Jerusalem artichoke, Helianthus tuberosus - 27th October 2015
from the shades of "Arcadia E4" lost and found
The towering sway of the ‘Jerusalem artichokes’ was razed to the ground; felled with a brutal and relatively short wield of our communal loppers. The ‘girasoles’ grew taller than ever this year. Some of them were so thick stemmed, strong, tall and stout, they warranted a call for the pruning saw. Despite having emanated from just a small patch of ground the ‘sun-chokes’ dominated that lower corner of the allotment garden where they looked up, turned sunwards and, splendidly vertiginous in full inflorescence, cast a heavy collective shadow that stole a lot of light from many of their neighbours. Forgiving but not forgetting the ‘topinambour’s’ propensity to overshadow; if the dense and verdant emanation sang, it could have been the chorus in a ‘helianthemic’ song of the garden; an ode to Arcadias lost and found. The tuberous roots of our fallen Arcadia are still there (waiting?) to be harvested. That patch of ground may be called on to sing a different song next year; with all the ‘sun-roots’ diligently dug up and some of them transplanted to another corner of the plot while others transported to the cooking pot.
Where does my notion of ‘Arcadia E4’ come from? What connections might be made between, Helianthus tuberosus, and Arcadia? I found out, via Wikipedia, that the Italian explorer, Giovanni da Verrazzano (G da V), ‘is renowned as the first European since the Norse expeditions to North America, around AD 1000 to explore the Atlantic coast of N. America - in 1524’. The Wikipedia page on Arcadia (Utopia) states that G da V, ‘applied the name “Arcadia” to the entire North American coast north of Virginia’ – or north of the area that became the Colony of Virginia and is now the Commonwealth of Virginia. Was G da V’s application serious and intended for posterity? Without more detailed botanical/culinary accounts of the Nordic explorations, the European relationship with the tuberous sunflower began there, in that region of North America.
20th June
30th June
G da V’s voyage to “Arcadia” began on 17th January 1524. He reached the area of Cape Fear on 1st March. From there he continued north along the coast and along the way, before his return to France (by 8th July 1524), G da V and his fellow explorers met with a delegation of Wampanoag at Narragansett Bay. By my reckoning their meeting happened in May/June 1524. What did G da V see of the culture, and in particular, the agriculture of the Wampanoag? How apparent were the cultivations of the inhabitants of Narragansett Bay? Did the tribes of the Wampanoag garden or farm ‘earth apples’, or forage for them? Would the haulms of ‘Canada potatoes’ have been conspicuous in the landscape at that time of year? Perhaps the ‘lamb-choke’ was not in season and any culinary offerings from the Wampanoag did not include the gastronomic delights of the knobbly ‘choke root’.
Samuel de Champlain is credited with taking the first samples of domestically grown ‘girasole articiocco’ from Cape Cod to France, 80 years later, in 1605. By 1621 the artichoke root was known to Europeans for causing ‘a filthy loathsome stinking wind within the body’ (John Goodyer, in Gerard’s Herbal) although it was not so widely known in Europe that New World/European settlers of the early 1600s knew much about it as a food crop. By 1620, when the Pilgrims started sailing to North America, the Native American populations of “Arcadia” had been devastated by diseases brought by other European explorers, hunters and traders. Yellow Fever and Leptospirosis may have been some of the diseases that lead to epidemics that wiped out whole tribes – especially those of the less isolated mainland Wampanoag people. European military intervention in inter-tribal relations exacerbated the calamity of disease.
Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) and climbing french beans - 26th September
Was the landscape of “Arcadia”, prior to the landing of the Europeans, an unspoiled wilderness or a pastoral idyll, or both, and were the Native Americans victims of European Utopian desires for it? The newly found Garden of Eden was a place of devastation – of and for the indigenous inhabitants and their cultivation and culture of the land. Was their relationship with the land symbiotic and harmonious? As native peoples succumbed to disease and disappeared I imagine there were substantial changes in or to the landscape on many levels. Perhaps da Verrazzano’s attribution of “Arcadia” was inadvertently a recognition of an Eden on the threshold of becoming lost – a sort of destruction myth. Areas of cultivated land might have become overgrown and overwhelmed by particular plants that had been controlled. Animals that had been hunted, their numbers and effects controlled, may have relatively quickly reasserted their presence.
Jerusalem artichoke (and Ash) shade - late afternoon, 30th September
Many of the settlers brought by the Mayflower perished in their first winter in Cape Cod. It was Tisquantum (Squanto) who introduced the settlers to Native American agricultural and hunting methods that would enable them to survive. The irony of Squanto’s story is that in the period of his forced abduction (to England and Spain) from his homeland, his tribe, the Patuxet, was wiped out by disease. He was purportedly the last of his tribe, a sole survivor. It was the settlers who inherited his knowledge of the land and the collective cultural practices long established on it. The pilgrims may have relished the Jerusalem artichoke root despite the loathsome flatulence it can cause. By the mid 1600s the ‘girasole’ had become much more popular and established as a food crop in Europe thus becoming another part of the substantial counter migration of American plant culture to Europe.
12th October
23rd October
This post is part of my delving or digging into the cultural history of a plant grown for food on our allotment. The history has imbued the plant with a potentially new and enriched sense of place albeit one associated with grim, regrettable historical and contemporary situations. In our allotment the Jerusalem artichokes have become weeds. The felled artichoke haulms were stripped down and are being dried for beanpoles for next year. The leaves and less substantial plants were shredded and consigned to the compost heaps in order to create more benevolent forms of darkness.
Where is the best place for the harvested Jerusalem artichoke roots of 2015 to go? What knowledge and wisdom can no longer be called on to answer that question?
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