Vigna Lanceolata in the Fire-Stick Farming and the Australian Aboriginal Culture
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review paper Ratar. Povrt. 2019, 56(2): 56-64 doi:10.5937/ratpov56-19716 Vigna lanceolata in the fire-stick farming and the Australian Aboriginal culture Alfredo Castelli1 ■ Aleksandar Mikić2 1Sergio Bonelli Editore, Milan, Italy 2Novi Sad, Serbia Summary: An amphicarpic and tuberous legume yam Vigna lanceolata Benth., endemic to Australia, has had an extraordinary significance in the peculiar type of farming and entire culture of the Aboriginal peoples for tens of millennia. Our review, welding plant and human sciences, offers a concise and informative presentation of the species, by elaborating its taxonomy and morphology, describing its beneficial nutritional and medicinal properties, exploring its ecogeography, with a remarkable population abundance in the northern areas of the continent, assessing its extensive spreading as a consequence of the past fire-use environmental changes and ways of its wilderness reconnaissance, harvest and food preparation, depicting its role in the Australian Aboriginal art, as one of the most sacred objects in the Dreamtime religion, presenting its vernacular names in 85 extinct and living Australian Aboriginal languages and concluding with opening new horizons of its research, through recently established biodiversity and breeding programmes. Key words: Aborigine, art, Australia, fire-stick farming, Vigna lanceolata Supplementary materials: Supplementary File 1: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.8145935.v2 Supplementary File 2: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.8145800.v2 The Children of the Dream Papuans and several other contemporary peoples of South Asia and Oceania took the Southern Dispersal According to the prevailing theory of the recent Route, crossing the Red Sea, travelling along the Indian African origin of modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens), Ocean coast and, via Sundaland and Wallacea, ultimately probably the first and the most important out-of-Africa settled in Sahul, a landmass merging New Guinea, migration started around 70,000 years ago, when the Australia, Tasmania and adjacent islands, at least 65,000 ancestors of the present Aboriginal Australians, years ago (Bae et al., 2017; Castelli & Di Cesare, 1996; Mikić, 2011; O’Connell et al. 2018; Suppl. File 1, Fig. 1). Although having commenced much later in Corresponding author: comparison to the anthropological studies of diverse aleksandar.mikich@gmail .com civilisations in other continents, those of the Australian Acknowledgements: Aboriginal culture are continuously revealing an The authors appreciate most respectfully the assistance from the esteemed extraordinarily ancient society with colossal knowledge elders of the Miriwoong people with Ms. Maryann of the Yawuru people, Dr. Amanda Lissarague, Ms. Clarrie Kemarr Long, Dr. Frances Kofod, Dr. Knut J. on and skill in art, astronomy, biology, ecology, Olawsky and Dr. Jane Simpson in obtaining hardly accessible information about ethnobotany, history, law, linguistics, mathematics and the names in various Australian Aboriginal languages, dialects and speeches, most of which are gravely endangered or on an inevitable way to perish forever. recreational games (Castelli, 1985a; Denham, 2015; The authors are also cordially grateful to the following persons and institutions Moorwood, 2002). Today, there are about 650,000 for their kindness in providing some of the segments of the figures and the declared Aboriginal Australians, making only 2.8% of video presented in this review: Mr. Ludo Kuipers, Mr. Russell Cumming, Mr. Maximilian Dorrbecker, Mr. Mick Erglis, Mr. Jean-Paul Ferrero, Mr. Made the total population of the country (ABS, 2017), while Harimbawa, Ms. Monique Larrey, Mr. Adam Peterson, the Batchelor Institute majority of classifications identifies up to 30 of Indigenous Tertiary Education, the Cooee Art Gallery and the National Museum of Australia. ethnolinguistic families with around 360 languages, comprising those already extinct and more than 90% Cite this article: Castelli A. & Mikić A. (2019). Vigna lanceolata in the fire-stick farming and the heavily endangered living languages and dialects Australian Aboriginal culture. Ratar. Povrt., 56 (2), 56-64. (Bowern, 2012; Suppl. File 1, Table 1). 56 Castelli S. & Mikić A. Vigna lanceolata in the fire-stick farming and the Australian Aboriginal culture Ratar. Povrt. 2019, 56(2): 56-64 A practice of burning the primeval megafauna, 2011). The infraspecific variability of V. lanceolata has designated as fire-stick farming and unique merely for been largely recognised, with several analyses of its Australia, spawned the landscapes widely known as qualitative and quantitative traits describing the species bushlands, with meagre but retained initial floristic as highly heterogeneous (Lawn & Holland, 2003) and structure (Castelli, 1985b; Jones, 2012). They serve as a encompassing a certain number of morphotype groups, source of what bush tucker, an Australian English like those labelled as Central or Silverleaf (Holland & denomination for easily accessible plant food, such as Butcher, 2012). The previously proposed varieties berries, fungi, grain grasses, nuts or yams, and facilely angusta E. Pritz, filiformis Benth., lanceolata Benth. and hunted large animals for meat, like kangaroo (Macropus latifolia C. T. White have been abandoned by all current spp.) (Adams et al., 2018). As a consequence, the native classifications as insufficiently precise, leaving the issue Australian yam species, such as Amorphophallus galbra F. of updating the genetic and phenotypic convolutedness M. Bailey, A. paeoniifolius (Dennst.) Nicolson, Cayratia of the species open (Nubankoh et al., 2015). The trifolia (L.) Domin, Dioscorea transversa R. Br., D. villosa L., chromosome number of V. lanceolata is identical to that Ipomoea aquatica Forssk., I. costata F. Muel. ex Benth., I. of its closest botanical relatives, x = 11 or 2n = 22 diamantinensis J. M. Black, Portulaca bicolor F. Muell., (Pasquet & Vanderborght, 1999). Typhonium liliifolium F. Muel. ex Schott and Vigna During the transition of one half of 19th century lanceolata Benth., had found a multitude of new into another, the existence of V. lanceolata was publicly ambiences and became staple food for tens of millennia. announced to the worldwide plant science community Every individual element of the Australian for the first time (Mitchell, 1848). George Bentham, a Aboriginal culture, including farming, revolves in a British botanist, gave a detailed description of its perfect symphony with the others around a kind of aboveground organs, such as smooth shoots, elongated cosmic maypole called Dreamtime or, in Western stipules, trifoliolate leaves with whole and spear-like Arrernte language, Altierjinga, a philosophical and leaflets of various widths, slightly lobed in the basal religious concept, meaning eternal, everywhen, out o f time, region, and notable aerial flowers on long peduncles time before or uncreated (Castelli, 2002). In a remote epoch, and of more or less intense yellow corolla colour (Fig. 1, humanoid and supreme progenitor beings, the second and third row). The growth habit of V. lanceolata Kundingas, descended from the sky and settled in the is dominantly prostrate, with long, creeping or vining Great Sandy Desert near the great rocky complex of stems (Fig. 1, first row), and colloquially regarded as a Uluru or Ayers Rock (Castelli & Alessandrini, 1984). bush. The underground organs of V. lanceolata are a tap During their sojourn and before their definite departure, root and relatively short, elongated and moderately thin they dreamed the complete Australian territory, searching tuberous formations (Fig. 1, first row), which may for wells and other goods marked the paths of these produce rhizomes (Saravana Kumar et al., 2012) and travels, labelled as dreaming tracks or songlines (Castelli, 1987). which associate the plant with yams, in general, as well By esteeming life, Dreamtime could be considered akin to as with pencil, carrot (Daucus carota L.) and parsnip Christianity (Rainbow Spirit Elders, 2007). (Pastinaca sativa L.), in particular. The propagation of the The timeless rock paintings and the mythology of species is quite complex, encompassing both vegetative the Aboriginal Australians portray the Kundingas as and generative mechanisms. The first is akin to other shape-shifting, with the form of yam as one of the most plants with transformed storage rhizomes, while the prominent (Veth et al., 2018; Suppl. File 1, Fig. 2). One seeds, developed by the pollination of chasmogamous of the most recurring themes in these tales is a slaughter flowers and shattered by the clustered and successively between Ngardilpi or Big Yam people and Wapurtarli or maturing dehiscent pods (Fig. 1, fourth row), is Little Yam people, ending with peace and with each responsible for the second one. Apart from these aerial battlefield becoming a sacred place for yam ceremonies inflorescences, V. lanceolata is characterised by restricted for the initiated males (Spencer, 2010). It is amphicarpic flowers, pods and seeds (Figure 1, third exactly the latter yam, V. lanceolata, and its place in the row). This represents a kind of genetically-controlled Australian Aboriginal culture we are devoting this adaptation to persist unfavourable environmental amalgam of plant and human sciences. conditions (Lawn & Bielig, 2016). The genus Vigna is represented in the flora of I come from a land down under Australia with five species, namely V. lanceolata, V. luteola, V. marina, V. radiata (L.) R. Wilczek