1880s - "little bundles of seeds from home" - Russian Contributions To Agriculture In America

Russian farm scene showing thatched-roof buildings, with horses and barn in left foreground

The Great Plains of the United States gladly welcomed people from Russia who understood how to farm  the land so similar to their homeland.  This article introduces the many varieties of plants that the agronomists quickly embraced. 

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RUSSIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO AGRICULTURE IN AMERICA

 AND AMERICA'S POSSIBLE GIFTS TO RUSSIA

By D. N. BORODIN, Agricultural Explorer of the RUSSIAN BUREAU OF APPLIED BOTANY

RUSSIAN immigrants to America have contributed markedly to the development of agriculture in

wheat - Fuchs

the United States. Up to the time of their appearance in the Great West, North America did not have any suitable grains and other agricultural products for that territory which has a smaller rainfall than the Eastern States.

The dark grey mass of Russian immigrants walking down the gangplank to the pier after a long trip across the ocean carried unwieldy packs filled with all manner of things full of memories, and at the bottom of each of those sacks was sure to be found a bundle containing precious seeds of plants grown back home. 

The Mennonite from Molochnaya and other colonies of Crimea and Ekaterinoslav Province brought with him Crimean, Turkey Red and Kharkov wheats and Kherson oats. The Molokans brought Sandomirka and Kustavka wheats. The natives of Kiev Province brought flax, sunflower, proso (millet) as well as wheat, and the seeds of watermelon and of Russian flowers. After much roving and much labor, the day at last arrived when the Russian immigrant farmer could apply his labor on his own land in a new country. And now the little bundles of seeds from home were carefully unknotted, and calloused, horny hands threw the Russian seeds with prayers into the soil of the New World. . . .

In the eastern United States, which have a moist climate, the first crops raised by the early settlers were the wheats, oats and rye from England, France and other countries of similar climates. A hundred years passed and the first pioneers began to move westward, where they found the prairie dry and inhospitable to the plants of the moister East. Consequently, for a number of years, cattle breeding was the main occupation in the Great Plains. 

Agriculture did not develop until the Russian immigrant seeking his Ivanovka, his Molochnaya, his Crimea and Caucasus,—his own "life-zone,"-—found also the life-zone of the plant-immigrants from theRussian steppes,—the drought-resisting varieties needed for the plains.

In the history of this plant immigration we have four stages: (1) Importation of seeds by Russian immigrants to be used on soil similar to that of their homeland; (2) this fact noted by American agriculturists and proper value placed upon the adaptability of Russian seeds to the Great Plains of the United States; (3) special expeditions to Russia for seeds and plants undertaken by private individuals (as Bernard Warkentin) from among the immigrants, and by the American Agricultural Explorers: N. E. Hansen, M. A. Carleton, F. Meyer, H. L. Bolley and others; (4) selection and hybridization of Russian varieties at American Experimental Stations which led to their improvement in different respects and their adaptation to local conditions.

The more prominent Russian wheats which have thus been introduced into the United States are Fife, first brought into Canada by private individuals as early as 1848 and later carried over into the States; Kubajika and Arnautka, the usual Durum wheats in South Dakota; and Turkey Red, also known as Crimean, Kharkov, or Malakhof, which is the variety best suited for territories subject to periodic drought. 

Regarding the introduction of the latter, Mr. M. A. Carleton, an American authority on this subject, writes as follows: 

"The first settlements in Kansas were made in 1873 near Norton, Halstead and Moundridge. Each family brought over a bushel or more of Crimean wheat for seed and from this seed was grown the first crop of Kansas hard winter wheat. . . . Later on, several lots of Turkey Red or Crimean wheat were imported by the Department of Agriculture from the Molokhan district of Taurida."

Oats were also brought in from Russia. Kherson, one of the best-known varieties, is planted

Nees von Esenbeck, TFL,
Plantae officinales - 1828 to 1833

especially in Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska and southern Wisconsin. The State of Iowa, through the efficient work of its Experiment Station, is now able to supply other States with this seed. Kherson oats are also known as Wisred and Sixty-day. Other Russian oats were brought later by the Call Agricultural Agency of St. Louis. The Experiment Station at Madison, Wis., has marked this variety "White Russian." The "Swedish Select" variety, which constitutes 75 per cent of the oats of the State of Minnesota, was imported from Russia. Oats have also been brought from Siberia and are known under the names of Tobolsk, Tatartan, Siberian, etc. An excellent illustration of the Russian contribution to United States agriculture was afforded last summer when a drought in several States bordering Wisconsin reduced the yield of all varieties of oats except those which had been brought over from Russia.

As a result of selection and hybridization, many Russian plants have undergone changes and have been improved to such an extent that they now present desirable varieties for re-importation into Russia. Many Russian staples, such as wheat, oats, alfalfa, etc., may find themselves in the position of the sunflower, that native of America which was imported into Russia a century or so ago and developed under the new conditions into an entirely different plant from its wild-weed ancestor (Helianthus annuus) of the North Western United States. After its Russian development it came back to America via Novorossiisk, Odessa and the Baltic ports, and now flourishes in Wisconsin, North Dakota and Montana under the names of Russian Mammoth and Russian Giant.

The United States of America have found in Russia (because of similar climatic conditions) the plants necessary for their Northwest and the Great Plains. Let us hope that these regions will reciprocate. Among America's possible gifts to Russia may be counted the new variety of hard spring wheat known as "Marquis," not long ago emigrated from Canada, which was noticed on p. 29 of World Agriculture (Vol. I, No. 2). Besides Marquis, the Durum varieties, Kubanka and Arnautka, mentioned above, and a Canadian wheat, North Manitoba, are now being sent to Russia as seed for the famine regions.

...

World Agriculture, Volumes 1-7

World Agriculture Corporation, 1919

1879 - Sunflowers vs. the Pent Up Miasma

I had no clue that planting sunflowers used to be considered an excellent way to prevent malaria!

The swampy lowland around Washington D.C. were malaria magnets and the sunflower was promoted to protect the population of the city from the disease.  The sunflower is a heavy drinker, true - but the flawed logic of the general population in ascribing more powers to the sunflower than it legitimately possesses is interesting.   

Link

THE BENEVOLENT SUNFLOWER.

It is not the Aesthetical nor sentimental view of the sunflower that at present commands our attention, but rather its sanitary powers in warding off disease.

Agriculture is always lavish of its gifts. It feeds the hungry, clothes the naked and shields mankind from disease, sickness and death. The grass, the tree, the flower, all add to man's pleasure, comfort and health. Trees drain the wet places, and slowly but surely fill up disease-breeding swamps. But, in proportion to size, no plant is so beneficent in warding off malaria as the sunflower.

Sections of the once malarious West have became salubrious from the growth of sunflowers, accidentally dropped by some enterprising citizen seeking a new home on the generous acres of the West. These uncared for seeds took root, grew, and the plants ripened their seeds. These, the birds, or the winds, or both, scattered broadcast until an annual crop is furnished for whomsoever will partake of it. 

These plants have furnished for the emigrants' horses, oxen and other stock on his road to a new home a grateful shade in midday; and the old stalks convenient fuel to cook the breakfast dinner and supper for the weary traveler. But the greater blessing conferred by the sunflower is the protection from malaria of the settlers on the rich lands of the prairies.

Whether the leaves inhale or absorb the malarial elements of disease; or whether, by exhaling a superabundance of oxygen, sunflowers protect man and beast from sickness, physiologists haven not yet determined; but that they protect from malaria, experience and experiment have abundantly and convincingly proven.

All plants absorb carbonic acid gas, and exhale oxygen; while living animals exhale carbonic acid gas and inhale oxygen. Plants are largely composed of the carbon obtained from the air, while oxygen is the vitalizing element in animal organisms.

Homes, districts, army stations, hamlets, villages and cities have been protected from malaria by trees and plants; but of all the plants, none exert so benign an influence against malaria as does the sunflower.

Link

Recent experiments have shown that persons may be inoculated with the malaria contained in the water of swamps, and in the algae growing and decaying in them. Whether the large exhalations of oxygen from great numbers of sunflowers or the excessive transpirations of water through the broad excreting leaves of these plants exert the sanitary influences attributed to them, or whether some unknown agency operates or co-operates to produce this desirable result is not material, so long as the result is obtained by liberally planting sunflowers around, or on the swampy side of habitable places; so that there may be interspersed between the human domiciles and the malaria-producing regions this efficient preventive agency.

Efficient engineering doubtless is the most effective means of overcoming malaria—by thorough drainage. Arboriculture ranks next. But for the quick and efficient aids to both of these, the planting of sunflowers in a proper manner is the most prompt and reliable means.

The necessary excavations of the engineer at first intensifies evil, by liberating the pent up miasma. So indeed does tree planting, but in a less degree. The sunflower cultivation, however, produces immediate good results while these more permanent measures are being perfected. 

Another plant, the Jerusalem artichoke-— Helianthus tuberosus—near akin to the sunflower in its anti-malarial influence, and having the advantage in not requiring to be planted annually, and of also yielding a valuable preventive.

1881-1910 Helen Sharp's botanical studies delight me.

Washington is a veritable hot-bed of malaria. That this state of things should have been so long permitted to have existed is not creditable to Congress, the governing power. Many of our most valuable representatives have been sacrificed by exposure to Washington malaria; and vastly more have suffered in health in consequence of the unsanitary conditions surrounding the capital of a great, intelligent and rich nation.

While engineering and arboriculture are laying great sanitary plans, let the simple, efficient and immediate offices of the sunflower be brought to bear to protect the President, the Cabinet, Senators, Congressmen and the citizens of Washington from a pestilence that constantly hovers over the capital.

This valuable protecting power of the sunflower may be utilized in any locality where miasma is rife.

To protect that part of the city near the Potomac flats there should be planted a broad belt of sunflowers between that part of the flats upon which the engineers will operate and the unoccupied land; as broad and long a a belt as practicable should be well plowed and planted with the Russian mammoth sunflower, four feet apart in rows at right angles, so that a single horse-plow may cultivate both ways. One plant in the square thus laid out will be best, as the growth is rapid and vigorous.

1892 - Currier & Ives

Similar management will protect other localities. The occupants of farm houses and country residences can be thus secured against the baneful influences of malaria.

A few sunflowers planted about the farmhouse might be sufficient to satisfy the aesthetic taste of Oscar Wilde, but they would not be numerous enough to ward off malaria. A belt of sunflowers and Jerusalem artichokes is required. Though there would be but little variety in these plants alone, there might be interspersed a few plants of pearl millet, golden millet, or some others to please the fancy and relieve the homely monotony of the sunflowers and artichokes. Judging from the display of artificial sunflowers in the shop windows in New York City, one might imagine that the sentimental malaria of aesthetical society has been utterly banished, yet the sunflower aesthetical malaria has spread far and near. The subjects most susceptible are those of a peculiar organization—those who are more sensitive than sensible.

It is to be hoped that artificial sentiment and artificial sunflowers will not in any way impede the rational employment of natural sunflowers to protect mankind from real ills.
...
Plant, cultivate and harvest a large crop of sunflowers, and a large crop of health at the same time. And at your harvest home festivities, bestow a thank-offering upon the Dispenser of all gracious gifts.

Thousands of valuable lives have been extinguished by the remorseless venom of malaria and if its full powers can be overcome by the simple act of planting trees and sunflowers, God bless the generous hearts that plan, and the benevolent hands that plant these life-preserving gifts for man.

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How to Prevent Ague in Rural Districts

Br A. S. Heath, M.D., New York.

Ague -A fever (such as from malaria) that is marked by paroxysms of chills, fever, and sweating recurring regular intervals. Also a fit of shivering, a chill. 

The past summer and fall developed malaria so profusely in localities near New York, that the quinine trade was most active and profitable to druggists doing business in these rural districts.

To drain and sub-drain the land for thirty or forty miles round New York, would require years, and millions of money; and now that we are on the very eve of rapid transit, when these localities may be utilized as residences for workingmen, clerks and other citizens who may seek pure air in the country for themselves and families, how can the fever and ague be prevented? This is a question of great importance. The health and happiness of a people should interest the State and the great city in which the people reside. The product of labor to the city and State is the basis of their wealth and prosperity.

Until perfect drainage shall be accomplished, we have a cheap, prompt, convenient, practical and effectual means of warding off malaria, if we can trust the experience of disinterested persons, who have themselves profited by the method proposed, in various parts of the world.

This sanitary and prophylactic preventive of malaria is a well-known annual plant of thrifty growth, and easily cultivated everywhere at a trifling expense. It is no less than the familiar Hellianthus annuus, the sunflower.

This plant has been cultivated in almost every State in the Union, and in many parts of Europe, to some extent, for this purpose. Where it was largely cultivated, its reputation, as a preventive ague, is undisputed; but where only a few seeds were sown about the house—half-a-dozen plants were grown—its prophylactic powers are doubted, and on good grounds, too. 

Trees, when dense around a house, ward off malaria. In a thousand places on the Mississippi and other rivers, deep forests ward off malaria. Even osage hedges, stone walls, and tight board fences, strips of thrifty rye interposed between a residence and swamp when on an elevated ridge, have all been known to interpose barriers to malaria; and none of these obstacles have been known to possess half the protecting power possessed by sunflowers.
...

The great cause of failure of protection by the growth of sunflowers is, that the culture was too limited. Powder can blast to pieces the hardest rock; but if used, grain by grain—homeopathically—its power is of no effect. It requires, to be effective, cumulation and concentration.

 Neymer, a German professor and author of eminence, says: "I have no hesitation in saying decidedly that marsh miasma, malaria, must consist of low vegetable organisms, whose development is chiefly due to the putrefaction of vegetable substances. It is true that these low organisms have not actually been observed. No one has seen malaria spores."

 At Cleveland, Ohio, Dr. J. W. Salisbury exhibited these spores to a large number of medical gentlemen from various parts of the Union, by the use of powerful microscopes. Knowing that malaria, then, is a congregation of minute vegetable organisms, and that these delicate organisms are destroyed by frost, by the odor of flowers and flowering plants, probably by the generation of ozone by these flowers and plants, we begin to know the modus operandi of the protecting power of the sunflower, as this is a profuse flowerer, and that every plant has an active organization, removing large quantities of water from the soil and generating a strong odor, and creating a large quantity of ozone. Swamps have been drained by sunflowers alone, by their excessive transpiration.

Though Neymer and many other physicians believe in the theory of vegetable organisms as the cause of malaria, and Dr. Salisbury and others have supposed that they have discovered the true organisms, yet it is not accepted by the profession as having been settled by microscopists, by any means. The fact is, the profession do not know exactly what malaria is, but rather what its effects are upon the human system.

I have read somewhere, but I do not know where, that a Southern army post had to be abandoned because of the sickness of the soldiers and officers. A discharged soldier and his family were permitted to occupy the station free of charge. This man, having a good many fowls, sowed a large plot of the ground with sunflower seed, immediately around the residence of himself and family. This proved to be a perfect protection from the ague. This fact coming to the knowledge of the government, this officer and his command were again sent to occupy this station, and they also were protected from the so much dreaded malaria.

Doctor Castle, editor of New Remedies, in an editorial, says: "An officer of the Engineer Corps, of the United States Army, recently informed us that, being stationed during the war on the Potomac river in one of its most malarious portions, he surrounded his quarters with a thick cordon of sunflowers, and escaped any trouble from ague."
The army officer Dr. Castle spoke of, did practice the proper method. He planted a thick cordon of sunflowers.

I confidently recommend to families who reside in New Jersey, Westchester County, New York, Staten Island, Long Island, and all other malarial districts, to plow deep a space of ground from ten to thirty feet wide, according to the distance from the house, on at least those sides of the dwelling toward the creek, river or swamp, from which the malaria emanates. The distance should not be greater from the house than from five to ten rods; and the greater the distance, the thicker the plot of ground should be sown with sunflowers.
...
Bees make the most delicious honey from its flowers.
...
I had to cut a lot from this. It was too repetitive.  Orignally published in 1878 in Wallace's Monthly: An Illustrated Magazine Devoted to Domesticated Animal Nature



Just for the record :-)

Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, a French army surgeon stationed in Constantine, Algeria, was the first to notice parasites in the blood of a patient suffering from malaria. This occurred on the 6th of November 1880. For his discovery, Laveran was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907.

http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/

1912 - Vasilii Stepanovich Pustovoit and his Sunflowers

I think I first twigged to Pustovoit when I encountered this mention of him.  Or maybe not...whatever the case, he certainly impacted the world of agriculture! A prestigious award now keeps his memory alive.

V.S. Pustovoit Award

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Vasilii Stepanovich Pustovoit

"The V.S. Pustovoit Award is the highest honour conferred to individuals working in the Sunflower Industry. To fully appreciate the significance of the Award, it is necessary to have some knowledge of the man after whom the Award was named.

2016 Award Winner,
Dr. Tatiana Sergeevna Antonova 

In 1912, V.S. Pustovoit began his research work on fields crops in the Kuban region. Pustovoit was an outstanding breeder, a Lenin and State Prize winner, and a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

He worked out the technique of multiple individual selection from strains and intervarietal hybrids assessed for their offspring quality, with the subsequent induced and regulated transpollination of the best numbers.

In 1924, Krasnodar became the experimental selection centre for Russian oilseeds and in 1932 the V.S. Pustovoit All Union Research Institute was established to formalize the valuable work Pustovoit had done in the preceding years.

V. S. Pustovoit headed the Breeding Department of the Institute until his death in 1972."

http://isasunflower.org/presentation/pustovoit-awards.html

http://www.childrenpedia.org/6/page411.html

 

A bit more background: 

In 1912, Pustovoit organized the Kruglik Plant Breeding and Experiment Station (since 1932 the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Oil Crops) at the Kuban Agricultural School.   From 1935 to 1972 he headed the department of selective breeding and seed-raising of oil crops and the laboratory of sunflower breeding at the All-UnionScientific Research Institute of Oil Crops.

Pustovoit was one of the first to breed sunflowers with high oil content. He worked out highly effective systems for the improved raising of sunflower seeds. He developed 20 broom-rape-resistant sunflower varieties with a high oil content (up to 57 percent in dry seeds). These varieties include Peredovik VNIIMK 8883, VNIIMK 6540, and Smena.

In 1974, varieties bred by Pustovoit occupied more than half the varietal sunflower plantings in the USSR; in foreign countries about 1 million hectares have been planted with varieties developed by Pustovoit.

V. F. BARANOV

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). 

© 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved

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Mammoth Russian, Diane's Strain

In 1882 the Iowa State Horticultural Society had something to say about the Mammoth Russian.

THE RUSSIAN SUNFLOWER 

THE CHEAPEST AND BEST FEED FOR CHICKENS.

The Mammoth Russian sunflower is the largest, best, and most productive variety. A flower exhibited at the Centennial measured twenty-two inches in diameter.  

The seed is valuable for stock-feeding; it is the best egg-producing food known for poultry, keeping them in fine condition, and largely increasing the production of eggs. The Poultry World says this plant should be grown by every breeder in the country who has opportunity to raise only a few stalks even; for its properties of glossing the plumage of exhibition birds are remarkable. 

It can be sown any time up to the middle of July. The leaves and stalk, when green, furnish capital fodder for horses and cows. It may be planted where other fruit and vegetables cannot be conveniently raised, along the sides of fences or anywhere where the soil is not easily cultivated. These flowers are double the average dimensions of the South American variety, and as a bearer it far excels the latter. 

I raised heads of Mammoth Russian sunflowers larger over than a common water pail, and very heavy, and full of large seeds, and valuable for poultry. The stalks when dry in winter make good kindling wood. The sunflower possesses anti-malarial properties of much value, and may be made very useful by liberal planting around houses located in malarial sections. Mark out the ground as for corn, and plant several seeds in each hill, and when the plant gets about three inches high thin out. The cut-worms will eat them down sometimes. Three quarts of seed is sufficient for an acre. 

—Mary J. Coomber, in Iowa Homestead, Transactions, Volume 16

Did you notice the reference to malaria?  I had to follow up on that.  The next post will follow that interesting claim until I find out what Mary is talking about!

Seeds from Russia - How the USA Learned to Value the Sunflower

The sunflower has long been grown in this country for ornamental purposes and the wild form has been used by nature to give the boy,  raised on the farm in the Middle West, employment during the summer months, for it is the weed that requires so much hand labor to eradicate.  Although a native of the New World we learned its real value from the experience of the farmers in Russia.  -1921-

Alonzo Frederick Vass,
Wyoming Agricultural Experiment Station

I first became interested in the seed industry in Russia when, for some unknown reason, which I assume is a data glitch somewhere in Google's bowels, this blog's stats suddenly began to register many, many, many more Russian visitors than any other nation!

In honor of that readership, imaginary as it is, I started looking for something appropriate where I always do...in the 19th century.  When I spotted sunflowers I jumped on it.  Who doesn't like a sunflower story?!  The Russian-German immigrants to the USA in the 1870s brought along the seeds of their home regions opening the eyes of farmers to new varieties and new crops.

This turns out to be a great story of successful plant breeding that benefited the world.

First I'll share this following article from an 1892 Scientific American, and in a following post fill out this history with information on the man responsible, Vasilii Stepanovich Pustovoit,  who, a decade later so positively impacted his home country of Russia, and mine, the USA,  with his improved sunflower seeds.

Voronezh  - Tháng Tám, 2016

1892 - Scientific American: Supplement, Volume 33

RUSSIAN SUNFLOWER INDUSTRY

THE sunflower, as a garden plant, has been known all over Russia for many years, but only in certain districts has it been cultivated on a large scale as an industry. The first cultivation of sunflower seed for commercial purposes began, says the United States Consul General, at St. Petersburg in 1842, in the village of Alexeievka, in the district of Berutchinsk, government of Voronezh, by a farmer who was the first to obtain oil from the seed. This farmer soon found many followers, and the village of Alexeievka soon became the center of the new industry. The government of Voronezh is even now the chief district in European Russia for the growing of the sunflower.

Besides the district of Berutchinsk, this plant is cultivated on a large scale in the districts of Novokhopersk, Ostrogoshk, Bobroosk, Valouisk, and Korotoiaks.From the government of Voronezh the cultivation of sunflowers spread to the adjacent governments of Tambov and Saratov, where there are large fields cultivated with this plant, particularly in the latter government. The people of the provence of the Don and the government of Sirnbersk and Samara are more or less engaged in this trade; in fact in the entire southeast of Russia the sunflower furnishes a prominent product of the farm.
Two kinds of sunflower are grown in Russia—one with small seeds, used for the production of oil, and the other with larger seeds, consumed by the people in enormous quantities as dainties. In the district where the seed is cultivated on a large scale. the plant has been continually grown on the same soil for many years in succession, thus producing a special disease of the plant. The sunflower seed is used principally for obtaining sunflower oil, which, owing to its nutritious qualities, purity, and cable flavor, has superseded the other vegetable oils in many parts of the country.

Large seeded type; photo eBay seller of Mammoth Russian 

In general the cultivation of the sunflower in Russia is considered to be very profitable.

http://www.feedipedia.org/node/732
Hulls plus seed ground to make a cake.

At the average yield of 1,350 lb. to the acre, and at the average price of 1/4d. a pound, the farmer receives an income of about £4 an acre, and this income can be increased in those districts where the grower himself is engaged in producing the oil from the seed. The substance remaining from the oil manufacture, or sunflower cakes, being used as cattle food, is also a valuable product. These cakes, however, have a comparatively small demand in Russia, but are largely exported to foreign countries, principally to Germany and England.

The government of Saratov, for instance, exports about 2,000,000 lb. of sunflower cakes to different countries, where a further quantity of oil is extracted from them before being used for cattle food. The sunflower shells, being used for heating purposes form an article of trade in several districts. The seed cups are not wasted, but are used as food for sheep.

The peasants in the government of Tambov are increasing the cultivation of the sunflower, owing to the following reasons: There is a steadily increasing demand at home and abroad for the seed, thus making the industry a profitable one, especially as Russia is the chief source of supply. As above mentioned, the sunflower is cultivated principally for the oil. If the cultivation is made with care, and if proper precautions are taken in drying, cleaning, and pressing , sunflower oil is equal to the French table oil in color, flavor, and taste.

At first sunflower oil did not meet with public favor in Russia, but later on, owing to its good qualities and cheapness, it took the place of the oil of poppy seed; but or a long time hempseed oil competed with it, owing to the fact that the lower classes, who for many years had used the hempseed oil in the preparation of various dishes, and who had long learned to relish it, were not disposed to give it up.
Now, however, public opinion has changed, and sunflower oil is preferred by the masses to all other table oils in Russia.

The process of oil making is as follows :

The seed being brought to the oil mill, is thoroughly cleaned and sorted. They are passed under millstones, specially prepared for the purpose, in order to release the seeds from the shells. After this the seed is properly dusted and put under a press, and, later on, into a mixer, where the seed is turned into a compact mass very much like paste, which passes into presses heated by steam. From these presses the paste is taken out and wrapped in a thin web, made of camel hair, and put under a press, by which the oil is squeezed out and conducted by pipes into tanks.

The total number of oil mills in Russia was, according to the last account, 104. From this number 85 were applied solely to obtaining sunflower oil. In 24 of these mills steam is used, and in others only manual power. The largest mill is at Saratov, and it produces 1,500,000 lb. of oil annually.

There are two kinds of oil obtained from the sunflower seeds. The better kind is sweet, and more expensive, the inferior having a bitter taste. The difference in the price of these two qualities is about one half penny a pound. The oil remaining from the oil production or the waste, and not used as food, is applied exclusively to certain industries.

The sunflower stalks, gathered from the fields, and dried in piles, have entirely replaced fire wood; in fact, these stalks are preferred even to pine wood, producing a quick and hot-flame fire. About 2,000 lb. of such fire wood are gathered from an acre of land, thus adding a great boon to a district where wood is scarce. Sunflower shells are also used in for heating purposes, not only in private houses but in large factories as well. They are burned in ovens especially prepared for their consumption.  See below.

The ashes of the sunflower contains, high percentage of potassium. The experiments of Hermbstedt have proved that 1,000 lb. of dried stalks yield 57.2 pounds of ash; and from 1,000 lb. of ash are obtained 349 lb. of the best potassium. As a food for cattle, sunflower cakes are looked upon as the best in Russia; they are considered better even than hempseed or rapeseed cakes. According to chemical analyses, the sunflower cakes from the government of Saratov contain: Azotic substances, 42.31 per cent; oil, 14.7 per cent; and ashes, 5.12 per cent. The dried seed cups, if ground, are used in many districts as food for cattle, and particularly for sheep, with great success.

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Speaking of heating with the stalks, I have always wanted a Russian stove/fireplace as they are so efficient, and can burn waste hay and less expensive stuff than wood. See this blog for some more information.  And here is a current company designing and building traditional masonry stoves.

LINK:  Nice coloring book for kids on sunflowers from the National Sunflower Association.

LINK; The matryoshka is painted in Sergiev Posad floral style by artist Anonova Zinaida.

1891 - Through Russia on a Mustang With Sunflower Seeds and Oscar Wilde

Through Russia on a Mustang

...
At Constantinograd, a small town, two days ride south of Kharkoff, we were getting well into Malo Russia. The most striking feature of the landscape were big fields of sunflowers.

All Russia nibbles sunflower seeds in its moments of leisure. Imagine half the citizens of the United States carrying, habitually, a supply of peanuts around in their .pockets and nibbling them continually, and you have a hardly exaggerated idea of the ubiquitous part played by the sunflower seed in Russian life. In the circus, in the theater, in the offices, the shops, the tea-houses, the city streets, the village door-stoop, men, women, girls and boys, peasants, nobles, merchants, soldiers—everybody, everywhere, nibble sunflower seeds.

It is to supply this universal taste that thousands of acres of those gorgeous flowers are cultivated on the northern border of Malo Russia.

People who have only seen the big sunflower as a garden ornament can have but a dim conception of the magnificent sight afforded by a forty-acre field of these gorgeous yellow blossoms. I first saw a field of them in the morning, when every big round golden face, without an exception in all the myriads, was looking toward the east. The scene was striking, and suggested a vast multitude of floral Aztecs worshiping the morning sun. Not being acquainted with the habits of the sunflower I wondered all the morning whether all those worshipful faces would, in the evening, be turned toward the west. So I watched other fields as we rode along, and learned, what every other reader of these pages very likely knows already, that the sunflower always turns its face to the east.

Here the mind naturally reverted to a period of the past,
when a slim gentleman in knee breeches,long hair, and with a big sunflower in his button-hole, emerged from the fogs of London to create a passing furore in America in favor of the floral
monarch of the Little Russian steppes.








The sunflower crop is one of the best paying in Russia. A good crop is worth, as it stands in the field, 100 rubles a dessiatine (approximately 2.7 acres ), or about $25 an acre. The seeds are sold by the farmer for one and a half to two rubles a pood. Then the merchants retail them for four rubles a pood, and at about every street crossing in Russian provincial cities are stands and peddlers with baskets, selling to the passers-by the product of the big sunflower.

In the field the sunflowers are sowed in rows like the " drilled corn " of the Kansas farmer, and, like corn, are cultivated and hilled up with shovel plows.
...

Is this awesome, or what!?  The company also made a similar fan where the cigar was a billy club!  

Stevens was a journalist who wrote 3 adventure books, this being a small excerpt from one, another being the first person to ride a bicycle around the world!!
Through Russia on a Mustang
Thomas Stevens
Cassell, 1891

1882 - Puck Cartoon Combining Plants and Presidential Candidates

This has little, or nothing, to do with seeds.  But I like it!

 This cartoon ran two years before the election.

For a quick rundown on this election...Wikipedia.

1901 - Vick's Nasturtiums, plus, Lamenting Photogravure

The year 1901 falls in the boring period of seed catalogs, after photographic reproductions were considered more modern. Below these images you'll find an article from 1893 describing the new technique of reproducing photographs much more easily than formerly possible. The beginning of the end as far as I am concerned.  The low contrast reproductions in the catalog are so boring and lifeless.

However, the cover and back cover of Vicks Garden and Floral Guide from 1901 still has the wonderful lithographed color and energy of the older catalogs.

 Compare the gray mushy reproduction of the nasturtiums above to this lively engraving from an 1887 Vick's illustrated monthly magazine and floral guide.

If you are interested in the engraved seed catalog work, use the search box
(up at the top of the page on the right) and use the query "engravings".

The beginning of the end...

American Printer and Lithographer, Volume 16 - 1893

A NEW PHOTO-INTAGLIO PROCESS

By Louis E. Levy.

WITH the exception, perhaps, of the domain of electricity, there is no other special field wherein the recent advances of science have opened so many avenues of progress and effected such notable changes as in the range of the graphic arts. From the time when, fifty years ago, the earlier researches of Scheele and Seebeck on light-sensitive compounds were first wrought into practical shape by Niepce, Daguerre and Talbot, the applications of photo-chemistry have increased in number and extent to such a degree that to-day the various processes of photographic reproduction would require a long catalogue to merely name them. 

Many of these variations, though marked, are unessential; others have proven of scientific interest only, while quite a long list of practical photo-reproductive processes have from time to time been superseded by simpler and more efficient methods.

The new photographic process which I have the pleasure of announcing is, as I trust will appear in practice, an effective and greatly simplified method of producing a photographic reproduction in the form of an intaglio engraving. Such engravings, technically known by the French term "photogravure" have been produced for some years past by a variety of photo-chemical processes, the most notable of which are those wherein the result is attained by means of a chrome-gelatin film. 

The fact that a film of chrome-gelatin becomes insoluble when exposed to light, and remains more or less soluble according to the degree to which light is permitted to act upon it, has been made the basis of a variety of processes for the production of photo engravings.

The gelatin film long served as the most effective means for the production of photo-engravings in relief, and still furnishes the basis for the production of photo-engravings in intaglio. For both purposes the sensitized gelatin film is exposed under a transparent negative or positive, as may be requisite in the subsequent procedure ; the unaffected portions and unreduced quantities of the exposed film are either swelled by absorption of a liquid or are dissolved and washed out, and the film then dried. In this condition it may be printed from direct, or it may be used as a mold to produce a reverse in a fusible metal ; or it may be covered with an electrolytic surface to receive an electrotype deposit, or it may be molded in plaster, wax, guttapercha or other suitable substance,from which, in turn, a reverse can be made by casting or electrotyping.

Intaglio photo-engravings have also been produced by a process wherein the varying amounts of reduced silver left in the developed gelatino-bromide plate are made to serve as a corrosive or etching agency on a plate of copper on which the bromide plate is imposed, but in general practice the washed out gelatin film has thus far proven the most practical means to the desired end. 

In all photo-intaglio processes hitherto known or practiced, the nature of the plate produced and the end sought to be attained is akin to that which is technically known as a mezzotint or aquatint engraving.  The essential feature of such engravings consists of the varying depths to which the design is sunken in the plate, the graduations of depth in the plate corresponding to the gradations of light and shade in the printed impression. The ink being rubbed into the depressions of the design and rubbed off from surface of the plate, the highest parts of the engraving represent the highest lights of the design, the deepest depressions render the darkest shadows and the intermediate depths produce the half-tone gradations of the picture. The difficulties attending the production of photogravure plates with the particular degree of graduation of depth which is responsible for an artistic effect in the printed impression are such that the process is practiced by only a few, the skill and experience needed for the work being obtained only by such individuals as possess artistic capacity and training.

In only one establishment, and that in Paris, has the work been brought to a high degree of quality, and there, as well as in other workshops, the hand of the skillful retoucher is frequently to be credited with the largest share in the final result.

To free this result as far as possible from the limitations of human handiwork, and to bring it forth under the more uniform and definite control of scientific procedure has been my aim in the experiments which have resulted in the present method. 

This method I have named "Photo-mezzotint", not because that is the most exact term by which to denote it, but because all the other good names have been pre-empted and made to do service in other directions.
The essential feature of the new method lies in the general fact that the picture, instead of being obtained from a graduated depth of the engraving, is produced from a sunken surface of uniform depth, the graduations of light, half tone and shade being effected by minute lines and stipples of varying thicknesses, but of uniform distance apart from centre to centre.

In this respect the photo mezzotint may be regarded as a development of the so-called half-tone relief process, the true mezzotint or photogravure effect being attained by reducing the thickness of lines and stipples and multiplying their ratio to the surface to such a degree as to render them invisible to the naked eye. In that way all the finest gradations from pure white to deep black are obtainable, with the result shown by the specimens before us. In these the picture is made up of equidistant stipples, varying from a microscopic point up to a size where they coalesce into a solid black, the half-tones consisting of stipples of about one four-hundreth of an inch in diameter and about 44,000 to the square inch. If a coarser stipple is used the effect varies from that of a mezzotint and approaches more nearly that of a line engraving, the lights and shades being made up of perceptible lines and stipples, like the effects of a steel or copper plate engraving of equal texture.

The processes at present in vogue for the production of photo-intaglio plates require not only long experience and a high degree of manipulative skill, but also take up quite a length of time—frequently a week or more—for their completion, and the plate, after passing the stages of the photo-chemical process, has then still to be extensively helped by the work of the retoucher. The retouching of photogravure plates inevitably introduces a degree of uncertainty as to the accuracy of the reproduction, the result as left by the retoucher being frequently very different from the original in its disposition of lights and shades.

By this new process all of these undesirable factors are eliminated; its manipulations are far more facile, the length of time for the entire work is reduced to a few hours, and the result is complete without the supplementary aid of the skillful engraver, except, possibly, in cases of local blemishes or accidental defects. It is therefore reasonably to be assumed that this new method of intaglio engraving, which has been the subject of an application for letters patent, may be regarded as a desirable addition to the category of the graphic arts.