Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 115, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1919 — NEW VALUABLE FOOD PLANTS [ARTICLE]

NEW VALUABLE FOOD PLANTS

Recently Brought From Peru by Men* bers of the Yale geographic Expedition. ----- -.—=== ' <1 ■ ■ T - — A new and important breakfast food plant has been fetched from Peru by file Yale geographic expedition. It yields a product" declared to be quite equal to oatmeal. The plant in queslion is a cultivated pigweed. ami yn- + rfvntly was one of the two principal grain producing erbps'* of the Incas. Today |n Peru it is chiefly used for i the iiianufHcture of ‘•chi<ha." a native l beer. From a valley high up in the ! Peruvian Andes the expedition obtained ; a D ew * n d remarkable wild relative of the tomato. It has an apple-like flavor, and Is the fruit of a desert plant, found in company with eaq/i and other such water-starved Vegetable species. The plant is a vine, which, say the experts, may he trained over arbors. It may be crossed with our own tomatoes for the production of vnfieries with "special 7 edible virtues. Another remarkable acquisition was a kind of tomato that grows on a„tree. - It is only a little tree, four or five feet high, wjth branches that ! spretld horizontally, giving it a flat- ! topped effect. The tomatoes are egg I shaped, and borne in pendant clusters ' from near the ends of the branches. | Yet another prize, deemed valuable for introduction into the United States, was the “lucurul” which can hardly be called a... discovery inasmuch as it has long bptjn a popular l fruit in Peru. It has rich, mealy , flesh, somewhaF teseufld+ftg -in texture 1 and flavor a cooked sweet potato, ami is hardy enough to be grown tn FlorI ida or in southern California.