Triticum compactum erinaceum, also called California Club Wheat or Mayview wheat, is an extinct subspecies of the hexaploid club wheat

Triticum compactum ''Triticum compactum'' or club wheat is a species of wheat adapted to low-humidity growing conditions. ''T. compactum'' is similar enough to common wheat (''T. aestivum'') that it is often considered a subspecies, ''T. aestivum compactum''. It c ...

. ''T. compactum erinaceum'' was a bearded, hairy rachis, red-chaffed wheat named for its appearance similar to that of a

hedgehog A hedgehog is a spiny mammal of the subfamily Erinaceinae, in the eulipotyphlan family Erinaceidae. There are seventeen species of hedgehog in five genera found throughout parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in New Zealand by introducti ...

. ''T. compactum erinaceum'' was thought to have disappeared before 1822.Davis, Horace. 1894
California Breadstuffs
(Chicago. The University of Chicago Press.) However data from the

United States Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the United States federal executive departments, federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, ...

indicates two additional specimen that were discovered and identified as ''T. compactum erinaceum'' more than a hundred years after their presumed disappearance.J. Allen Clark and B. B. Bayles. 1935.
Classification of Wheat Varieties Grown In The United States
'. United States Department of Agriculture. The new specimen indicate that ''T. compactum erinaceum'' was grown in the United States until the

Dust Bowl The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of both natural factors (severe drought) an ...

era, at which point it presumably disappeared. There have only been four recorded specimens of ''T. compactum erinaceum''.George W. Hendry, and Margaret P. Kelly. December 1970.
The Plant Content of Adobe Bricks: With a Note on Adobe Brick Making
'. California Historical Society Quarterly. p. 366

Identification

''T. compactum erinaceum'' has a small short brush. Its stem is usually white, but sometimes faintly purple on lower internodes. ''T. comactum erinaceum'' has awned spikes (2 to 5 cm long) and a brown, wide, glabrous

glume In botany, a glume is a bract (leaf-like structure) below a spikelet in the inflorescence (flower cluster) of grasses (Poaceae) or the flowers of sedges (Cyperaceae). There are two other types of bracts in the spikelets of grasses: the lemma and ...

. ''T. comactum erinaceum'' usually has rounded shoulders and wide incurved beaks (1 to 4 mm long). The kernels of ''T. comactum erinaceum'' are red, short, soft, ovate, humped and curved. Its germ is small and its crease medium to wide and shallow. Its cheeks are usually angular.

History

''T. compactum erinaceum'' was grown alongside other species of wheat by Jesuit Monks in Monterey County California during the late eighteenth century. ''T. comactum erinaceum'' was presumed extinct after 1822, but proved to exist when in the summer of 1917 when it was rediscovered by E. F. Gaines, of the Washington Agricultural Experiment Station growing in the vicinity of May View, Washington. Again In 1929 ''T. compactum erinaceum'' was reported to be growing, in Douglas County, Oregon, on 322 acres.

Notes

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q20720381 Wheat