1916
Autumn
The flora of the region can be grouped into three zones, representing altitudinal limits. In the first, or highest, zone naked-grained barley reaches higher than the other agricultural crops. This barley is exclusively naked grained and hexastichous, with a rare admixture of distichous types. [1] Among the naked-grained barley, forms with yellow grains predominate [2] but there are also many forms with greenish grains, extremely close to the Himalayan barley. [3] The barley grain is not only used as cattle feed but for flat cakes, which people make for themselves. Bread as we understand it does not exist in the Pamirs and yeast is not known. The flat cakes, substituting for bread, are produced from practically everything: vetchlings, ordinary peas, beans, millet, rye and wheat or mixtures of all these crops.
According to statements from the natives and the officers at the frontier post, the limit for growing spring wheat has recently been raised, thanks to the introduction by a Tajik farmer, Abdul Nazarov, of an extraordinarily early-ripening wheat from the Afghan mountains in the vicinity of Kabul. Where it previously was possible to grow only barley, early-ripening wheat can now be successfully harvested. Locally this is called gandum-dzhal’dak which means ‘early-ripening wheat’.
The composition of the wheat is very variable. I collected comparatively few samples but when analyzing them, I saw that a multitude of forms were cultivated there. The crops are mainly mixed. On a single field it is possible to find a mixture of forms differing not only in morphological characteristics but also in various degrees of early ripening. The wheat of the Pamirs is very different from the European one. The awnless wheat with round glumes attracted special attention and reminded me of the structure of some of the Chinese wheats that have been described. Crops are sometimes encountered which are infested by a smut, causing hard pollen. It is interesting that the Tajiks often wash the seed grain to rid it of the smut. 
Photo from Bulbul Hunza.
Notes:
- That is, the barley is predominantly six-rowed with a few two-rowed types. [↩]
- Hordeum coeleste L. var. himalayense Rittig. Classifications have changed and as I am no taxonomist, I think it best to remove them from the text. On the other hand, I’d welcome expert help. [↩]
- H. coeleste var. pamiricum Vay. [↩]
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Interestingly, H. coeleste turns out to be a Linnean taxon: http://www.plantnames.unimelb.edu.au/Sorting/Hordeum.html. Vavilov did love to split, didn’t he.
That variety is described as a naked barley, which might have made it easier to thresh.
More interesting, and bizarro, is the name of the authority for making H. ceoleste a convar of H. v. vulgare. And rats if the Harvard University Database of Botanists isn’t down just when I need it most.