Despite its name, buckwheat isn't a kind of wheat or even a grass — it's a relative of rhubarb, sorrel, and knotweed whose three-cornered seeds are cooked and eaten like grain. It was one of the earliest crops Europeans brought to North America, and buckwheat pancakes were a common food in American pioneer days. Today American farmers also grow it as a fast summer that smothers weeds and draws in beneficial insects.
Appearance
- Appearance
- An upright annual about 2–4 ft (60–130 cm) tall, often with reddish stems.
- Leaves
- Arrow-shaped to heart-shaped. Leaves can grow 3 in (8 cm) wide within two weeks.
- Flowers
- Small white to pink flowers, about 1/4 in (6 mm) across, crowded in clusters at the stem tips.
- Flowering time
- Flowering can start about three weeks after planting and go on for up to 10 weeks.
- Fruit
- A sharply three-angled seed about 1/4 in (5–7 mm) long that turns dark brown when ripe.
Look-alikes
Wild buckwheat is a vine that twines over crops and fences, and its tiny greenish flowers sit in small clusters where the leaves meet the stem. Crop buckwheat stands upright with showy white to pink flower clusters at the stem tips.
Why they get mixed upIt's a common weed in the same family, with similar arrowhead-shaped leaves and three-sided seeds.
Where it lives
- Typical habitats
- Farm fields
- Cover-crop plots
- Vineyard rows
- Range
- First domesticated in southwestern China (Yunnan). In the US it is grown for grain and as a cover crop; growers in the Northeast and Midwest often plant it after early vegetables, and some California vineyards seed strips of it between the rows.
- Preferred conditions
- It can't take frost, so it's planted after all danger of frost has passed. It does best in light to medium, well-drained soils and poorly in heavy, wet ground.
Growing it
- Care
- It reaches seed maturity in 70–90 days and has dense, fibrous roots in the top 10 in (25 cm) of soil. It's good at pulling phosphorus from the soil that other crops can't easily use. Growers cutting it as a cover crop kill it within 7–10 days after flowering starts, before seeds harden, because it can reseed and become a weed.
- Propagation
- Grown from seed. A crop takes only about 10–12 weeks.
- Toxicity
- Buckwheat can cause severe allergic reactions in some people. It contains compounds that, when sprouts or flowers are eaten in large amounts, can make skin unusually sensitive to sunlight.
Conservation
- IUCN Red List
- NENot EvaluatedNot yet assessed
Culture and stories
- Culture and stories
- Buckwheat is a dangerous allergen in Asian countries that buy a lot of US wheat, so export elevators in wheat states like Montana have zero tolerance for grain exposed to buckwheat, and farmers are advised not to plant it next to or before commodity wheat.
- The hulls are used to stuff pillows, and the hulled seeds, called groats, are cooked into kasha, a traditional Eastern European porridge.
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