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9 - Harvesting crops: arable and forestry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

David Briggs
Affiliation:
Wolfson College, Cambridge
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Summary

In The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, Darwin (1905, vol. 390) considered an issue raised by Loiseleur-Deslongchamps in his book Les Cereales. As cereal crops have evolved under domestication, perhaps the weeds infecting the fields in which these crops have been grown have also changed. It is interesting to quote Darwin's reaction to this point and his cautious conclusion.

Loiseleur-Deslongchamps has argued that, if our cereal plants have been greatly modified by cultivation, the weeds which habitually grow mingled with them would have been equally modified. But this argument shows how completely the principle of selection has been overlooked. That such weeds have not varied, or at least do not now vary in any extreme degree, is the opinion of Mr H C Watson and Professor Asa Gray, as they inform me; but who will pretend to say that they do not vary as much as the individual plants of the same sub-variety of wheat? We have already seen that pure varieties of wheat, cultivated in the same field, offer many slight variations, which can be selected and separately propagated; and that occasionally more strongly pronounced variations appear, which as Mr Shirreff has proved, are well worthy of extensive cultivation. Not until equal attention be paid to the variability and selection of weeds, can the argument from their constancy under unintentional culture be of any value.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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  • Harvesting crops: arable and forestry
  • David Briggs, Wolfson College, Cambridge
  • Book: Plant Microevolution and Conservation in Human-influenced Ecosystems
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511812965.010
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  • Harvesting crops: arable and forestry
  • David Briggs, Wolfson College, Cambridge
  • Book: Plant Microevolution and Conservation in Human-influenced Ecosystems
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511812965.010
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Harvesting crops: arable and forestry
  • David Briggs, Wolfson College, Cambridge
  • Book: Plant Microevolution and Conservation in Human-influenced Ecosystems
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511812965.010
Available formats
×