Food Plants

New Food From Old Aztec threshing Amaranth – Florentine Codex – 16th Century

Amaranthus hypocondriacus Amaranthaceae

Amaranth harvest in Sierra Madre, Mexico

Amaranth seed balls for sale in market, Sierra Madre

Aztec God Huitzilopochtli

Amaranth culture in US today

More Amaranth Species A. cruentus A. caudatus

Triticale On left – wheat, triticale, rye

The Trouble with Tribbles

Prickly Pear Pads - Nopales

Star fruit – Averrhoa carambola

Star Fruit - Carambola The carambola is believed to have originated in Sri Lanka and the Moluccas but it has been cultivated in southeast Asia and Malaysia for many centuries. It is commonly grown in southern China, in Taiwan and India. It is rather popular in the Philippines and Queensland, Australia There are 2 distinct classes of carambola–the smaller, very sour type, richly flavored, with more oxalic acid; the larger, so-called "sweet" type, mild-flavored, rather bland, with less oxalic acid

Pinyon Pine – Pinus edulis

Stone Pine – Pinus pinea

Pine nuts or pignoli – from Pinus edulis

Kiwi Fruit – Actinidia chinensis

Kiwi fruit cultivation

Taro – Colocasia esculenta

Taro harvest - Hawaii

Taro corms

Poi – made from taro corms

Tamarind – Tamarindus indica

Tamarind Fruits

Tamarind based sauces

Tamarinido Drinks

Ethnobotany and Geography

Ethnobotany and Geography Ethnobotanical studies often focus on limited geographic areas: regions, countries, provinces, states, and even smaller areas. This may seem to be a limited arrangement because it prevents making large scale comparisons between areas or plant uses, but it makes sense because the relationships of plants and people in a particular area are often incredibly intimate

Why study plants of Polynesia? In all traditional cultures the relationships of plants and people are reciprocal and dynamic In traditional societies, most plant products are collected, produced and consumed locally Michael Balick and Paul Cox feel that nowhere has the effect of the use of plants on human culture been more dramatic than in their use to manufacture sea craft that transport people and their crops across vast stretches of the ocean

Long Ocean Voyages by Humans Erik the Red journeyed 800 miles from Iceland to discover Greenland; his son Leif Eriksson went farther sailing nearly 2000 miles from Greenland to an area he called Vinland, which we know as a part of Newfoundland in Canada Polynesians would commonly travel the 422 miles from Fiji to Tonga or 769 miles from Fiji to Samoa; Samoa to Tahiti (1059 miles) was not unheard of; the longest trips were from Tahiti to Hawaii (2700 miles) such trips did not occur often, but occurred often enough to populate almost all habitable islands in the Pacific and to allow trade and exchange of culture across the Pacific

Viking voyages

Viking longship – Gokstad, Norway

Polynesian Islands

Tahiti with sailing canoes and other ships – painted in 1773 by William Hodges with Capt. Cook’s expedition

Boats in Moana

Boats in Moana

Boats on Island of Kabara The Camakau (thah-mah-cow) which is a single-hulled canoe of up to 15 meters in length and used in inter-island transport and warfare The Drua (ndrro-ah) which has two hulls and requires up to 50 men to sail it The Tabetebete (tahm-bay-tay-bay-tay) which is the largest of all Fijian sea craft with an intricate hull of fitted planks that could be up to 36 m long and 7.3 m wide - these vessels could transport up to 200 men, sail at 20 knots

A Drua built about 1900 on Fiji

Design of a camakau, traditional Fijian ocean- going craft

Josafata Cama, traditional shipwright of Kabara Island

Vesi tree – Intsia bijuga

Selecting Vesi trees for ship building – Kabara Island

Hollowing out a Vesi tree trunk for a canoe hull – Kabara Island

Vika Usu weaving a sail from Pandanus leaves – Kabara Island

Pandanus odoratissimus

Young Pandanus leaves

Canarium harveyi sap used for caulk

Kabara Islanders and Sandra Bannock on first voyage of camakau

Where did Polynesians come from? Based on many characteristics such as blood types, linguistics, indigenous agriculture, and archaeological evidence it is generally thought the Polynesians came from the Lapita, an agricultural people who left Indo-Malaysia and journeyed west

Polynesian Islands

Polynesian Migrations

Maori Migration to New Zealand

Sweet potato tubers

Sweet Potato Names In most parts of the South Pacific, sweet potatoes are called kumara, very similar to the native Peruvian word of cumara However, in Hawaii, the sweet potato is called ‘uala, more similar to the native Columbian word kuala - perhaps a couple of groups were in contact with South America

Plans for a balsa wood raft – used along coast of South America drawn by F.E. Paris in 1841

Thor Heyerdahl’s balsa wood raft – 1947 in action and model