WI: Alternate Plant Domestications

Howdy all! I've been lurking for years and this topic finally got me off the bench and into the game.

As a native Nevadan I have long thought piñon pine trees were a prime target for domestication. They are hardy trees and thier wild nut yield sustained a small population throughout the great basin IOTL. Since a lot of the sagebrush steppe is used for grazing wild fires have been supressed and people at the BLM are finding that the natural habitat for piñons is extending down into valleys. Could a couple hundred years of domestication combined with careful basin management turned wild piñon stands into vast piñon orchards? Could advanced agriculture in the Great Basin lead to a more developed artisan class that warrant the early discovery and extraction of precious metals? Some food for thought (pun intended).
 
Wapato, the Broadleaf Arrowhead, is another good one. It's continent wide but most sources I've found have it as a big food source of the Pacific Northwest. It's come up in a few domestication threads.
 

Driftless

Donor
Howdy all! I've been lurking for years and this topic finally got me off the bench and into the game.

As a native Nevadan I have long thought piñon pine trees were a prime target for domestication. They are hardy trees and thier wild nut yield sustained a small population throughout the great basin IOTL. Since a lot of the sagebrush steppe is used for grazing wild fires have been supressed and people at the BLM are finding that the natural habitat for piñons is extending down into valleys. Could a couple hundred years of domestication combined with careful basin management turned wild piñon stands into vast piñon orchards? Could advanced agriculture in the Great Basin lead to a more developed artisan class that warrant the early discovery and extraction of precious metals? Some food for thought (pun intended).

How well do those nuts keep? High fat nutmeats can go rancid more easily than some foods, I think..., unless they're stored carefully. If "shelf-life" isn't an issue, those nuts would be a good source of nutrition.
 
How well do those nuts keep? High fat nutmeats can go rancid more easily than some foods, I think..., unless they're stored carefully. If "shelf-life" isn't an issue, those nuts would be a good source of nutrition.

Well, they'll keep for several years if frozen, which doesn't help much in the time period we're talking about. The Paiutes seemed to make 'em last the winter between sun-roasting and milling. I guess the bone-dry climate helps.
 

Driftless

Donor
Well, they'll keep for several years if frozen, which doesn't help much in the time period we're talking about. The Paiutes seemed to make 'em last the winter between sun-roasting and milling. I guess the bone-dry climate helps.

That should work then.

I don't know about the Pinon pine, but a lot of pine trees are adaptable to really poor soils and arid conditions. Off hand, I'd think you could stretch their range some, if domestication had been attempted.
 
Wapato, the Broadleaf Arrowhead, is another good one. It's continent wide but most sources I've found have it as a big food source of the Pacific Northwest. It's come up in a few domestication threads.

Arrowhead is certainly interesting, since it's a water plant that be domesticating it would encourage the farmers to make paddies for it, and that could lead to domestication of other water plants like wild rice or cattails. It's hard work, but the Pacific Northwest cultures were pretty renowned for making slave raids on neighbours OTL.

Northern Australia has a bunch of species which are potentially domesticable, based on comparisons with the same or related species overseas. Taro is perhaps possible, although the native version in Australia (Colocasia esculenta var. aquatili) is a different subspecies which may or may not be suitable to cultivation. In any case, it's found in the Kimberley region, which is... not the most promising region for agriculture. Highly variable rainfall and poor soil, for starters.

Still, there are others aplenty, many of which I've touched on in Lands of Red and Gold. The water chestnut (Eleocharis dulcis) has been domesticated in China/Southeast Asia, and is also found in northern Australia. So are two species of yams (Dioscorea alata and D. bulbifera). Common purslane (Portulaca oleracea) was domesticated multiple times in the Old World, but not in Australia, despite being widespread.

Plus, of course, the various species of Australian native rice, Oryza australiensis, O. rufipogon, O. meridionalis and O. officinalis. These are genetically diverse enough that some researchers have suggested that rice first evolved in Australia and then spread to Asia. There has been some small-scale cultivation of that in OTL, but not on a large commercial scale (yet).

So in short, there are possibilities, although those plants named above would struggle to make a complete founding domestic crop package. No really good high-protein crop like legumes, for instance (although Australian native rice is higher protein than domesticated Asian rice). But it's not inconceivable.

If the Aboriginals had domesticated taro or some other crop, could they have had an "incomplete package" which they could supplement through hunting or fishing or trading with Aboriginal groups which had surplus meat?
 
If the Aboriginals had domesticated taro or some other crop, could they have had an "incomplete package" which they could supplement through hunting or fishing or trading with Aboriginal groups which had surplus meat?

Such a semi-domestication still requires a few other things. Food storage is particularly important, since many crops do not store well, particularly root crops, and especially in tropical climes. It would need techniques and varieties of the crop which could be readily stored. Seeds generally store the best; it's no coincidence that most of the founding agricultural packages (though not all) had some form of seed (not always cereals) which could be stored easily. Other forms of storage are possible, especially in drier climes (which is what I went with for LoRaG), but it's harder.

For most of the crops I listed, it would also need to develop some control over irrigation. Since the regions in question are generally dry and mostly variable in rainfall, they would also need some pretty good early engineering works to store water for long periods.
 
For me there are many nut producing trees, wild grapes, various berries, and wild rice in addition to what has already been domesticated and medicinal plants. I have no idea how this would be accomplished but in North America I could see the traditional agricultural peoples doing it but they need to have a reason too.
 
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