White wheat

Dense, white, glabrous ear, similar to that of red wheat; awns black at the base and divergent.

Hard wheats degenerate in Madeira. Unless care is taken to renew their seed, they readily take on the characters of turgid wheats. We have seen specimens of red and yellow wheat with somewhat divergent awns, more or less floury caryopses and hollow straw, except at the top, whereas none of the turgid and soft wheats found on the island loses the characteristics of the subspecies or cultivated types to which it belongs. (1921).

Besides Triticum aestivum, Madeira also has T. polonicum, characterised by very long, narrow caryopses with a hard fracture and by elongated glumes. For the time being, however, this species is little cultivated and is found only in the parish (freguesia) of Caniço (‘reed’).

In addition to the text transcribed verbatim from the first edition, the co-author of this work, Carlos Azevedo de Menezes, also published the following interesting information, which it is worth preserving here.

“

In a valuable study of the Portuguese varieties, published 40 years ago by the late professors Ferreira Lapa and Andrade Corvo in volume III, part II, of the Memorias da Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, we find 29 different types of this cereal indicated and described: 26 from the mainland of the Kingdom (reino, i.e. mainland Portugal) and the Azores, and 3 from the Madeira archipelago. The Madeiran types are those still known in the archipelago today by the names trigo mocho, trigo português and trigo Alexandre, under which they were listed in that study. The first and second belong to Triticum vulgare and the last to Triticum turgidum, two races once regarded as distinct species, but which many botanists now include in the subspecies tenax of Triticum sativum, Lam.

Having had the opportunity to examine several samples of wheat gathered in different parts of Madeira in 1904 and 1905, we had no difficulty in recognising that the number of varieties on this island is greater than the number studied by the professors mentioned above. We further found that some of the old types, although similar to certain Portuguese types from which they may perhaps derive, nevertheless differ from them in noteworthy characters. The Madeiran varieties we were able to study all belong to the races T. vulgare and T. turgidum, known in the trade as soft wheats. We have never found T. durum, another race of T. sativum, on Madeira or on Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’), and it may well not exist on these islands. The wheats that in Madeira are called ‘hard’ are, in our view, simply sub-races of T. turgidum, as can easily be recognised from the shape of their ears and glumes and from the consistency and arched shape of their grains. In true hard or durum wheats the grains are elongated, pointed and almost always vitreous, characters we did not observe in any of the Madeiran varieties.

As stated above, the area under wheat in the whole archipelago is about 2,000 hectares, and production amounts to some 25,000 hectolitres a year. The yield per hectare varies considerably: on some land it can reach 30 hectolitres, while on other land it does not exceed 4 in years of little rain. The average yield on the island of Madeira must be 8 hectolitres per hectare, and in the municipality (concelho) of Funchal 12 hectolitres.

The value of crop rotation is almost unknown to the people of Madeira, and there is land on which wheat is usually grown for 15 and 20 years in succession. Often this land is not even manured, and yet every year it produces a yield that the ignorant and perhaps unambitious farmer considers sufficient reward for his labour! Since the island’s soil is so fertile, it would be no surprise if its output tripled or quadrupled in a short time once it was subjected to more rational methods of cultivation.

All the varieties of wheat in Madeira are usually sown from December to March, and the harvest takes place in June and July. T. turgidum is grown more in the low-lying zone of the island than at higher elevations, the reverse of what happens with T. vulgare. The latter, which appears to be the oldest on the island, is found up to an altitude of 700 metres (1900).

Madeira imports about 7 million kilograms of foreign wheat every year, since local production is barely enough to meet consumption for 3 months.

Madeiran wheat is almost always sown by hand, and it is harvested either by pulling up the plants or by cutting them with a sickle. The latter method is far less common than the former. Threshing is done either on threshing floors, where the ears are trampled by oxen harnessed to a board with stones and pieces of iron fixed to its underside, or by hand-driven machines. Since threshing machines are now common across almost the whole island, the primitive method of having animals beat the ears is gradually falling out of use. People who own only small quantities of wheat usually thresh it with a flail (malho).

Wheat straw is used for thatching huts, as fodder for livestock and sometimes also as bedding for stalled animals.

The fertilisation of the land is a matter of very little concern to the great majority of Madeiran farmers. Some, however, manure the ground intended for sowing with dung from the fold (curral), and so obtain better harvests than those who do not manure. The richness of the soil in phosphoric acid and the configuration of the island’s terrain, which allows the rains to carry every year a certain quantity of elements necessary for plant nutrition from the higher ground to the lower, must be the reasons for the lasting productivity of the land that the ignorant, routine-bound farmer devotes to the uninterrupted cultivation of wheat and other cereals. To prevent the cultivated varieties from degenerating, farmers in the different parts of the island periodically exchange among themselves the wheat intended for sowing.

Madeirans credit local wheat with a higher nutritive value than imported wheat. The analyses carried out by the late Professor Ferreira Lapa on the three types referred to above confirm this opinion to some extent, since they showed, for those types, a proportion of protein matter equal to or even greater than that found in the best Portuguese varieties of soft wheat. Bread made from Madeiran flour is generally light and fluffy, brownish and tasty.’