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Botany Photo of the Day
In science, beauty. In beauty, science. Daily.

Triticum aestivum cultivar

Triticum aestivum cultivar

Botany Photo of the Day will have brief written entries on weekends, holidays and my vacations from April through September. – Daniel

In terms of global cereal crop production, wheat is second only to maize (corn) (though it sometimes yields the number two spot to rice, depending on the year). China, India and the USA are the world's top-three producers – not so coincidentally, these are also the three countries with the largest populations. Read “The Story of Wheat” from the December, 2005 edition of The Economist for details about the history and future of this exceedingly important crop.

6 Comments

bev commented:

Daniel;

(I typed my email address very carefully (:)

Thanks for the link to the article - it was fascinating; not only about the wheat but about trends in population growth. Maybe similar to the rats in a cage experiment who stop breeding when overcrowded.

If one doesn't want to read the whole article; you HAVE to scroll down to the photo of the mouse balancing between 2 wheat stalks - what a shot!

msEmily commented:

That's a beautiful picture..

Eman commented:

how can i send you something?
I am a botany graduate from Kuwait University and i would love to participate in some wild plants of kuwait.

Daniel Mosquin commented:

Hello Eman,

My preferred methods of people submitting photographs are on the About Botany Photo of the Day page. Wild plants of Kuwait would be very welcome!

aminu abubakar chiranchi commented:

am a nigerian studying botany at university level currently, i am very impressed with this lovely pictures they will help me through my course of study, i will be very glad if u can help me with other materials via my email thanks ones again.

Alexander Jablanczy commented:

Do we want fifty to a hundred million Canadians?
Do we need to move the agricultural line two hundred miles north of the US Canadian border?
Of course all that would happen if there were a grass crop that would grow in extremely poor mineral soil without fertiliser sans irrigation in all non agricultural soil. In northern Canada.
About twenty years ago I found a grass which had a very tasty edible seed soft fast to the stem yet easily removed by running the sheaf though my fingers.
I tried to get an ex agronomist then a forester interested to no avail.
So every year or two I drive 40 km N of the Soo check on my grasses on a dirt road and take a few plants to identify at least or gather enough in a few minutes by hand for a meal just raw to see any ill effects. There are none.
Maybe all for the best. In twenty years it could have been propagared studied in an agricultural institute and test plantings done with cooking baking experiments.
Already plans might have been formed to convert unfertile scrub land to fertile fields.
Better not. We have more than enough productive agricultural lands, for farmers are being paid not to grow crops.
I dont know what it is almost certainly not wheat rye barley millet corn buckwheat rice or wild rice but it is some sort of a grass seed. Greenish grey soft 5 by 2 mm 50 per ear twenty ears
per stalk.
Just about now it's time to check on them to see if they are still there.

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