1. Food Plants

2. New Food From Old
Aztec threshing Amaranth – Florentine Codex – 16th Century

3. Amaranthus hypocondriacus Amaranthaceae

4. Amaranth harvest in Sierra Madre, Mexico

5. Amaranth seed balls for sale in market, Sierra Madre

6. Aztec God Huitzilopochtli

7. Amaranth culture in US today

8. More Amaranth Species
A. cruentus A. caudatus

9. Triticale
On left – wheat, triticale, rye

10. The Trouble with Tribbles

11. Prickly Pear Pads - Nopales

12. Star fruit – Averrhoa carambola

13. Star Fruit - Carambola
The carambola is believed to have originated in Sri Lanka and the Moluccas but it has been cultivated in southeast Asia and Malaysia for many centuries. It is commonly grown in southern China, in Taiwan and India. It is rather popular in the Philippines and Queensland, Australia
There are 2 distinct classes of carambola–the smaller, very sour type, richly flavored, with more oxalic acid; the larger, so-called "sweet" type, mild-flavored, rather bland, with less oxalic acid

14. Pinyon Pine – Pinus edulis

15. Stone Pine – Pinus pinea

16. Pine nuts or pignoli – from Pinus edulis

17. Kiwi Fruit – Actinidia chinensis

18. Kiwi fruit cultivation

19. Taro – Colocasia esculenta

20. Taro harvest - Hawaii

21. Taro corms

22. Poi – made from taro corms

23. Tamarind – Tamarindus indica

24. Tamarind Fruits

25. Tamarind based sauces

26. Tamarinido Drinks

27. Ethnobotany and Geography

28. Ethnobotany and Geography
Ethnobotanical studies often focus on limited geographic areas: regions, countries, provinces, states, and even smaller areas.
This may seem to be a limited arrangement because it prevents making large scale comparisons between areas or plant uses, but it makes sense because the relationships of plants and people in a particular area are often incredibly intimate

29. Why study plants of Polynesia?
In all traditional cultures the relationships of plants and people are reciprocal and dynamic
In traditional societies, most plant products are collected, produced and consumed locally
Michael Balick and Paul Cox feel that nowhere has the effect of the use of plants on human culture been more dramatic than in their use to manufacture sea craft that transport people and their crops across vast stretches of the ocean

30. Long Ocean Voyages by Humans
Erik the Red journeyed 800 miles from Iceland to discover Greenland; his son Leif Eriksson went farther sailing nearly 2000 miles from Greenland to an area he called Vinland, which we know as a part of Newfoundland in Canada
Polynesians would commonly travel the 422 miles from Fiji to Tonga or 769 miles from Fiji to Samoa; Samoa to Tahiti (1059 miles) was not unheard of; the longest trips were from Tahiti to Hawaii (2700 miles) such trips did not occur often, but occurred often enough to populate almost all habitable islands in the Pacific and to allow trade and exchange of culture across the Pacific

31. Viking voyages

32. Viking longship – Gokstad, Norway

33. Polynesian Islands

34. Tahiti with sailing canoes and other ships – painted in 1773 by William Hodges with Capt. Cook’s expedition

35. Boats in Moana

36. Boats in Moana

37. Boats on Island of Kabara
The Camakau (thah-mah-cow) which is a single-hulled canoe of up to 15 meters in length and used in inter-island transport and warfare
The Drua (ndrro-ah) which has two hulls and requires up to 50 men to sail it
The Tabetebete (tahm-bay-tay-bay-tay) which is the largest of all Fijian sea craft with an intricate hull of fitted planks that could be up to 36 m long and 7.3 m wide - these vessels could transport up to 200 men, sail at 20 knots

38. A Drua built about 1900 on Fiji

39. Design of
a camakau,
traditional
Fijian ocean-
going craft

40. Josafata Cama, traditional shipwright of Kabara Island

41. Vesi tree – Intsia bijuga

42. Selecting Vesi trees for ship building – Kabara Island

43. Hollowing out a Vesi tree trunk for a canoe hull – Kabara Island

44. Vika Usu weaving a sail from Pandanus leaves – Kabara Island

45. Pandanus odoratissimus

46. Young Pandanus leaves

47. Canarium harveyi sap used for caulk

48. Kabara Islanders and Sandra Bannock on first voyage of camakau

49. Where did Polynesians come from?
Based on many characteristics such as blood types, linguistics, indigenous agriculture, and archaeological evidence it is generally thought the Polynesians came from the Lapita, an agricultural people who left Indo-Malaysia and journeyed west

50. Polynesian Islands

51. Polynesian Migrations

52. Maori Migration to New Zealand

53. Sweet potato tubers

54. Sweet Potato Names
In most parts of the South Pacific, sweet potatoes are called kumara, very similar to the native Peruvian word of cumara
However, in Hawaii, the sweet potato is called ‘uala, more similar to the native Columbian word kuala - perhaps a couple of groups were in contact with South America

55. Plans for a balsa
wood raft – used
along coast of
South America
drawn by F.E.
Paris in 1841

56. Thor Heyerdahl’s balsa wood raft – 1947 in action and model