Legal Immigrants

The smell of harvested wheat can be tantalizing. When the golden straw is cut and the bulging grains are harvested they produce a parfume like odor, not less breath-taking than that of roses or lime-trees. I am always happy if I see in spring that the farmers have choosen to grow wheat, instead of the odor-less, but more profitable corn.

And than at a late summer day, usually at the end of August or early September, all the golden wheat is harvested, leaving behind only the short stubbles. This always makes me melancholic, since it signals that the summer time will soon end.

This,  in fact is not wheat, but barley. But it also has this tentalizing smell in later summer

But thanks god, a close relative of wheat, namely rye, is already seeded out in late autumn, with its fresh green shots staying throughout the winter time and bearing the promise of a next years golden grains.
This years the farming cooperative, obviously driven by a similar challenge as myself of testing to grow plants from more southern, oriental regions of the world, chose a range of wheat variants from countries as far as Tunesia, Nepal or Korea.

Iranian Variant, Maybe we do some Bagels from it

Greek variant, Good to bake Pita Bread

Variant from Chile, Do they bake pan-cake there ?

Wheat from Tunesia: Arab spring role

Wheat from the roof of the world:  Nepal

Wheat from Korea: Must be an old sort, since the label still mentions DVR ("democratic peopels republic", now simply North Korea)

I am sure the farmers are well aware that wheat is pollinated by wind, and the close vicinity of these6 variants from different European, Asian, North-African, Middle-Eastern and South-American variants will produce an interesting hybrid of intercultural mixtures next year. But first I hope that all these immigrants will flourish here at the tempered European climate and give us later in summer interesting novel variants of their tantalizing smell.

Three weeks later, the wheat strains from different parts of the world all started to grow. But they exhibit different growth rate. Currently, Greece and North-Korea are leading the ranks, Tunesia, Nepal and Chile are in the middle, and Iran is slightly lagging behind. Don't be misled by the green on the photo below:  Most of it is weed, the wheat sprouts in between are still pretty small.

Wheat three weeks after sowing. From left to right wheat sorts from North-Korea (K); Nepal (N); Tunesia (T); Chile (C); Greece (G) and Iran (I). The wheat shots are visible at closer inpsection, but most of the green is in fact weed.