While travelling through La Rochelle on the French Atlantic coast this year I discovered the original plant species of wild sea-beet from which silverbeet and beetroot evolved.
The original plant has the same rather stiff leaves of beetroot but without its swollen roots or the long leaf blades of our familiar silverbeet. This wild ancestor would hardly satisfy a hungry rabbit let alone become a vegetable on which our advanced civilization depends.
Vilmorin, without the benefit of Mendell’s laws of heredity, describes Swiss chard beet as Beta vulgaris a biennial native of southern Europe as part of the Chenopodiacea family (thanks to Linnaeus' ground breaking systematic classification based on a plant's sexual characteristics).
Vilmorin postulates that beetroot and Swiss chard (silverbeet) appear to be exactly the same plant except that in the case of silverbeet “cultivation has developed the leaves instead of the root.”
Vilmorin listed what we call silverbeet in 1885 as Chilian Beet, identifying it under just three colours — the bright red, deep yellow and white stalks. Apparently the other two colours of orange and pink were unknown to Vilmorin then. Vilmorin is unfailingly observant noting that their silvery beet (sea-kale) is “more productive and being quite free from any trace of earthy flavour. In these plants a light and pale colour in the leaves appears to be accompanied by a mild flavour while leaves of a dark green colour have always a strong acrid taste.”
During Diggers comprehensive grow-outs to ensure purity, farm manager Dr. Will Trueman had identified twelve colour variations depending on whether they were dark leaved or green leaved, and whether leaf stalks were bi-coloured with pink tinges along the ribs.
“The root ... is branched and not very fleshy, while the leaves are large and numerous.” †
Exactly when this wild plant deviated into a sweet, swollen beetroot is difficult to ascertain so we need to depend on literary accounts that first refer to silverbeet in Babylonian texts of the 8th century BC.
Now labelled as Five Colour Silverbeet it holds an important place as the poster child of the Australian heirloom seed movement. In 1993-95, during our extensive grow outs of over 500 heirloom vegetable varieties, this particular strain (originally from New Gippsland Seed Farm) caught the eye of Seed Savers Exchange farm manager David Cavagnaro.
So we grew large quantities for export to Seed Savers Exchange in Iowa, USA, and it became the lead line in their first home gardeners catalogue. During repeated trips to American seed trials Diggers staff had naively gifted seed to American seed merchants only to subsequently find the seed strain renamed Bright Lights and under the control of Johnny's Seeds.
It is unclear if the first reference to beetroot was in Roman Christian times or as late as the middle ages, but by 1855 Vilmorin had identified three different forms of beetroot – garden beet, cattle beet and sugar beet.
Large Blood Red Beet — which then was cylindrical, as long and thick as a man's arm and with nearly a third growing above ground. The modern, round red beet that remained below ground had not yet developed but it was available in yellow, red, white and orange.
Sugar Beet — In Silesia in 1802 the first sugar extracting factory was set up after German chemists had crossed white Swiss chard with swollen beets and extracted 6% sugar.
Vilmorin, following Napoleon's encouragement 30-40 years earlier, began breeding and listed Vilmorin’s Improved White Sugar Beet — “A small variety, exceedingly rich in sugar, often producing rootlets, always leafy; neck of the root wide, and skin rather wrinkled; flesh very compact. Under average conditions, it yields about 14 tons of roots to the acre, containing 16 to 18 per cent, of sugar.” †
Sugar beet now accounts for 50% of European sugar production and 20% of consumption world wide. Today's varieties do best grown through temperate 15-20°C days for about 100 days and reach one to two kilograms. The Diggers Club lists heirloom sugar beet which can be grown and used like a sugary beet or as a sweetener for desserts.
Alarmingly, Monsanto’s Roundup Ready GE sugarbeet has become the dominant US crop — it is unregulated but under serious challenge in California, awaiting environmental statements.
Yellow Globe Mangold — “This is one of the most extensively grown of all the varieties of Mangolds, being hardy, productive, easily pulled, and a good keeper. It is nearly spherical in shape, and of a slightly orange-yellow colour, the part overground somewhat grayish.” †
Vilmorin listed seventeen different varieties which were grown and stored for feeding to cattle during the long winter months when feed was scarce.
The German version was called Mangel Wurzel and expressed itself in a yellow colour (a chance hybrid between white stemmed chard and the red, swollen form of beetroot.) All are large and edible.
Farmers preferred mangels over swedes because they didn't taint milk. But like modern beetroots the roots displayed in several colours — red, white, yellow, orange — and like the Chioggia Beet grew in concentric circles.
Still the best advice today — Vilmorin’s growing instructions: “Native of Europe. — Biennial. — A plant which, in the first year of its growth, forms a more or less long, thick, and fleshy root, and runs to seed in the second year ... Beet-seed ... which is really a fruit, nearly as large as a pea, and almost always containing several seeds … They retain their germinating power for six years or more.”
“They prefer a deep, rich, well-manured and well-tilled soil. It is a good plan to dig in the manure in the autumn, as fresh strawy manure is apt to cause the roots to become forked.”
“The seed should be sown in drills 15 inches asunder … Thin out the seedlings, as soon as they are large enough to handle ... Before cooking, the roots should be well washed, but not peeled or scraped, or in any way bruised; for, if such is the case, much of the saccharine matter escapes during boiling.”
† Quotes from Vilmorin's notes on beetroot in The Vegetable Garden.
