Sweet Corn

Weather: Power outage early yesterday, rain after dark, then snow that’s accumulated on every leaf blade and horizontal stem.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas; leaves on grape hyacinth, Japanese honeysuckle, vinca, sweet pea, golden-spur columbine, beards tongues, winecup mallow, alfilerillo; needle, June, pampas, and other grasses.

What’s gray: Winterfat, snow-in-summer; four-wing salt bushes are gray-green; buddleia, pinks and catmint leaves are blue gray.

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach, apricot and apple; purple aster leaves darkening.

What’s yellowed: Young stems on globe willow; leaves on fernbush yellowing; some arborvitae have browned.

What’s blooming indoors: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, small birds.

Weekly update: Sweetness is a recessive trait in Zea mays. Because plants do not reproduce easily when the two genes that control sugar are recessive (su), Paul Mangelsdorf believed all sweet corns were derived from the Chullpi strain in Peru and Bolivia. He noted the early archaeological remains of corn - and corn with its large cobs leaves lots of debris - showed evidence immature cobs and stalks had been chewed for their sugar.

Like Maíz de Ocho, sweet corn traveled from the southwest to the Mandan and Hidatsas of the upper Missouri, then skipped to the Iroquois. One would guess they obtained it during one of their forays in the west. It was growing along the Susquehanna in 1779 when John Sullivan and James Clinton destroyed forty Iroquois villages they believed were aligned with the British.

Richard Bagnal took some ears back to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where Plymotheus was growing it in 1822. The latter wrote, sweet corn "assimilated to the common corn," but he had discovered seed from suckers would breed true. He noted that, over time, the original crimson cob that had stained table linens disappeared.

Bagnal wasn’t the only source for native sweet corn. George Carter talked to a man named Hubbard at Harvard who said his family had been growing a yellow sweet corn since they received some from natives in the 1600s.

However, he was the most important. Following Plymotheus instructions, Gideon Smith described crossing Tuscarora and Sioux in Baltimore to produce Smith’s Early White, a large-grained white sweet corn he described in 1838. He mentioned he was able to restore the red cobs, but "got rid" of it because "it stained the lips and fingers while eating it."

Noyes Darling of New Haven, Connecticut, began experiments with an early yellow flint and a white sweet corn to produce Darling’s Early sweet corn in 1844. At the same time, Augustus Russell Pope was crossing a southern white corn with a northern early sweet corn in Somerville, Massachusetts, to produce Old Colony in 1845. Nathan Stowell of Burlington, New Jersey, crossed a northern sugary corn with Memomony, a soft field corn, to create Stowell’s Sweet Corn in 1850.

White sweet corn remained the snob’s choice until Atlee Burpee introduced Golden Bantam in his 1902 catalog as a cannable sweet corn that tasted better than existing varieties of white corn. He’d obtained his seed stock from a strain William Chambers developed in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Before he died, Chambers had been controlling the pollination of his ears and selecting the best.

Since, botanists have learned more about the genetic structure of corn to produce F₁ hybrids that maintain their sweetness after they’ve been picked. John Laughnan introduced the first, Illini Chief, in 1961 from a cross between Golden Cross Bantam and Iochief. Since it was difficult to reproduce, Illinois Foundation Seeds introduced Illini Xtra Sweet in 1968. J. Hove had created a triple cross. The kernels contain so little starch they shrivel when they dry.

Notes:
Carter, George F. "Sweet Corn among the Indians," Geographical Review 38:206-221:1948.

Giles, Dorothy. Singing Valleys: The Story of Corn, 1940, on Chambers. All I’ve found on Chambers is he lived in Greenfield on land he acquired in 1870 that had been a hatter’s shop on the stage road.

Larson, Debra Levey. "Supersweet Sweet Corn: 50 Years in the Making," University of Illinois press release, 7 August 2003.

Mangelsdorf, Paul C. Corn: It’s Origin, Evolution, and Improvement, 1974.

Parker, Arthur C. Iroquois Uses of Maize and Other Food Plants, 1910.

Plymotheus. Letter to the editor, New England Farmer, 7 September 1822; I haven’t see any further identification of him. Bagnal was probably the one who lived in Plymouth from 1753 to 1809.

Singleton, W. Ralph. "Noyes Darling, First Maize Breeder," The Journal of Heredity 35:265-267:1944, reprints Darling’s "Indian Corn - New Variety," Cultivator, 18 November 1845.

Smith, Gideon B. Albany Cultivator, 1838.

Photographs:
1. Canned Golden Sweet F₁ hybrid corn, Charter Research, Twin Falls, Idaho, released in 1975.

2. Canned white sweet corn. This was the preferred type over Thanksgiving in the local grocery store.

3. Silver Queen sweet corn, developed by Harvey Mauth for Rogers Brothers Seed Company of Idaho and released in 1955.

4. Golden Bantam sweet corn.

5. Xtra Sweet F₁ hybrid corn, derived from Illini Xtrasweet, bred by J. Hove and released by Illinois Foundation Seeds, 1968. Shriveled kernels.

Field Corn

Weather: Gentle rains Wednesday and Thursday, followed by morning mists rising from the river Friday and Saturday.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas; leaves on grape hyacinth, bearded iris, Japanese honeysuckle, vinca, sweet pea, violet, golden-spur columbine, beards tongues, winecup mallow, alfilerillo; needle, June, pampas, and other grasses.

What’s gray: Winterfat, snow-in-summer; four-wing salt bushes are gray-green; buddleia, pinks and catmint leaves are blue gray.

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach and apricot; purple aster leaves darkening.

What’s yellowed: Young stems on globe willow; leaves on fernbush yellowing; some arborvitae have browned.

What’s blooming indoors: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds.

Weekly update: Anthropologist, botanists, and politicians ask different questions about the origins of corn. The first want to know who did it, where they lived, and when. Botanists insist on understanding the whats and hows, the probabilities of hybridization. Nationalists only ask that their people be given credit as the first; their offspring want the royalties.

The rest of us have simpler questions. How do I grow it? When do I eat? From that perspective, the many pueblo varieties of corn fall into two types: flour and sweet.

The Hopi planted sweet corn over four days during the waxing moon of April in secluded niches and harvested it in July. Much was roasted and eaten when it was picked. Since it’s prone to mold, the remaining kernels were removed and dried for use as a sweetener.

Dietary corn was planted in fields from mid-May to late June. Crow-wing indicated in 1920 each clan was assigned a week to plant, but individuals could plant when they chose. The four-day sowings staggered tasseling dates so neighboring patches of wind-born pollen could not fertilize each other. Unlike sweet corn, it was gathered after it dried in September and October. The ears were stored and the kernels removed when needed for grinding or boiling.

This flint corn derived from one of the primary races of maize that developed in Mexico. Chapalote came from intermediate altitudes of Sonora and Chihuahua. This is the form found in the Tehuacán valley and the one found in Bat Cave in the Mogollon Mountains of Catron County from around 2000 bc. The shell or pericarp was brown, and could be popped on the cob.

The corn found in the strata of Bat Cave underwent a major change around 500 bc when varieties appeared that had been crossed with teosinte, the closest relative of maize. Since teosinte grows around corn fields in México, it’s assumed the hybrids came from there. One distinguishing feature is the pericarp may come in many colors. Another is that teosinte may introduce mutations that become permanent.

Maíz de Ocho appeared around 700 in western México. The eight-row variety spread into the southwest, then north to Colorado and east along the Arkansas River. From there the variety moved into lower elevations following cold soils and short growing seasons north up the Missouri river after the year 1000. From there the corn moved east along the southern Great Lakes to the Iroquois and New England. The kernels were easier to grind, the yields higher than their predecessors, and the plants could handle both drought and cold.

In 1851, Lewis Henry Morgan said the Iroquois planted a white flint corn that ripened first. They soaked it in wood ash lye for hominy. The second to ripen was a soft red they picked green and charred over pits to dry. Last to ripen was the white they used for flour.

They stripped some ears and braided the still attached husks into clusters that could be hung to dry and store. Other corn, including the charred red, was buried in grass-lined pits. Neither Morgan nor Arthur Parker gave an explanation. Centuries earlier, Jesuits had reported their bark-roofed long houses were flammable. Buried corn would survive catastrophe.

The eight-rowed corn became the ancestor of modern field corn. In the middle 1840s, near Peoria, Illinois, Robert Reid planted some reddish corn he’d obtained from Gordon Hopkins before he moved west from Brown County, Ohio, on the Ohio river east of Cincinnati. Hopkins’ family says it had been in their family since 1765 when men migrated into the Shenandoah valley from Baltimore.

The gourd-seed variety only grows well from Virginia south. When it failed to germinate in the prairie environment, Reid filled the spaces in his field with leftover yellow seed he got from neighbors. The New England corn crossed the southern variety. His son, James, worked to improve it by selecting out the red. Reid’s Yellow Dent became famous when it won first prize at Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.

Feed corns are softer than southwestern flints, whose kernels are surrounded by hard starch layers. In field corn the hard starch migrates to the sides, leaving a softer starch in the center that shrinks to produce the identifying top dent. One of its advantages was animals could chew it without having it ground. It also was more prone to diseases and predators. Breeders had to reintroduce resistence to store and export it.

Notes:
Crow-wing. A Pueblo Indian Journal 1920-1921, edited by Elsie Clews Parsons, 1925.

Galinat, W. C. and J. H. Gunnerson. "Spread of Eight-Rowed Maize from the Prehistoric Southwest," Harvard University Botanical Museum Leaflets 20:117-160:1963.

Giles, Dorothy. Singing Valleys: The Story of Corn, 1940, on Reid.

Jesuits. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites, 1898.

Mangelsdorf, Paul C. Corn: It’s Origin, Evolution, and Improvement, 1974.

Morgan, Lewis Henry. League of the Ho-de’-no-sau-nee or Iroquois, 1851.

Parker, Arthur C. Iroquois Uses of Maize and Other Food Plants, 1910.

Stephen, Alexander. Notebooks, 1882-1894, edited as Hopi Journal, 1936, by Elsie Clews Parsons, on Hopi planting times.

Wallace, Henry A. and William L. Brown. Corn and Its Early Fathers, 1988 revised edition, on Reid.

Whiting, Alfred F. Ethnobotany of the Hopi, 1939.

Photographs:
1. Gila Pima A’al Hu:ñ flint corn, Gila River Reservation, Arizona, Native Seeds Search, Tucson. The low, hot lands of the Pima and Papago in southern and central Arizona were a separate diffusion route for maize into the southwest. Rounded top.

2. Río Grande Blue flour corn, Native Seeds Search; from a mix of blue corn varieties from Río Grande pueblos. Rounded top.

3. Reid’s Yellow Dent corn. The red survives in streaks. Depression in top.

4. Southern corns have a different lineage and probably moved north along the lowland coast of México through areas like Tramaulipas to the southern Mississippi valley. Hickory King, southern dent corn for hominy; grown in 1880 by A. O. King of Hickory, Virginia, from an ear he received from friend; marketed by Burpee in 1885 as having a large grain and small cob. Depression in top.

5. McCormack’s Blue Giant dent corn, developed by Jeff McCormack from Hickory King and an unknown blue dent; released in 1994 by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Mineral, Virginia. Depression in top.

Growing Corn

Weather: Snow last Sunday was so fine, it didn’t accumulate in masses. Still it lingered in the shadows for several days, protected by afternoon temperatures that didn’t reach 32 degrees, then by high clouds.

Mornings are now so cloudless the effects of the sun are not mitigated and dawn temperatures average 20 degrees. Cold probably is killing any tender perennials like snapdragons that might have wintered over.

What’s still green: Juniper, arborvitae, piñon, other evergreens, yuccas; leaves on bearded iris, vinca, sweet pea, violet, golden-spur columbine, beards tongues, hollyhock, winecup mallow, alfilerillo, purple aster; needle, June and other grasses.

What’s gray: Four-wing salt bushes, winterfat, snow-in-summer; buddleia and catmint leaves blue gray.

What’s reddened: Cholla, young twigs on peach and apricot; new buds visible on peach.

What’s yellowed: Young stems on globe willow; leaves on fernbush and bouncing Bess yellowing.

What’s blooming indoors: Sun comes in low this time of year for blooming zonal geraniums on inside porch that faces southeast.

Animal sightings: Hopefully cold temperatures are killing off the insects and vermin that survived last winter. There were so many grasshoppers and aphids this past summer from the previous warm winter, it would be a disaster next summer if everything survived.

Weekly update: Our image of Native American farming methods was set by people living in New England. Every year around Thanksgiving the same information is reiterated for a new generation. Darrett Rutman recapitulates:

"They set grains of seed corn into the center of each circle...Here and there along the coast the women fertilized the corn by setting a small herringlike fish, the alewife, with the seed...As the first corn shoots broke the surface a few weeks after planting, the women descended on the fields again, carefully planting three of four bean seeds around the young corn. Corn and beans grew together, the beans climbing on the cornstalks. Sometimes squash and pumpkin seeds were planted in the hills, their vines trailing across the uncultivated land between."

Today, Native Seed, a seed collective in Tucson, tells local bean growers to "plant with corn & squash."

When people actually looked at farmers in the Southwest in the late nineteenth century, that’s not what they were doing. For one thing, among the Hopi, cultivation is divided by gender. For another, First Mesa is at 5700' with annual precipitation averaging 8" to 12" a year. Plymouth Plantation lies on the Atlantic Ocean. It’s at 34' with more than 52" of precipitation a year. It’s ten degrees hotter in the summer in Arizona than in Massachusetts.

The Hopi are matrilocal, which means the women controlled the homes and the springs that irrigated small gardens. Men had jurisdiction over clan kivas and agricultural fields away from the village. Men planted part of the corn crop in the main washes below the mesas that would get flood water during summer monsoons. They grew the other under cliffs where water seeped down. Two locations with two water sources provided security against erratic weather.

Alfred Whiting says men at Oraibi leaned the modern irrigation techniques they used at Moenkopi from the Mormons of Tuba City. They founded the village in a wash as a summer camp in 1870 about 40 miles from Third Mesa. The Mormons arrived in 1875.

Beans might have been grown in lines between the corn rows, but Whiting said, more often men planted them on mesa tops in 1935. They also planted peach orchards in the dunes under the cliffs.

Women had small gardens they watered by hand from their springs. They grew squash, gourds, musk melons and introduced plants like chili, onions, and tomatoes. The dye plants, sunflowers and red amaranth, usually grew in the women’s plots, but sometimes could be found in a corner of a bean field. Other useful wild plants like Rocky Mountain bee weed, devil’s claw and wild potato were left where they volunteered in corn fields.

The method for planting corn was the same in both the Northeast and Southwest. Instead of the long, continuous rows of Midwestern farmers, small circles were cleared about six feet a part.

Walter Hough indicated the Hopi used a planting stick with a wedge point to dig holes where they dropped seed: 6 to 12 kernels in a good field, more in a bad. Whiting added, the foot-deep holes were filled during the season as the plants grew.

No mention has been made of fertilizer in the Southwest. In February they cleared brush and releveled fields.. In April, Alexander Stephen noted they planted rabbit bush. Ericameria nauseosus grows about 6' tall. The shrub blocked winds that uncovered seeds that were planted more shallowly than corn. Elsie Clews Parsons said the men of Oraibi used greasewood fences around their watermelon patches.

The other trait shared between the Northeast and Southwest is the chronological history of crops. Squash was domesticated first, then corn was introduced. Beans came later. In the Northeast, the three merged. Roger Williams recorded the Narragansett of Rhode Island believed in "Kautantowwit. The great south-west god, to whose house all souls go, and from whom came their corn and beans."

In the Southwest, where the climate was different, the crops were kept separate. Corn and beans each had its own set of ceremonies within the annual ritual agricultural cycle.

Notes:
Hough, Walter. "The Hopi Indian Collection in the United States National Museum," U. S. National Museum Proceedings 54:235-296:1918.

Native Seed/SEARCH. "Planting and Harvesting in the Low Desert," double-sided, single-page guide included with orders.

Parsons, Elsie Clews. Hopi and Zuñi Ceremonialism, 1933.

Rutman, Darrett B. Husbandmen of Plymouth, 1967.

Stephen, Alexander. Notebooks, 1882-1894, edited as Hopi Journal, 1936, by Elsie Clews Parsons.

Whiting, Alfred F. Ethnobotany of the Hopi, 1939.

Williams, Roger. In James D. Knowles, Memoirs of Roger Williams, The Founder Of The State Of Rhode-Island, 1834.

Photographs: Different ways sweet corn is grown in the immediate area. For more on nostalgic corn planting, see post for 23 November 2008.

1. Corn possibly grown for farmer’s market; field is planted every few years, with ditch at the back; 9 July 2010.

2. Corn possibly grown for market; field was planted in cantaloups a few years before; ditch is at the back and has lateral on one side; 12 July 2012.

3. Corn grown in a few rows at the back of the house land, 17 August 2012; variations in height reflect differences in flow of water from ditch in back.

4. Corn grown in a few rows at the side of the house land, 13 September 2013.

5. Corn grown along side the house land, ditch in front, 22 October 2014.

6. Corn grown in widely spaced rows in field separated from house land, ditch in front; 12 July 2012.

7. Corn growing in raised bed at end of trailer; earlier annual four o’clocks were blooming at the base; I’m not sure if this was planted this year, or reseeded last summer; 15 October 2014.

8. Corn grown in opening in a wood lot, 22 November 2011; I think it’s planted every few years and comes back on its own in the intervening seasons.

9. In comparison, field corn grown as commercial crop in Michigan, summer of 1982. With modern seeds and picking machines, corn was planted more densely than it was when I was a child.

Great Mullein

Weather: Storms passed over all week, but only brought increased humidity and, one morning, a wet fence; last rain 5/13/12; 14:32 hours of daylight today.

Afternoon clouds first appear over Tsikomó, then drift north behind the Jémez. This is probably one reason this was seen as a sacred mountain.

With afternoon clouds moderating temperatures a little, buds that didn’t open in the heat are coming out, including a hedgehog cactus, a Dr. Huey rose, the Persian rose and a cluster on the catalpa. Also, the raspberries are no longer drying before they’re ripe, though they’re stunted.

What’s blooming in the area: Tree of heaven, hybrid perpetual roses, buddleia, bird of Paradise, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, red yucca, daylily, rose of Sharon, hollyhock, datura, sweet pea, alfalfa, Russian sage, purple garden phlox, single sunflowers, yellow flowered yarrow, zinnias, Shasta daisies; apricots ripening.

Beyond the walls and fences: Tamarix, leatherleaf globemallow, mullein, alfilerillo, tumble mustard, stick leaf, scarlet bee blossom, velvetweed, white and pink bindweeds, scurf peas, bush morning glory, silver leaf nightshade cut down, buffalo gourd, Indian paintbrush, horse tail, prostrate knotweed, goat’s head, Hopi tea, plain’s paper flower, goat’s beard, fleabane, horseweed, local Mexican hat, golden hairy asters, áZil del muerto, native dandelion; buds on goldenrod.

In my yard, looking east: Snow-in-summer, bouncing Bess, white and creeping baby’s breath, coral beardtongue, Jupiter’s beard, pink evening primrose, winecup mallow, sidalcea Party Girl, California and Shirley poppies, Saint John’s wort; leaves turning brown on oriental poppies.

Looking south: Rugosa, floribunda and miniature roses, Dutch clover, Illinois bundle flower.

Looking west: Caryopteris, oriental lilies, blue flax, Siberian and Seven Hills Giant catmints, leadplant, Johnson’s Blue geranium, Goodness Grows speedwell, David phlox, white spurge, perennial four o’clock, sea lavender, ladybells, Mönch asters, purple coneflowers.

Looking north: Golden spur columbine, hartweig evening primrose, butterfly weed, squash, chocolate flower, coreopsis, blanket flower, anthemis, Mexican hat, chrysanthemum.

Bedding plants: Petunia, nicotiana, snapdragons.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbirds, small brown birds, geckos, hummingbird moths, cabbage and other butterflies, bees, hornets, harvester and small black ants.


Weekly update: When I was child in the 1950’s I believed almost anything I was told about how Indians had lived. The protests of the 1960's and 70's made me less credulous.

When I recently read that native Americans used mullein leaves for diapers, my first thought was have you - and I think it was a male blog writer - have you ever really handled a mullein leaf?


I know the leaves are large, up to 20" long, 4" wide, and 3/8" thick. I also know they’re covered with soft, tiny hairs which give them a fuzzy feel. But would you seriously place them next to your more sensitive body parts if anything else was available?

I picked a leaf from a roadside plant and stuck it in some water to bring home. Within half an hour, the submerged section was dark green from the moisture. The exposed part still repelled droplets. I’m not sure which attribute the blogger thinks would make it useful as a diaper.


When I was searching the web to reread that blogger, I came across another man who called himself Quaker Dan who said he knew great mullein as Indian Toilet Paper when he was a child. That’s a very different thing. Verbascum thapsus has also been called Witch’s Candles, Beggar’s Blanket and Quaker Rouge.

Most such names are less facts than negative stereotypes perpetuated by outsiders.

The only natives I’ve found who claim to have used the leaves for diapers are the Lumbees of Robeson County, North Carolina, a people who know better than most the dangers of exoteric perceptions. Anthropologists consider them to be tri-racial, while local politicians defined them as legally black in an era when that condemned them to Jim Crow segregation.

They’ve been arguing ever since they’re pure descendants of the Cheraw who migrated to the Pee Dee river from the Danville area of Virginia in 1703. In 1737 they sold their land in South Carolina and moved north.

The source of their belief they used the leaves as diapers could have come from local Scots Irish, slave or Indian traditions, or could have been absorbed from stereotypes. I haven’t found any other group in Europe, Africa or this country who admits to such a usage.

In fact, according to Wikipedia, diapers have only been traced back to the 1590's in England, just before European settlement in North America and just as Protestantism was spreading and attitudes toward the body, bodily functions and child rearing were changing. In this country, Matilda Stevenson says Zuni children simply didn’t wear much clothing until they were four years old.

Even had mullein been used by Europeans for diapers, there was none here to be used in 1620. It ranges from Scandinavia to Africa and west toward China. Gene Wilhelm believes seeds were brought here by men who used them to stupify fish.

However, it also had to have been brought earlier for other reasons. Manasseh Cutler reported its long terminating yellow spikes were “common in old fields” in July in New England in 1785.


Dioscorides first mentioned great mullein was used in the Roman empire in the first century AD to treat old coughs, while Francis Quinlan suggested it was particularly valued in Ireland for treating tuberculosis in 1883. Its use for these and related respiratory problems has been reported by tribes with close relations to either the English (Cherokee, Creek, Delaware, Lumbee, Malecite, Micmac, Mohegan, Penobscot, Shinnecock) or the French (Iroquois, Menominee, Potawatomi).

Ben-Erik Van Wyk and Michael Wink suggest the efficacy of this and related members of the figwort family comes from the presence of triterpene saponins like verbascosaponin combined with mucilage in the dried petals. They also say it’s been used successfully for ear aches (Iroquois), hemorrhoids (Iroquois), sores (Catawba, Lumbee, Malecite, Micmac) and boils.

All these tribes live east of the Appalachians or around the Great Lakes. The only groups in the west who used the herb are the Atsugewi of California and the Salish of Montana. The first used it for colds and in their sweat lodges; the second for tuberculosis.

The small seeds may not have arrived in New Mexico until modern roads were built. Stevenson doesn’t mention its use by the Zuni in the early twentieth century when Elmer Wooton and Paul Standley could still list all the places it had been found: Cedar Hill, Pecos, Mogollon and along Ruidoso Creek.

It since has spread to many parts of the state, at least those parts where there are major roads. A tall plant’s blooming behind a steel barrier on the way to Santa Fé. Usually leafing stalks get cut by road crews, and only the ones that bolt after the onset of the monsoons survive to flower. They usually leave brown stalks about two feet high and seeds that can survive for decades in the soil.


Someone down the road has let one grow by the entrance to his front drive. The biennial would have appeared as a rosette of wide grey leaves last summer, and wintered over to send up its stem of compressed leaves this spring.


When mullein first appeared in the southwest, people apparently noticed its similarity to the local tobacco, Nicotiana attenuata, and experimented with rolling powdered leaves in corn husks. Local Spanish speakers called the tobacco punche and mullein punchón. As a consequence, they discovered inhaling the smoke was good for asthma symptoms.

The Zuni also recognized the plant’s similarity to tobacco when they finally saw it and called it anna lanna. In the 1970's, people said they had used powdered roots to treat athlete’s foot. They also called the plant amidolan kwiminne when they used the roots to treat sores, rashes and other skin infections.

The Ramah Navajo considered it to be a male plant which they combined with a female, Frasera speciosa or deer’s ears, whose leaves were mixed with mountain tobacco “to give strength and to clear mind if lost while hunting or if confused after returning from a hunt, enables clear thinking so the way to camp may be found.”

The Hopi called their tobacco paviva and mullein wupaviva. The chief smoked the tobacco mixed with Macromeria viridiflora to bring rain. When mullein arrived, people mixed it with yoiviva to “cure people who have ‘fits” or who are not in their ‘right mind’” or who have “power to charm at a distance.”

Dan Moerman thinks the last refers to witchcraft, which brings us back to the nature of plants that leads to the rediscovery of the same traits by different people in different places and different times. The Apuleius Platonicus herbal, a pastiche of Dioscorides, Anglo-Saxon and possibly north African beliefs surviving from the late 1000's, says Mercury gave the plant to Ulysses to protect him from the evil magic of Circe.


Notes:
Apuleius Platonicus. Comments on Verbascum from P. Buchan, Witchcraft Detected and Prevented, 1824. In book 10 of The Odyssey, Homer has Ulysses say “The Slayer of Argus plucked from the ground the herb he promised me. The Gods call it Moly, and he showed me its nature, to be black at the root with a flower like milk. It would be difficult for men and mortals to dig up Moly; but the Gods can do anything” (translated by T. E. Shaw). There’s no scholarly consensus on the identity of moly, since it doesn’t sound like mullein.

Boughman, Arvis Locklear and Loretta O. Oxendine. Herbal Remedies of the Lumbee Indians, 2004.

Camazine, Scott and Robert A. Bye. “A Study Of The Medical Ethnobotany Of The Zuni Indians of New Mexico,” Journal of Ethnopharmacology 2:365-388:1980.

Curtin, Leonora Scott Muse. Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande, 1947, republished 1997, with revisions by Michael Moore.

Cutler, Manasseh. An Account of Some of the Vegetable Productions, 1785.

Dioscorides, Pedanius. De Materia Medica, book 4, translation found on Cancerlynx website. He claimed white phlomis was female and listed additional uses, including bruises and wounds.

Moerman, Dan. Native American Ethnobotany, 1998. He includes other uses not mentioned here, including its use as ceremonial tobacco by the Isleta and Menominee.

Quaker Dan. “Indian Diapers & Toilet Paper,” Back 40 Forums website, 8 August 2009. The discussion began when someone who called himself The Old Buzzard described the complex way he shredded first year leaves and placed the fragments within layers of leaves to create modern style diapers for his children.

Quinlan, F. J. B. “A Note upon the Use of the Mullein Plant in the Treatment of Pulmonary Consumption,” British Medical Journal 27 January 1883, pages 149-150. He read his paper at the 1884 International Medical Congress in Copenhagen. His talk and article were widely publicized in this country and its recommendations adopted by men like Herman Wilfert, who reported his experiments in “The Treatment of Pulmonary Consumption by the Mullein Plant,” The Cincinnati Lancet and Clinic 14:584-185:1885.

Stevenson, Matilda Coxe. The Zuni Indians, 1904, reprinted by The Rio Grande Press, Inc., 1985.

_____. Ethnobotany of the Zuni Indians, 1915.

Van Wyk, Ben-Erik and Michael Wink. Medicinal Plants of the World, 2004. They discuss another species, the one used today in commercial herbal medicines, but they indicate all Verbascums have the same properties.

Vestal, Paul A. The Ethnobotany of the Ramah Navaho, 1952.

Whiting, Alfred F. Ethnobotany of the Hopi, 1939. He used the synonym Onosmodium thurberi for deer ears.

Wikipedia. On-line articles on “Diaper.”

Wilhelm, Gene, Jr. "The Mullein: Plant Piscicide of the Mountain Folk Culture." Geographical Review 64: 235-52:1974. Although it’s widely cited, I haven’t been able to locate the article or an abstract to determine exactly what location he is describing. If it were Appalachia, the people could have been related to the Scots Irish who made contact with the Cherokee, Creek and Lumbee.

Wooton, Elmer O. and Paul C. Standley. Flora of New Mexico, 1915, reprinted by J. Cramer, 1972.

Photographs:
1. Giant mullein growing down the road, 6 July 2012.

2. Same plant, 5 June 2012.

3. Leaves on mullein growing along road to Santa Fé, 2 July 2012.

4. Leaf from above plant along road to Santa Fé, 2 July 2012.

5. Flower stalk from mullein growing down the road, 2 July 2012.

6. Dead stalks along road to Angel Fire, 18 June 2012.

7. Young plant growing along road on Santa Clara land, 2 July 2011.

8. Dead stalk on plant left in someone’s yard in town, 6 July 2012.

9. Close up of stem and leaves of plant on way to Santa Fé, 2 July 2012.

10. Flowering stalk from mullein growing along main road some years ago, 13 September 2008.

Prostrate Knotweed

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Hybrid tea roses, bird of paradise, silver lace vine, Japanese honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Heavenly Blue morning glories nearly gone, sweet pea flourishing, Sensation cosmos, French marigolds, Maximilian sunflower; green pepper roasting done for year.

Outside the fences: Apache plume, leather-leaf globemallow, velvetweed, yellow evening primrose, datura, bindweed, scarlet creeper, ivy-leaf morning glory, older pigweed turning brown, ragweed, Russian thistle, goats’ head, chamisa, snakeweed, goat’s beard, horseweed, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, gumweed, broom senecio, spiny lettuce, Tahokia daisy, purple, heath and golden hairy asters; milkweed leaves turning yellow, toothed spurge turning maroon.

In my yard looking north: Nasturtium, chocolate flower, blanket flower, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, yellow cosmos, chrysanthemum, Crackerjack marigold.

Looking east: Floribunda roses, hollyhock, winecup, large-leaf soapwort, scarlet flax, reseeded and Crimson Glory morning glories, pink evening primrose, zinnias; Autumn Joy sedum leaves losing color.

Looking south: Blaze, floribunda and miniature roses, cypress vine.

Looking west: Russian sage, catmint, lady bells, individual David phlox flowers, calamintha, sheltered purple coneflower, Mönch aster.

Bedding plants: Moss rose, snapdragon, nicotiana, sweet alyssum back.

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern, pomegranate.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, monarch butterfly, wasps, black harvester and small red ants.

Weather: Rain Tuesday night; short thunderstorm Friday morning; temperatures in high 30's yesterday morning; 11:29 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: Prostrate knotweed is one of those weeds that survive because it’s no where near as noxious as its peers. It’s not poisonous, doesn’t have thorns, and doesn’t take over the best watered soil - it’s just not worth the same effort I expend to control pigweed and Siberian elms.

The dark brown seeds lie buried just beneath the surface in winter when cool temperatures and dampness revoke their dormancy, leaving them ready to germinate when conditions improve. They say the annuals first appear looking like grass, but I never notice them until a few stems a couple inches long appear with their rounded, oval leaves spaced too far apart to cover the soil.

This summer I was removing the white taproots from the zinnia bed when I was preparing it for seed in late May. Those early plants probably had four sets of chromosomes and peaked early, before the summer heat reintroduced dormancy in unsprouted seeds and sent everything else into remission.

Come the monsoons, enough moisture penetrates the warm soil for a second wave to grow, this time the ones with six sets of chromosomes. When I went out to weed in late July, I saw plants had returned in the zinnia bed and new ones were growing along the nearby fence. I haphazardly pulled some, but left many in my pursuit of other enemies.

Then, as seems to happen every year, events overtook my resolutions and things were left to grow as they would in late summer. When I went out last weekend, the knotweeds in the zinnia bed were turning brown, while the light-green ones in the shade of the fence had grow erect and lacy.

Out in the drive, in front of the garage, the thick doilies I first noted the middle of August had waxed fat, with thick blue-green leaves, some with red lines. At the leaf joints, small stems held clusters of dark rose buds, maybe a sixteenth of an inch across. Some were parting to expose their stamens, while others remain closed, shaking the pollen within to fertilize themselves.

Useful as a capacity to waste no resources on petals to attract insects or variations in chromosome counts may be to survival, I suspect an ability pass unnoticed has been more important.

No one knows where Polygonum aviculare emerged, but its fossilized seeds have been found in northern European strata dated to the Cromerian warming period during the middle ice age between 866,000 and 478,000 years ago. Jonathan Sauer believes they were "native pioneers preadapted to join in the migrations of early humans as ruderal camp followers."

With the appearance of neolithic farmers, the ground hugging plant moved into the fields from central Germany northwest to Britain. Either weeds weren’t yet seen as problems, or the red stems were tolerated.

By the time iron age people were sacrificing a man at Thor’s Grove in Jutland around 400bc, the seeds were part of the Tollund grainery, included in the gruel of his last meal. Another member of the buckwheat family, Persicaria lapathifolia, seems to have been gathered deliberately, but archaeologists debate if the inclusion of prostate knotweed was accidental or intentional.

Some 700 years later and eleven miles to the east, another man was sacrificed who’s body was found near Grauballe in 1954. His last meal contained fragments of 63 grains, including prostrate knotweed, but no spring greens or late summer fruits. From that, Peter Glob has argued he probably was killed in some late winter ritual designed to speed the arrival of spring.

The late season food fed to both men was relatively dirty, filled with hairs and ergot, a fungus that infects one of their main crops, rye. The Graballe man’s skeleton showed signs of near starvation when he was young and recent calcium deficiencies. It may be he died in a year when food supplies were particularly low, and everything non-toxic was eaten. Glob indicated the condition of his teeth showed this wasn’t his usual fare.

Prostrate knotweed moved to the compacted pathways when it was ejected by more fastidious farmers and traveled west with the first settlers to New England where John Josselyn reported in 1672 that knot grass had "sprung up since the English planted and kept cattle in New-England."

It continued moving west, annoying people who wanted perfect lawns, but otherwise dispersing by seed or contaminated nursery pots. A century ago it was considered "a common dooryard weed at middle levels in the mountains" of New Mexico.

Sometimes, people who confronted it as a new plant would test it: the Chinese tried it as a dye, the Ramah Navajo used a warm infusion to treat stomach aches. In the late nineteenth century, there was a brief fad for Hemero Tea to treat asthma and bronchitis in Austria and Germany.

But as usually happens with familiarity, most soon learned to ignore it.

In oblivion there is success for the meek.

Notes:Coward, Fiona, Stephen Shennan, Sue Colledge, James Conolly, and Mark Collard. "The Spread of Neotlithic Plant Economies from the Near East to Northwest Europe: A Phylogenetic Analysis, Journal of Archaeological Science 35:42-56:2008.

Glob. Peter Vilhelm. The Bog People: Iron-Age Man Preserved, 2004.

Josselyn, John. New England’s Rarities Discovered in Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents and Plants of That Country, 1672, reprinted by University of Michigan, University Library with 1865 notes by Edward Tuckerman.

Meerts, Pierre. "An Experimental Investigation of Life History and Plasticity in Two Cytotypes of Polygonum aviculare L. Subsp. aviculare That Coexist in an Abandoned Arable Field, Oecologia 92:442-449:1992; on chromosomes.

Rafinesque, C. S. Medical Flora, volume 2, 1830; on China

Sauer, Jonathan D. Plant Migration: The Dynamics of Geographic Patterning in Seed Plant Species, 1988

Taylor, Timothy. The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death, 2004; on ergot.

Uphof, J. C. T. Dictionary of Economic Plants, 1968 edition; on Hemero Tea.

Vestal, Paul A. The Ethnobotany of the Ramah Navaho, 1952.

Wooten, Elmer Otis and Paul Carpenter Standley. Flora of New Mexico, 1915.

Photograph: Prostate knotweed, much enlarged, in my drive, 3 October 2010.