Native American Foods: Technology and Food Sources: Cultivated Plants

The cultivation of wild plants—that is, transplanting or encouraging the seeding of wild plants in concentrations that made tending and harvesting easier and harvests fuller—was an intermediate step between plant gathering and agriculture. Before contact, seed selection and tending of plants such as marsh elder (Iva annua), also called sumpweed, sometimes produced crops of seeds that were three times the size of those growing untended. Stands of cultivated plants at contact included wild lamb’s-quarter, Jerusalem artichoke, amaranth, and elderberry (genus Sambucus).