From Eat the Weeds
and other things, too
by Green Deane
Sugar Cane on
The Run
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| Saccharum
officinarum: Sweet Wild Weed |
Among the edible wild plants on this site are a few escaped
fruit trees and ornamentals that have become naturalized. Let’s add
another: Sugarcane.
I’ve grown sugar cane for several years in
my yard, neglecting it actually. It grows happily just the same despite
the fact I am more than 200 miles north of south Florida and on a dry
hill. So that is the first surprise about sugarcane or Saccharum officinarum.
It’s a tropical and subtropical plant, found from Florida to Texas as
well as Puerto Rico and Hawaii. One does encounter it growing in the
wild. It looks like very tall corn that has mated with bamboo.
Sugarcane
is actually a grass, a big grass — note the man in the picture above —
and a perennial. There are a half dozen to three dozen species —
botanists can’t agree –but that is kind of forgivable. Grasses are
notoriously difficult to sort out, even when you know what it is. If
you think it’s tough identifying mushrooms, try grasses for a real
challenge.
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| Bottom of Sugar Cane stalks |
Let me give you two estimates which as first would seem
wrong. There are about 195 countries in the world, and about 195
countries grow sugar cane. That can’t be because places like Canada
and Sweden don’t grow sugarcane. There is a two part explanation. The
official number of countries is usually based on the membership in the
United Nations. But several countries are not in the United Nations.
Also sugar producers call some places countries that are not really
countries, such as Puerto Rico and Bermuda. So two different measuring
standards come up with the same answer — 195 — but their list of
“countries” would be slightly different.
And while sugar cane is
really mostly sugar — it is one of the most efficient plants there are
— that’s not always a bad thing. In fact, sugarcane was included in
military survival manuals because it is nearly impossible to
misidentify and it does provide portable energy. You can use a stalk of
it (a cane) as a walking stick and for food. You chew the end but spit
out the fiber called bagasse (bah-GAS.) Once dry, bagasse burns well.
The
clear sugar sap after processing is brown sugar, hence brown sugar is
less processed sugar. Then it is bleached white. Also one can never get
all of the sugar out of the sap and that becomes molasses, one of my
grandmother’s preferred sweetener. She never used white sugar in her
life. Any time anything called for sugar in went the molasses.
Sugarcane
is probably from the area of India originally. Granular sugar was
mentioned in writing some 5,000 years ago. It got to the Mediterranean
Basin around 800 AD. Within 200 years there was hardly a village there
that was not growing sugar cane. A sweet tooth is the one craving
humans are born with. Sugarcane came to the New World some five hundred
years later where it played a significant and controversial role, and
still does.
Historical fact: Sugar was one of the first
pharmaceutical ingredients, a sweetener to mask bitter medicine, hence
the lyric… “a little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down.” There
are generally three kinds of sugar cane grown, “chewing cane” “crystal
cane” and “syrup cane.”
Saccharum
officinarum (SAK-har-um of-fee-shee-NAR-um) means “sugar
of the shops.” Officinarum
comes from Latin and the Romans. Government-approved food and medicine
in the Roman Empire were sold in designated shops. It was a standard of
quality. Thus something sold in a shop was what we would call the
authorized version, or the official version, the real McCoy.
Green Deane’s
“Itemized” Plant Profile
Identification:
Giant grass, eight to 20 feet, resembles corn, solid, jointed, juicy
stalks, one to two inches thick, tough. Leaves three feet or more long,
two to 2.5 inches wide, thick midrib, fine sharp teeth on the edges.
Spikelet are white, hairy, plume like, two to three feet long. Can grow
straight up or fall over.
Time of year:
This year’s sugar cane is usually harvested in November, but in a wild
stand, nearly year round.
Environment:
Moist, low areas as well as abandoned cultivations particularly in the
Everglades.
Method of
preparation: Stems are peeled and chewed for the juice.
Or, they can
be peeled, crushed and boiled for the syrup. Once a sweet syrup is
obtained, or sugar, it can be used for many things, from making wine to
fuel.
Green Deane's
Disclaimer
Information
contained on this website is strictly and categorically intended as a
reference to be used in conjunction with experts in your area. Foraging
should never begin without the guidance and approval of a local plant
specialist. The providers of this website accept no liability for the
use or misuse of information contained in this website.
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