ISSUE 101, WHERE TO LOOK, Part 3: Sturtevant's Edible Plants of the World
Edward Lewis Sturtevant’s Edible Plants of the World
The ambition to compose a global survey of edible plants, a Flora Dietica, was ancient and lent a practical dimension to the broader philosophical project of describing in a rational order all living things—the project of biology. Attempts at describing the world’s fruits, vegetables, and grains began in antiquity and suffered from the writer’s lack of access to much of world’s geography, the prevalence of myth and fantasy in plant origin stories, and the paucity of written sources in broadly spoken languages. So there is little surprise that the surveys of plants in Pliny or Aristotle lack breadth and contain a substantial degree of nonsense.
Before a global Flora Dietica could be undertaken with useful scope and accuracy, several developments had to occur in the organization of information. Large libraries had to be created. Extensive networks of correspondence had to be developed—networks that extended beyond the academic and scientific communities into the world of common farmers and foragers. Linnaeus in the 18th century put forward his biological taxonomy and projected his nomenclature during the 18th century, and its scientific universality proved a tool, regardless of the fact that information concerning living things remained piecemeal for many parts of the world. Scientific inquirers were supremely conscious of this shortcoming, and labored to extend, refine, and correct knowledge. August Pyramus de Candolle’s Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis (1824) consolidated a more rigorous and reliable taxonomy and history of edible plants.
But for much of the 19th century floriculture—the pursuit of ornamentals—dominated the global inquiry into plant biology. Not until the end of the century did governments, conscious of the pressure of expanding populations, determine to shift the primary focus of investigation to edible plants. The Hatch Act of 1887 federally mandated the creation of state experimental station devoted to agricultural inquiry. The systematic planting of every available edible cultivar made administrators realize that many edible cultigens must exist in other portions of the world that might benefit the citizens of the United States. The 1890s saw the first dispatch of plant hunters charged with exploring remote regions for plants employed locally for food and medicine.
Perhaps the greatest speculation about the useful plants to be found in the far corners of the world was compiled by the director of the New York Agricultural Experiment station during the 1880s, Edward Lewis Sturtevant’s Edible Plants of the World. It noted 2,897 plants employed as food in the world, organized by Linnaean order, describing how they were prepared and consumed and what was known of their development. This material existed as a vast heavily annotated manuscript that was condensed and edited for publication by U. P. Hedrick of the New York Experimental Station in 1919. It became an instant classic. https://www.swsbm.com/Ephemera/Sturtevants_Edible_Plants.pdf
Sturtevant was the embodiment of American diligence. Descendended from an old New England Puritan family, he read classics in Bowdoin College, served as a Captain the the Union Army in the Civil War, trained as a physician in Harvard, and instead of practicing medicine, organized a family experimental farm with his two brothers. Waushakum Farm in South Framingham, MA, lept into the forefront of scientific agriculture, with soil analysis, crop rotation, comparative grow-outs of similar cultigens, and integrated tree crop, field crop, market garden, and livestock components. He subscribed to scientific and agricultural journals in French, German, Italian, and English. He collected a library of 500+ pre-Linnaeus books on biology and botany (now in the possession of the Missouri Botanical Garden), so he could add Greek and Latin classical citations as well as those in the European languages. In the years following the Civil War he began publishing observations on agricultural topics. He made a national reputation by 1870 on his close observation of morphology of Maize.
When the New York Experimental Station was organized, Sturtevant was approached about becoming the first director. He realized that it was a politically fraught position. A contingent of farmers didn’t like the idea of the government paying for research in optimizing crops. “My taxes are going to folks making a better potato than I’m now growing.” But by 1887, Sturtevant had gathered so much information about so many crops and had shared that knowledge gratis to any farmer that approached him, that the animosity was somewhat mitigated. He ran the station for five years before retiring. He died before the manuscript was published, but had during his lifetime published a series of articles on certain vegetables in agricultural journals.
When Hedrick determined to resurrect the manuscript in 1919, he did so knowing that the findings of the plant hunters in every part of the world had rendering Sturtevant’s findings out of date. But no book in print attempted to represent the entirety of the Flora Dietica as Sturtevant did, so Hedrick brought it out, trimmed of much cultural commentary and many of the older literary references.
A typical entry, succinct in style, and precse in geography and dating is this on the Canary Island Dragon Tree whose secretions were esteemed for medicinal uses and whose berries were once traded. It is now a popular, long-lived ornamental. The berries tend to look more orange than yellow.
Dracaena draco Linn. Liliaceae (Agavaceae). DRAGON-TREE.
Canary Islands. The dragon tree furnished dragons-blood once
considerably exported from the Canaries. At Porto Santo, one of the
Madeira Islands, Cada Mosto in 1454 found the tree yielding "a kind of
fruit, like to our cherries but yellow, which grows ripe in March and is
of a most exquisite taste."
Given how useful a reference a global flora dietica is, it is not surprising that a number of competing databases present information on edibles. All are searchable, but they vary in terms of coverage. The Food Plants International database, a Christian effort to document the scope of God’s providence uses scientific taxonomy and nomenclature in describing plants: https://foodplantsinternational.com/plants/
Bruce French created a more text-based compendium organized by nation for the Rotary International. It claimed over 35, 000 entries:
https://foodplantsolutions.org/country-resources/all-resources/
I also recommend the USDA plant database, which incorporates edibles among its more capacious listing of vascular plants
https://plants.usda.gov/