“When did the 1st Diospyros branch out from the Ebonaceae - that is an interesting question.”
Given common features between the plants and considering the diverse climates they grow in, Ebonaceae likely has been around close to 200 million years, not in current form, but for a source point of origin. Given many other species have major genetic events in the 60 to 70 million years ago range, it is likely divergence into the @800 species extant today occurred in this timeframe. Persimmon shows the entire group is highly likely to survive chromosome doubling events with current examples diploid, tetraploid, hexaploid, octaploid, and nonaploid. It would be interesting to get one of the octaploid D. kaki and cross with a 60 chromosome D. virginiana. The result should be a hexaploid which would enable moving chromosomes into other hexaploids.
Yams and sweet potatoes are 2 different plants. The NZ plants were yams from Africa/asia.
Chickens originated as jungle fowl in SE Asia, not Madagascar
Noogy, do some digging. Sweet potatoes are called Kumar in New Zealand and Kumari by the natives on the coast of Peru. The plants in New Zealand were sweet potatoes. But even if we allowed it was yams, the point still holds. Yams would have had to be transported about the pacific to get to New Zealand. In a trivia item worth considering, there is some evidence Maize was cultivated in China hundreds of years before Columbus “discovered” America. There is also plenty of evidence the Vikings had a settlement on the east coast of Canada (The Meadows) 1000 years ago, long before Columbus was a pipe dream.
A month ago I read the “chicken paper” with genetic evidence of origins. It contains good evidence of chickens cultivated in a south American location being endemic to Madagascar. I don’t think Darrell intended to generalize this to all chickens.
Just the South American chickens. The broader category of all chickens has to look at India and should include the gray and green junglefowl. Interesting trivia, there are two variants of the gene for blue eggs in chickens, one from South America and one from Asia (widely distributed in China). The chickens I am working with lay blue eggs and are physically colored like Silver Laced Wyandottes.
Folks, my original question posed 5 years ago was answered and since then I have acquired numerous persimmon varieties – American, Asian and Hybrid that have borne fruit.
Could you please start a new thread regarding chickens, origins of persimmon, copper etc?
Like the araucanas? Hmm…interesting…