Maca, a turnip-like root now sold worldwide as a powder, grows at 4,000 metres, where frost and wind defeat most crops. Until the late 1980s it was farmed only around Lake Junín in central Peru, where it is still roasted in earth pits.
.jpg/330px-Food-peanuts_(23958638589).jpg)
📍 Southern Bolivia & NW Argentina
Peanuts were domesticated in South America, most likely in southern Bolivia or northwestern Argentina, where the most wild-like varieties still grow. The oldest known remains, about 7,600 years old, come from Peru.
📍 Eastwood (Sydney), Australia
The tart green Granny Smith sprang up by a creek in Eastwood, now a suburb of Sydney, in 1868. Maria Ann 'Granny' Smith had tossed out some French crab apples there, and she grew the lucky seedling on.
📍 Tian Shan, Central Asia
The apple's wild ancestor, Malus sieversii, still grows in Central Asia's Tian Shan mountains, where apples were first domesticated before travelling along the Silk Road to Europe.
.jpg/330px-Schlumbergera_%C3%97_buckleyi_(16946879165).jpg)
📍 Coastal mountains of southeast Brazil
The Christmas cactus is no desert plant: its wild Schlumbergera ancestors grow on trees and rocks in the misty coastal mountains of southeast Brazil, where they're called flor de maio, 'May flower', as they bloom in the southern autumn.
📍 Peru
Guano comes from wanu, the Quechua word for dung used as fertiliser. The Inca strictly protected the seabirds nesting on islands off Peru, and in the 1800s ships carried their droppings around the world to fertilise farms.
📍 Andes, Peru
Condor comes from kuntur in Quechua, the language of the Inca, and reached English through Spanish around 1600. With wings spanning up to 3.3 metres, the Andean condor is one of the largest flying birds in the world.