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Today's Topics:
1. August millet-of-the-month (part 2): "Sonoran millet" (Don Osborn)
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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2023 14:15:48 -0400
From: Don Osborn <don@milletsalliance.org>
To: collab@lists.millets2023.space
Subject: [Collab] August millet-of-the-month (part 2): "Sonoran
millet"
Message-ID:
<CA+RHibXor6piTTWcQVqPSAFF3XaP32XsbuXR61JMKx-Ho5kD2g@mail.gmail.com>
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Sharing the millet-of-the-month spotlight in August with little millet
(Panicum sumatrense) is its North American "cousin," sometimes called
Sonoran millet (P. hirticaule or P. sonorum). Both are in the same genus as
proso millet (P. miliaceum), which was the January millet of the month.
Sonoran millet has been well documented as being under cultivation in what
is now the SW US and NW Mexico since prehistoric times until modern
times./9 /10 Cultivation now is apparently limited mainly to small farms
notably of Wariho Indians in Sonora, Mexico, where it was documented as
recently as 2011./11
Regarding nomenclature, it seems that P. hirticaule/12 may be used more for
the wild varieties, and P. sonorum/13 for the larger and larger-grained
variants that have been cultivated. However usage varies, esp. in older
literature.
At one point, it was thought that this grain - its cultivated variety - was
extinct./11 An important range of cultivation in the Colorado River delta
effectively disappeared as an indirect effect of the Hoover Dam./9 Its
present status is "vulnerable."/13 There is some discussion of whether this
grain is truly "domesticated" in the strictest agricultural sense of the
term, but there is no question that it has long been selected and
cultivated.
Archaeological evidence shows that Native Americans cultivated or gathered
seeds of several Panicum and Setaria species, especially before the
domestication and spread of corn/maize.
Don Osborn, PhD
(East Lansing, MI, US)
North American Millets Alliance
(The above is based on an earlier post to Collab, in October 2022,
https://lists.millets2023.space/pipermail/collab/2022-October/000090.html ;
the image and links to sites from which its parts were sourced, below, are
new)
Notes:
1. Gary Nabhan & J.M.J. de Wet. 1984. "Panicum sonorum in Sonoran Desert
Agriculture." Economic Botany, 38(1), 65?82.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4254574
2. https://www.nativeseeds.org/pages/sonoran-panic-grass
3. Barney T. Burns. 2011. "A Short History of Panic Grass." Seedhead News,
No. 109, Spring 2011, pp. 6-7.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0157/0808/files/SeedheadNews109-2011-Spring.pdf?6793537935674027774
(Republished in 2015 at
https://www.nativeseeds.org/blogs/blog-news/a-short-history-of-panic-grass )
4. https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Panicum_hirticaule
5.
https://explorer.natureserve.org/Taxon/ELEMENT_GLOBAL.2.130251/Panicum_sonorum
Attached image credits:
(left) https://cabezaprieta.org/plant_page.php?id=1533
(top right) https://calscape.org/Panicum-hirticaule-%28%29
(middle right)
https://medivetus.com/botanic/panicum-hirticaule-mexican-panicgrass-edible-uses/
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