Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
5
The Practices
The Alluring Almond
Plants do amazing things with chemicals. Fixed in place, plants use them
to repel or attract their ecological companions. The wild “bitter almond”
(
Prunus dulcis
var.
amara
) was so named because it contains amygdalin,
an intensely tart chemical compound that breaks down to cyanide. It
evolved in the mountains of west-central Asia, where winters were warm
and wet and summers hot and dry. Its chemical defenses repelled those
companions that were tempted to sample its seeds, and its poison
punished those that disregarded its bitterness. The presence of amygdalin
is controlled by a single gene, however, and occasionally a mutation
would sprout. Some early farmers identified certain mutations and began
to cultivate them. Evidence of wild almonds can be found at Greek
archeological sites dating back 10,000 years.
Ancient peoples moved the domesticated almond (
Prunus dulcis
)
around the Mediterranean Basin, where they learned by trial and error
to plant it on rocky hillsides so as to avoid early spring frost, which
destroys its flowers. Almond orchards were usually marginal: they occu-
pied poor soils, were generally dry-farmed, and added a little extra to
farmer families' nutritional needs and income. The early Franciscans
brought almonds to several California Missions. The first commercial
almond orchard in the state was planted near Sacramento in 1843 with
varieties from the Languedoc region of France, but commercial produc-
tion eluded growers for decades. Growers did not understand the need
for bees to cross-pollinate different almond varietals, and they did not
adequately protect their trees from frost and disease. Thus, almonds
came relatively late to commercial orchard production in California,
after all manner of citrus, stone, and pome fruit.
