@Talus I of Dixie
Ask and ye shall receive...
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Every story has a beginning. But not all stories have a start.
On first glance, this may sound like one of those meaningless quotes people like to throw around, and for the most part it is. But this phrase can have some truth, especially when it comes to history.
But first, what are the definitions? The two words can be used interchangeably in some cases, but there's a few situations when this isn't possible. For example, machines don't have "begin buttons", they have start buttons.
So what's the difference?
When needed to differentiate between the
two, start is used in cases where there is a sudden, almost instant commencement, while begin is used to describe the start of a more gradual process.
Lets take a look at the history of France. When did it start? Some dates are more agreed upon than others, but if you ask, you could get answers as far apart as 53 BCE, 476 CE, 843 CE, 1190 CE, 1453 CE, 1792 CE, or 1958 CE, to name a few.
Is any single one of these correct? You could make a case for any of them, but does that mean the others aren't valid? How could the founding of the Fifth French Republic be the start of when such an entity has existed since the French Revolution? Or how could the French Revolution have been the start when the nation had existed as a monarchy for almost a millennium before?
Instead, one could argue that there is no start to French history. All of these moments have built up over time, every date helping to define the nation we call France, as moments will continue to define the nation's future.
We could go further, but by now you might be asking yourself, "What does this have to do with this story?"
Well this story, like the history of France, doesn't have a single start. Like there is no single start to French history, there is no single event that has made this world different from ours, no single action that has changed everything, no single man that turned the world upside down.
But we can begin somewhere. We can't pretend to know what exactly made this world different from ours, but we will see small, almost unnoticeable differences take place, gradually building up, eventually spreading across the world, making this world unrecognizable from our own.
And this is where the story begins.
Wild rice is the common name given to plants in the genus Zizania. A closely knit family of four aquatic grasses, [2] three are native to the Americas. These three plants are the ones that we will be focusing on.
Zizania texana is the only perennial of the American branch. It has long stems, short panicles, and its grain is short. It is endemic to the upper San Marcos River, where it is critically endangered. Along with its selective habitat and reproductive requirements, these factors make it the species with the least potential.
Zizania aquatica is the most widely distributed of the species. It can be divided into two subspecies, varieties aquatica and brevis. The former is characterized by its robustness, tall panicles, and branched florets, while the latter is the complete opposite, being less robust, having short panicles, and less branched florets. The most important advantage brevis has over aquatica is its high salt tolerance. Found in the brackish waters of the upper Saint Lawrence River, over the years it has adapted to this habitat, where it now thrives in the muddy estuaries. Like Zizania texana, the grain produced by this plant is small and slender, and isn't substantially consumed by humans.
Zizania palustris is native to the boreal regions of North America, found as far north as 52° N. It can also be subdivided into two species, varieties palustris and interior. Plants of the variety palustris vary in height, but are known for their slender panicles with small amounts of spikelets. They can grow in water as deep as four feet. This variety produces the biggest grain, having an average length of .65 inches. In contrast, plants of the variety interior have medium to tall panicles, covered in numerous spikelets. They grow along rivers, in waters around one to two feet deep. This species of wild rice has seen the most historic usage, and has recently been considered as a potential crop.
In our timeline, wild rice was never tamed. It has been harvested for millennia, [3] but only recently have substantial efforts been made to domesticate the plant.
Many tribes relied on wild rice as a staple food. They regarded wild rice as a gift from the gods, and in the environment they lived in, it might as well have been. Tribes would go to war, make alliances, and migrate across long distances, all to access the plant. The grain would be stored for the winter, when other sources of food weren't readily available.
We have evidence that proto-agricultural practices were starting to emerge around the plant. We know that wild rice was transplanted by the natives, accounting for its widespread range out of the Great Lakes. There's records of wild rice being rolled into balls of mud and clay and planted in shallow lakes and streams, to ensure its growth for the spring.
But if it had been utilized so much by the Native Americans, why wasn't it domesticated? We will probably never know the answer to this question. Perhaps these practices had been a recent innovation. Or maybe wild rice has been domesticated in the past, but other factors never led to its use taking off. Ultimately, there might not be a reason. And while all of these are plausible, there might be another interesting possibility.
Every species of wild rice has their own distinct traits. But for every useful trait a species might have, it is balanced out by a comparatively bad trait. As an example, the species of wild rice with the biggest grain happens to be the species of wild rice with the smallest yield. Essentially, this makes none of the plant species worth cultivating. Maybe this is the reason why the plant wasn't domesticated.
But what if there was a way to combine these traits? Could a cultivar that combines these characteristics be an attractive prospect for domestication?
Well as it turns out, there is a way. Due to its biology, [4] hybridization is commonplace among the species, [5] and the offspring of these pairings is fertile. But due to a mutation present in hybrids, [6] they cannot mate with their parent species, only with other hybrids. The chances of two hybrids arising and fertilizing each other would be low, but it isn't impossible. It is estimated that 2 to 4 percent of all flowering plants have arisen due to this mutation. Essentially, the offspring of the hybrids would be a new species of wild rice.
Now, let us look into a past that never was. We don't know the exact cause, but it could have been a simple change in the winds direction. Regardless of the cause, in time immemorial, a new breed of wild rice emerges. While the ancients will never know this, it arose through the same mutation detailed above, a hybrid of two varieties of wild rice [7].
While not impressive in stature compared to its relatives, it makes up for its size elsewhere. It has the biggest grain of any wild rice species, a few millimeters longer than the largest of its forefathers. It is incredibly robust and fertile, with virtually all of its grains reaching maturity. The yields of this plant are among the highest in the genus. But the most visible distinction from its predecessors is the color of its grain. While most varieties of wild rice are darker in color, maturing into various shades of brown and black, the grain of this new species is white. For this reason, for now we will give this new species the name Zizania alba, layman's terms for white wild rice.
For our purposes, this species grows almost unnoticed by humans for millennia. At most, maybe the occasional hunter-gatherers might come across the species, gather some grains from the grass, and leave unknowing, not being able to distinguish between this plant and the other varieties of wild rice.
But further into the future? Eventually, a time of great change, a period of domestication and settlement will come across North America. [8] In our timeline, wild rice wasn't domesticated during this period. But what about this new species? Could it go unnoticed? Or could its improved traits make it an attractive candidate for cultivation?
And as it turns out, a group of wanderers from the far west might be the first to take note. [9] Just maybe in this timeline, they could be the ones to plant the seeds for a new world.
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[1]- Image credit: Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program.
Just a decent picture I found of wild rice online. I'm assuming it's Zizania aquatica, since the picture is from Chesapeake Bay, but I didn't look into it.
[2]- There's a bit of a debate about how many species of wild rice there are. Some claim that Zizania palustris and Zizania aquatica are one species, and that each variety is equally related to another. From what I've read, this has the most truth, but I've chosen to classify them as separate species, since that classification is the one most commonly used.
[3]- There's evidence that wild rice has been harvested since 3800 BP (around 1850 BCE), which coincides with a population boom in eastern Northern America. Not sure if there's a correlation, but it would make sense. Though keep in mind that this was around the time that the cultivars of the Eastern Agricultural Complex were spreading at this time, so that might alternatively be the cause.
[4]- For those of you interested, pistillate and staminate spikelets of wild rice are separated, with the former standing erect on the upper panicle and the latter pendulous on the lower panicle. This renders cross pollination a common occurrence among wild rice. This trait will also help with the eventual domestication process.
[5]- This means pretty much what it sounds like, but for those of you who don't know, hybridization is when two different species fertilize each other and have offspring. Usually hybrids are sterile, but the different species of wild rice haven't diverged enough to not be able to breed with each other, so hybrids are fertile.
[6]- To be specific, this mutation/process is called allopolyploid hybrid speciation, in which a hybrid plant becomes polyploid and inherits two sets of its parents chromosomes, making it unable to breed with either of its parent species. In contrast to the usual 12 chromosomes present in other grasses, plants in the genus Zizania inherit 15 chromosomes from each of their parents. So a regular wild rice plant has a total of 30 chromosomes. In a situation where this mutation occurs, an hybrid wild rice plant would have 60 chromosomes. I'm not sure if any research has been done into this mutation in wild rice, but it is very common in the plant kingdom, so I don't see why it couldn't occur here.
[7]- More specifically, this species arose from a intraspecific allopolyploid hybrid between Zizania palustris L. var. palustris and Zizania palustris L. var. interior. The variety palustris has the biggest grain of any wild rice species but it has few spikelets, while variety interior has small grain but has double the amount of spikelets. So picking the best of both worlds, we get this cultivar.
[8]- I'm referring to the Late/Terminal Archaic Period of OTL, which marked the beginning of plant domestication in North America, along with the rise of horticulture and seasonal settlements. Along with this, it was a period of movement and migration, which will be a major theme of the beginning part of this TL. The plants that were cultivated in this period are referred to as the Eastern Agricultural Complex.
[9]- It'll be more obvious to some people than others, but these "wanderers" will be the subject of the next entry. Whoever guesses right first gets a cookie!
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I wasn't really happy with the post I wrote a week ago, so I decided to rewrite it. I originally wrote in on the PA homeland in the west and the setup for the migration, but it didn't really flow well as an introduction to the timeline. So I decided to write about wild rice since it is the main POD. The subject of the scrapped chapter will be the focus of the next entry. It took me a bit longer than anticipated to write this chapter, cause I was tired from all the quarterly exams and wasn't really in the mood.
Sorry for the wait! Updates should be coming weekly-ish now that I've established things.
This is my first update ever, so I'm really nervous and excited. Hope you guys enjoy it!
Thoughts? Questions? Feel free to leave them below!
