Members of genus Colocasia in Europe.

Sebbywafers

Banned
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colocasia

This is the genus Colocasia. It includes taros and eddoes, and various species of this genus are grown and eaten for food in Asia. In Southeast Asia, the Taro arguably forms a staple crop. They're like the potatoes of the old world.

However, for some reason, taros and eddoes never seemed to spread across the silk road to the Middle East and Europe. Taros are a tropical/wet soil fruit of course, so it makes sense they'd never realistically get as far as Europe, but eddoes are more suited to dry and cold environments. So why didn't this genus, having the ability to become staple crops, travel west?

And what if it did travel west to Europe? What would happen if, during the age of the Mongols when the silk road had been revitalised, eddoes managed to make their way to Europe (preferrably somewhere like the HRE where they are alien and will be seen as a new alternative crop) and grown. Will we see a marked improvement in yields similar to what happened when the potato was introduced? Would European eddoes, through their starchy nutritiousness, be able to increase the OTL population of Europe and have flow-on effects from there?
 
Would they be any good outside the Mediterranean? Taro/eddoe isn't really the best for nutrition although it's capable enough, and I don't think they give as high of yields as potato does. Northern Europe already had turnips for cold-weather crops. And since potatoes weren't adopted as late as the 19th century in parts of Europe that really needed it (Russia), there could be issues adopting it. Especially since taro as far as I know needs special preparation which potatoes don't. That means plenty of room for superstitious peasants to freak out over growing the crop.

Also, from the link you gave, it was known in the Meditteranean region.
 
I'm guessing the why is simply that there is not a lot of suitable soil between Europe and China, so someone would have had to deliberately bring the plant to Europe to try it out. That's not something ancient traders did over these distances, normally. "Hopping" from one suitable location to asnother, like sugarcane, rice and citrus did, would not work.

As to the impact, I'd say that's a question of when it is introduced and how good it actually is. I'm having a hard time finding reliable productivity figures on eddoe online. From the range that I find given (Assam to western Yunnnan and northern Indochina), it seems to still be a plant adapted to warm, moist climates. That would be a limiting factor because Europe is plenty moist in the cool parts, but rather dry in most of its warm areas. If that is an issue, it would probably join Europe's other native and acclimatised roots and tubers as a nice crop. If it can be adapted to dry, warm soils, it will make another vegetable for the Mediterranean diet.

If it can be adapted to get high productivity on cold, wet soils, it could be as much of a game changer as the potato. The problem is, it would have to addapt fairly readily because the method by which this was done in northern Europe was hit-or-miss for much of known history. Say it arrives in 200 AD - can it adapt and how long will it take? I don't know enough about the plant to say, but assuming it can, the impact will be interesting. We may largely miss out on rye-oat-agriculture and be able to support a much larger population in the north much earlier. Especially if legumes also spread. There is a site called Elisenhof that casats light on the existence of rye-and-beans farming in 8th century northern Europe. It wasn't pretty, but it supported the people. Add a highly productive tuber as a third staple and you'll have 1200 population levels centuries earlier. I will add that that is not necessarily a good thing.
 

Sebbywafers

Banned
Okay, so if Taro/Eddo is pretty average in Europe, what would be a better old world miracle crop? I want a more overpopulated Europe and all the fun that entails.
 
Okay, so if Taro/Eddo is pretty average in Europe, what would be a better old world miracle crop? I want a more overpopulated Europe and all the fun that entails.

Could there ever have been any? Buckwheat? That was mainly used in Russia but is suitable to the rest of Northern Europe. It's native to the Far East but could get to Europe earlier maybe?

Anything to really help Northern Europe (Southern Europe has enough) that doesn't come from the Americas is going to be totally exotic. So reindeer spreading from the Sami/Siberia and moose domestication. Anything else is probably just adding another vegetable to Northern European diets instead of a staple crop. In which case you have bistort, roseroot, etc. both of which are medicinal herbs first and I can't imagine anyone but the Sami or Siberians using them for food, in which none are staple crops but supplements to enrich the Northern European diet. The Baltic Finns are probably the best way to spread this exotic element into Northern European agriculture in general since they come from a different cultural background once you get far enough back in the past. But you could have Finland, Northern Russia, etc. have a good deal more people than they ever historically had. Butterflies will obviously fall on the Northern Crusades and Sweden's conquest of Finland.

For Southern Europe, there's always plain old rice. More irrigation to produce more crops. Maybe in the Roman-era get rice agriculture started in Italy and the rest of the Meditteranean (North Africa outside of Egypt will have difficulties, though, and probably most of the Levant too), and then during Late Antiquity edicts by the new Germanic ruling class to get it thoroughly established in Italy, southern France, and Spain at the very least.
 

Sebbywafers

Banned
Hmmm...
For buckwheat, when did it historically arrive in Northern Europe? And if it was suited why didn't it take off when it did?
 
Taro was known in Europe. The Romans knew of it and used it fairly widely in their cuisine but it fell out of significant use after the fall of the empire because the trade routes to the areas it was grown were disrupted. It seems to have remained something of a niche, fall-back crop in the post-Roman period. It's grown in parts of the Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean to this day.

As for a crop for Northern Europe, well one possibility I've seen discussed before is that Europe's population and development was hindered by the dominance of the Mediterranean and Levantine agricultural packages which prevented the emergence of a Northern European agricultural package because the pre-existing agriculture was better than putting in the effort to develop a more specialized one that might theoretically have been superior. It's part of why Germany and Central Europe never really took off in terms of population and development until the early Medieval period, when more suitable crops and agricultural practices had been developed. From memory, rye was a big part of that.

Anyway, the potential domestications thread raised the possibility of cattails as a potential Northern European crop. It meets the criteria in terms of nutrition and productivity but might have actually been too good to be domesticated because it was so productive there was no need to doemsticate it. So there could be potential there for a much earlier development of Northern Europe and a consequently higher population across all of Europe.
 
Hmmm...
For buckwheat, when did it historically arrive in Northern Europe? And if it was suited why didn't it take off when it did?

I don't know how big it was in Scandinavia/Germany/Baltic, but it was an important part of the Russian diet as kasha since the early modern era (at least during Ivan the Terrible's reign, probably a bit earlier). Was it introduced by the Mongols or was it known earlier?

As for a crop for Northern Europe, well one possibility I've seen discussed before is that Europe's population and development was hindered by the dominance of the Mediterranean and Levantine agricultural packages which prevented the emergence of a Northern European agricultural package because the pre-existing agriculture was better than putting in the effort to develop a more specialized one that might theoretically have been superior. It's part of why Germany and Central Europe never really took off in terms of population and development until the early Medieval period, when more suitable crops and agricultural practices had been developed. From memory, rye was a big part of that.

Anyway, the potential domestications thread raised the possibility of cattails as a potential Northern European crop. It meets the criteria in terms of nutrition and productivity but might have actually been too good to be domesticated because it was so productive there was no need to doemsticate it. So there could be potential there for a much earlier development of Northern Europe and a consequently higher population across all of Europe.

Cattails apparently require a very specialised water agriculture to domesticate. Moose would help, since they could be like water buffalo, but otherwise seems very difficult.

A lot of Northern Europe's agriculture was helped along by the invention of the heavy plow, correct?
 
I don't know how big it was in Scandinavia/Germany/Baltic, but it was an important part of the Russian diet as kasha since the early modern era (at least during Ivan the Terrible's reign, probably a bit earlier). Was it introduced by the Mongols or was it known earlier?
Wikipedia says it was introduced to Russia/modern Ukraine by the Byzantines in the 7th century. No idea how reliable that is though.


Cattails apparently require a very specialised water agriculture to domesticate. Moose would help, since they could be like water buffalo, but otherwise seems very difficult.

Ahh, that would make sense. I wonder, what do we know of the wild ancestor of modern rice? How similar was it to cattails, and how different would the water agriculture of cattails be to that of rice?

A lot of Northern Europe's agriculture was helped along by the invention of the heavy plow, correct?
My uderstanding is that that has been the traditional view, but it's been questioned in more recent work. I'm not qualified to comment on which is right though.
 
I think to increase European agricultural output you may have to go another way. Buckwheat have existed in Europe long enough that if it could revolutionise agriculture, it would already have done so. A important aspect is also what kind of soil can the crop grow in. As example Jerusalem artichokes give 200% calories per field compared to potatoes. So why didn't it not outcompete potatoes? Because it demand good soil, while potatoes thrive in soil where no other plant can grow. But at the same time we also have plant in Europe which have potential, but it was never really pushed. As example many plums and apple sort thrive in poor North European soil (like heath) and gave a solid output. But people preferred grazing, as cattle gave more and kept better. Here a solution could be that apple and plum wine became more popular, an earlier introduction of red clover could also help (maybe a introduction to France in the 8th century, as it would enable it to spread to the entire Frankish empire). Because some times the lack of pollinators was part of the problem.

Other out of the box solutions could be brackish water farming and aquaculture. But what we really need is a crop (or several) which could do well in subarctic climate, as it would increase the crop output of Scandinavia and Russia several times. Preferable one which doesn't need ploughs and do well in sour soil.

Edit: Soybean seem one of the few Eurasian crops which can relative easy in Europe, why it didn't make to Europe I don't know, but it seem it would be in the same niche as peas as a nitrate fixator.
Lupin seem to serve same purpose and is also able to grow in the Baltic.
 
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