FOOD RESOURCE COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
QUERCUS PERSICA, MANNA OAK
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 Persia. the acorns are eaten in southern Europe and, in southern Persia, afford material for bread. The leaves also furnish a manna. In oden times, as we read in Homer and Hesiod, the acorn was the common food of the arcadians. There is, however, much reason to suppose that chestnuts, which was named in the times of Theophrastus and Dioscorides Jupiter acorns and Sardian acorns, are often alluded to when we read of people having lived on acorns in Europe; and, in Africa, dates are signified, because they were likewise called by Herodotus and Dioscorides acorns and palm-acorns. Bartholin says that in Norway acorns are used to furnish a bread. During a famine in France, in 1709, acorns were resorted to for sustenance. In China, the fruits of several species of oak are used as food for man, and a kind of curd is sometimes made from the ground meal. Oak bark is pounded by the Digger Indians of California and used as food in times of famine.
