Buckwheat Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
- This article is about the food crop. An article about the fictional character is at Buckwheat (character).
- This article is about the food crop. An article about the fictional character is at Buckwheat (character).
Common buckwheat was probably first cultivated in China. Besides the seeds, from which buckwheat flour is produced, buckwheat is also a good honey plant. The flour is made into noodles (including soba) and into buckwheat groats, often known as "kasha". Buckwheat contains rutin, a medicinal chemical.
Buckwheat pancakes, sometimes raised with yeast, are eaten in several countries. They are known as blinis in Russia, galettes in France (especially in Brittany) and ployes in Acadia. Similar pancakes were a common food in American pioneer days. They are light and foamy. The buckwheat flour gives them an agreeably earthy, mildly mushroom-like taste.
Cultivation of buckwheat has declined sharply in the US. Over a million acres (4,000 km²) where harvested in 1918. By 1954 that had declined to 150,000 acres (600 km²), and by 1964, the last year that production statistics where gathered, only 50,000 acres (200 km²) where grown. In 1970 Russia grew an estimated 4.5 million acres (18,000 km²) of buckwheat.
The name 'buckwheat' comes from its triangular seeds, which resemble the much larger seeds of beech.
In the 1970s and 1980s, General Mills produced a sweetened, maple-flavored breakfast cereal made from buckwheat, which was marketed under the name Buc-Wheats.
References
McGregor, S.E. 1976. Insect Pollination Of Cultivated Crop Plants, chap. 9 Crop Plants and Exotic Plants. U.S. Department of Agrigulture. As found on the website of the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center of the USDA Agrigultural Research Service.[1]
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