Hedrick, U.P. editor. 1919. Sturtevant's Notes on Edible Plants. Report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station for the Year 1919 II. Albany, J.B Lyon Company, State Printers. [References Available]
is a plant of Europe and northern Asia. Buckwheat seems to have been unknown to the Greeks and Romans. It grows wild in Nepal, China and Siberia and is supposed to have been brought to Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century from northern Asia. According to Buckman, it is mentioned in a German Bible printed in 1522. It is mentioned by Tragus, 1552, as cultivated in the Odenwald under the name of heydenkorn. Caesalpinus, 1583, describes it ias cultivated in the Odenwald under the name of heydenkorn. Caesalpinus, 1583, describes it as cultivated, probably in Italy under the name of formentone aliss saresinum. Dodoenaeus, 1616, says it was much cultivated in Germany and Brabant. It must have secured early admittance to America, for samples of American growth were sent to Holland by the colony of Manhattan Island as early as 1628. It is at present cultivated in the United states as a field corp, as also in northern Europe, in China, Japan and elsewhere. Fraser found large fields of it at 11,405 feet elevation near the temple of Milun in the Himalayas. In northern India and Ceylon, it is of recent introduction and its cultivation is confined to narrow limits. Notch-seeded buckwheat is a native of the mountainous districts of China and Nepal, where it is cultivated for its seeds.
