IN SEARCH OF LOST FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

• BY VALÉRIE LEVÉE

Meat, fruits and vegetables, but no grains or dairy products, and definitely no processed foods. These are the main points of the “paleo” diet, which advocates for a return to what our prehistoric ancestors used to eat. Except that prehistoric fruits and vegetables have little in common with the ones we eat now because they’ve been transformed by modern farming practices.

Let’s go back to cave-dweller times to find out about the ancestors of today’s bananas, pumpkins and corn, which used to make up their diet.

The banana that we buy at the grocery store has nothing to do with its ancestor that we find in the wild.

PHOTO D'Hont, Angelique CIRAD

The teosinte is our corn's ancestor.

PHOTO John Doebley

THE FRUIT OF A GRASS

Contrary to appearances, the banana tree is not actually a tree, but rather a giant herbaceous plant! Originally from Asia, it has been cultivated in Papua New Guinea for over 7,000 years. But the bananas of prehistoric times neither looked nor tasted like the modern-day varieties. Like the wild bananas that still grow in Asia, they were full of seeds and had little flesh. Nothing like the cultivated bananas we eat.

These ancient bananas did have the advantage of being fertile, however. Since growers had several species available to them, they could crossbreed them. Over time, they obtained fleshier bananas, which they selected for eating and kept the seeds for breeding. This crossbreeding also led to a fruit that develops from the female flower, without it needing to be fertilized (parthenocarpy).

Thus, the modern, seedless banana was born. But it has to rely on human intervention because it’s sterile!

PUMPKINS AND OTHER SQUASH

Zucchini, pumpkin, spaghetti squash, straightneck squash, pattypan squash—you wouldn’t have found any of these on a prehistoric menu: they simply didn’t exist. Despite their different shapes, colours and tastes, they all come from the same ancestor: Cucurbita pepo, which grew in Mexico and the southern United States.

The fruit of this heirloom species were small balls, a few centimetres in diameter, with tough, bitter, stringy flesh. The hunter-gatherers of prehistoric times harvested them primarily for their seeds, and then began to grow them, about 10,000 years ago, as evidenced by squash remains found in caves in Mexico. Some 5,000 years later, Indigenous people in the United States also began cultivating them. In both cases, the growers had thousands of years to select squash varieties for their size, taste, shape and colour.

In the 16th century, squash was brought to Italy on ships returning from the New World and by the 19th century, the Italians had selected zucchini as their favourite type. This small, slim and green squash looks tiny beside its sister, the big orange pumpkin, but it became so popular that it spread around the world, and ended up back in the Americas again.

FROM TEOSINTE TO CORN

It was likewise in Mexico that hunter-gatherers began cultivating teosinte, the ancestor of corn. But there’s no way they could have done teosinte roasts, as the kernels weren’t sweet and the ears were tiny!

In fact, teosinte, which still grows in the wild in Mexico today, is so different from corn that it’s hard to believe it’s its ancestor. Instead of a single, strong stalk bearing an ear with several hundred large kernels, teosinte has branches with lots of ears consisting of a handful of small, hard kernels wrapped in a shell. Did hunter-gatherers grind these kernels into flour? Did they suck out the sugar from the pith of the plant stem? Did they eat the flowers? Or did they ferment the pith to make an alcoholic drink? Whatever the case, the first farmers selected the plants they could get the most out of, and archaeological remains show that what they were growing around 9,000 years ago wasn’t teosinte anymore, but corn.

From Mexico, corn traveled south with humans to Argentina and north to Canada, then to the rest of the world, and a huge number of different varieties were developed, each suited to its local climate.

If corn roasts are possible today, it’s because corn kernels have lost their shell and a genetic mutation caused an increase of its sugar content.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN TO CULTIVATE HEIRLOOM PLANTS

• BY VALÉRIE LEVÉE

If you want to see what teosinte looks like, go to the Latin America kitchen garden. It’s cultivated by Isabelle Paquin, the horticulturist in charge of the Useful Plants Garden. Also grown in the garden are exotic food plants like pepino dulce (sweet cucumber), sticky nightshade, quinoa and pipicha. And in the adjacent African kitchen garden, you’ll find okra, gboma, black-eyed peas and even peanuts! Believe it or not, these “hot country” plants are perfectly happy in Montreal! “Summer’s short, but it’s hot and humid. If we start these plants from seeds, they’ll grow,” says Ms. Paquin.

Immigrants, glad to see plants from their countries of origin, may want to grow them at home, as Hamidou Horticulture does with African eggplant, cotton and also heritage and Indigenous vegetables. Growing heirloom plants lends an exotic touch to a garden by helping rediscover forgotten tastes. If you’re interested, you can find tips on the website blog Potagers d’antan and seeds in libraries like Santropol Roulant and the Atwater Seed Library, in Montreal, or Seeds of Diversity, across Canada. Ms. Paquin says that heirloom plants can be grown just like present-day plants. She suggests starting with ones that are easier to grow, like beans and peas. And if you really do want to get into heritage plants, why not revive the ancient practice of the three sisters, by growing corn, beans and squash together, as Indigenous peoples used to do? If you plant corn first, it will serve as a support for climbing beans, while the leaves of the squash will protect the soil from drying out and help prevent weeds from growing.