Just how many professional ethnobotanists are in your cooking group?

You and your culinary buddies need to get out more and philosophize less.

There are whole books written on the subject. You can find them in a place
called a library. Check it out.

You have been looking in the wrong places.

The wild ancestors of all our cultivated crop plants are out there somewhere
on the planet and they won't be in your back yard.

Many of them have been domesticated to such an extreme you might not
recognize many of them at first.

The wild ancestor of the sunflower grows throughout North America from coast
to coast but the plants have many small flower heads instead of a single
oversized one. They grow in open fields not wooded areas.

The wild ancestors of the tomato are all gangly South American perennials
with small berries. Its just that none of the species are cold hardy.

Wild chilies are all over the New World tropics.

The wild gourds are found primarily in arid regions and have rather small
fruit.

The wild ancestors of corn occur all through Mexico and look like tall
grasses and have no cobs at all.

BTW, be sure to do a spelling check before you send out your queery, oops, I
mean query.


Michelle wrote in message
...
Hey I was reading a post on my cooking group and one user always
posts a factoid about food this time it was about a chili pepper plant
and it's ancesstory .
so my question is how come you don't just see vegetables growing all
over the place wild like som crazy out of control tomatoes or somthing
like that once I saw some whild sunflowers in the woods and I saw a
pumpkin once but not too much else I see whild fruit all the time like
crab apples or sour cherry but no bunches of
Have we imbread cultivated food plants that they just don't grow wild
where did all the wild plants go that we cultivated modern vegetables
from?
Just a queery
Michelle
"Love is the water in the garden of life "