🥞 The wheat that is not a wheat

Wheat is a grass. So are corn, rice, oats, barley and rye — narrow blades, seeds packed onto a head at the top of a stalk. Buckwheat is none of that. USDA’s plant guide opens with the family and never mentions grasses: “Buckwheat family (Polygonaceae). Buckwheat is a warm-season, broadleaf annual with superficial surface roots, a weak tap root and erect, reddish stems,” a plant that makes “heart-shaped leaves, and clusters of small white flowers.” USDA files it as a “pseudo-cereal” — something we treat like a grain because we grind its seed. Even the name is a mix-up about shape: “The plant’s three-sided, angular seed looks like a small beechnut, therefore it was named buckwheat from the Anglo Saxon words boc (beech) and whoet (wheat).” A beech-nut of a seed, on a broadleaf plant, wearing the word wheat ever since.

Basis: USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, Plant Guide: Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum Moench), Pullman Plant Materials Center: “Buckwheat family (Polygonaceae). Buckwheat is a warm-season, broadleaf annual with superficial surface roots, a weak tap root and erect, reddish stems. The plant produces multiple branches along the stems, heart-shaped leaves, and clusters of small white flowers at the end of the branches.”; “Buckwheat is a pseudo-cereal processed into products such as breakfast foods, flour and noodles”; “The plant’s three-sided, angular seed looks like a small beechnut, therefore it was named buckwheat from the Anglo Saxon words boc (beech) and whoet (wheat).”

Of everything a farmer sows to cover the ground, nothing gets going faster. The guide is direct about it: buckwheat “grows in the shortest time period of all cover crops,” “flowering within 3 to 6 weeks and completely maturing within 11 to 12 weeks.” That speed comes with a hard limit — the plant is “not tolerant of frost,” and should be “planted after the risk of frost has passed.” So the calendar is different in every state that grows it. USDA lists the windows: “late May to mid-June in North Dakota,” “mid-June to mid-July in New York,” and “mid-July in central Washington (under irrigation).” Three states, three completely different bets about summer.

Basis: USDA NRCS Plant Guide, Buckwheat: “Buckwheat grows in the shortest time period of all cover crops flowering within 3 to 6 weeks and completely maturing within 11 to 12 weeks.”; “not tolerant of frost, flooding, soil crusting or extreme drought”; “Buckwheat should be planted after the risk of frost has passed… Recommended planting dates vary from late May to mid-June in North Dakota, mid-June to mid-July in New York, and mid-July in central Washington (under irrigation).”

While it is up, it runs a diner for insects. Buckwheat “is an excellent plant for bee pasture,” says the guide: the flowers “produce numerous, shallow white flowers and abundant nectar, and bloom in the late summer when other plants are no longer blooming.” The scale is startling for such a small plant — “About one acre of buckwheat can provide enough forage for a hive of honey bees, producing about 150 pounds of honey in one season.” The favour goes both ways, because buckwheat cannot pollinate itself: its flowers “are self-sterile and require pollination by insects or wind for fertilization.” Without insects or wind carrying the pollen, no seed.

Basis: USDA NRCS Plant Guide, Buckwheat: “Buckwheat is an excellent plant for bee pasture and insectary gardens… The plants produce numerous, shallow white flowers and abundant nectar, and bloom in the late summer when other plants are no longer blooming… About one acre of buckwheat can provide enough forage for a hive of honey bees, producing about 150 pounds of honey in one season.”; “Flowers are self-sterile and require pollination by insects or wind for fertilization.”

Farmers also plant it as a bully. “Because buckwheat grows quickly, it is an excellent suppressor of weeds, and it has been used for this purpose in North America for several centuries,” the guide says — and then drops a detail you do not expect in a plant manual: “Thomas Jefferson and George Washington corresponded with one another about how well buckwheat suppressed weed growth on their farms.” Two of the country’s founders, writing letters to each other about weeds. The crop planted for that job is often never harvested at all: it is mown or turned back into the soil, which is why a field of buckwheat can exist without ever showing up in the harvest table.

Basis: USDA NRCS Plant Guide, Buckwheat: “Because buckwheat grows quickly, it is an excellent suppressor of weeds, and it has been used for this purpose in North America for several centuries. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington corresponded with one another about how well buckwheat suppressed weed growth on their farms, and at that time, the practice had already been used by European settlers for over 150 years.”; “Buckwheat is easily killed by mowing or frost.”

And here is where the not-a-wheat becomes a problem for wheat. The plant guide carries a warning in capital letters: “WARNING: Buckwheat has the potential to contaminate commodity wheat crops when grown prior or adjacent to wheat in several Midwestern and western states, which causes major issues with wheat exports to Japan and other Asian countries.” Volunteer buckwheat is easy to get and hard to lose — its seeds “shatter (fall off the plant) soon after maturing,” which “causes potential volunteer problems the following year.” A crop that sows itself, in a field somebody wanted to be pure wheat.

Basis: USDA NRCS Plant Guide, Buckwheat: “WARNING: Buckwheat has the potential to contaminate commodity wheat crops when grown prior or adjacent to wheat in several Midwestern and western states, which causes major issues with wheat exports to Japan and other Asian countries.”; “Seeds mature 10 days after flowering and shatter (fall off the plant) soon after maturing, which reduces yields and causes potential volunteer problems the following year.”