather-leaf globemallow, empty flower holders; composite family.

2. Tomatillo seeds rattle in the unopened cases; nightshade family.

3. Black-eyed Susan cone, with no seeds remaining; composite family.

4. Áñil del muerto head, with a few seeds remaining; composite family.

5. Golden spur columbine, empty flower holders; buttercup family.

6. Alfalfa seeds; legume family.

7. Illinois bundle flower, empty flower holders; legume family.

8. Perennial four o’clock seed capsules, with black tongues exposed; four o’clock family.

9. Large-leaf soapwort, with black tongues exposed; pink family.

10. Yellow evening primrose, empty seed holders; evening primrose family.

11. Winterfat seed heads, some still full, some empty; composite family.