Centres of Diversity

From the Atlas to Atlantis
August 1926 Just like the Kabyle mountains, the Atlas mountains are occupied by a population of Berbers who are definitely different from the Arabs. They are settlers with a high level of agriculture. Here tiled roofs are widespread. The people have a feeling for their old culture and preserve all old habits. The legend of Atlantis, aptly interpreted by Benoît, no doubt has something behind it. In any case, in the interior of North Africa one gets a feeling of the effect of some long-lasting civilization. It is possible that these people, who are of an Aryan type, have something in common with so

Esparto grass
Vavilov says that Stipa tenacissima, which he calls alfa grass, “is utilized only in a wild condition”. It isn’t clear whether he is referring only to Morocco, because in Spain it certainly was cultivated. A proposal for a plant micro-reserve in Valencia mentions the traditional cultivation of Stipa tenacissima as having been responsible for the replacement of chalk-loving species, and says that cultivation at that site has been abandoned, which may result in the recovery of typical species of the maquis. Alfa grass h

Marrakech and into the Atlas
August 1926 Marrakesh is an ancient city, represented by an important oasis with an extensive system of underground irrigation, for which water is supplied to the fields through subterranean tunnels. Water is plentiful. The oases cover a large portion of the land. There is a multitude of crops: cereals, leguminous and oil-producing plants and different kinds of wheat, in part reflecting an influence from southeastern Asia, from where the underground irrigation system had also perhaps been adopted. In Marrakesh I hired guides and horses and went into the Atlas mountains. In the foothills, wide areas are occupied by the special feathergrass of

Casablanca
August 1926 From Rabat I went to Casablanca, which is also situated on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and differs little from Rabat as far as conditions are concerned. Both Rabat and Casablanca are new cities, built by the French in Arabian style with flat roofs. But they have adopted only the building style from the Arabs; all the rest is like Europe. From Casablanca I travelled into the Atlas mountains, to the oasis of Marrakesh, with the intention of reaching, if possible, areas with montane crops in the Atlas mountains

The unknown ancestor of the broad bean
Vavilov had clearly been strongly influenced by his host in Algeria when he wrote that “Here it is to some extent possible to solve the riddle of the origin of some cultivated plants. It was just here that Trabut found the interesting wild bean mentioned above, Vicia pliniana (Trabut) Muratova, which undoubtedly is genetically especially closely related to the cultivated forms of the small-seeded, black beans of Afghanistan and India.” Although he doesn’t say as much, he seems to be implying quite strongly that the “wild” Vicia pliniana, found and described by Trabut, is in