C8? It was C4 in my day and, although maize is a C4 plant so capable of growing faster than C3's at high temperatures, a number of dicot plants are also C4 as far as I recall (are sunflowers C4? They are dicots). Maize is not like other grasses because no-one knows where it comes from; I believe it has no known wild relatives :)
> (Interesting family of plants, grasses... Wikipedia wasn't too well
> organized, however. Any better sources freely accessible?)
Specifically for grasses I don't know but for general and basic biology you could try Purves et al The Life Wire (basic undergrad textbook with helpful material available online).
> Potatoes, yams and similar plants can be a source for a grain-free
> carbohydrate diet. It is possible to base civilizations on these.
> Having some sort of grain in addition makes survival easier, since
> (apart from locusts and drought or flooding) there are few foes that
> affect both crops at once.
I suspect that the relative ease of storing grains is an important factor. Root or tuber crops, cassava being the notable one, are of specific value where drought is a problem - you leave cassava tubers in the ground to dig up in the dry season. I think an interesting model for parts of Pamaltela could be the palm açaí whose fruit is the main thing people eat in the lower Amazon, along with cassava. Apparently it's not very delicious.
Civilizations based on non-grain carbohydrates - Ireland :) Also non-Andean South America, never very highly developed though.
> You might even conceive a culture that survives on grapes and flower
> nectar for carbohydrate sources. Along with milk, of course.
Perhaps not grapes so much but a bunch of fruits are loaded with carbohydrates and fats and all sorts. Extra-floral nectaries (loads of plants have these) could have nice mythical reason too. Others are palm hearts (someone implied earlier that palms were primitive plants along with ferns and cycads - they aren't, they are Angiosperms so modern). Agave, pineapples. I think there are loads of bits of plants upon which you could base a civilization if you don't have to do the calculations.
> Bloodbean (Jolar), Lagniappe (Kothar) and Squaa (Tarien) appear to be
> similar to soy, lupines, rape, peas, beans or lentils. Presumably it
> has been bred to have lower bitter component (and protein?) content.
Not sure rape should be in that list - it's a crucifer like cabbage. I personally would say that most foodplants have not been highly bred and taste vile like most plants do. Early lettuces were so full of latex that they got the name from it (well, from the fact, the word being whatever the milk-word was at the time). I bet those plants of yours taste vile. I bet most Pamaltelans eat bland tasteless pap (fufu) too (sorry, my experiences of African cuisine are not great).
> Note that Fonrit is the only Pamaltelan land goddess food based on
> grain. Vralos has peas instead, and Zamokil's Sweet Grass sounds very
> much like sugarcane to me.
You can't do much with sugarcane though. Except make sugar and alcohol. You can suck the stem for sugar, but I'm not sure you could base much of a civilization on it. Unless you wanted to of course.
> The rivers in Jolar (especially the Rinka) have ordinary reed -
> another variety of grass - but perhaps only in places that are usually
> flooded (i.e. magically "not-land").
Reeds are not grasses, they are rushes (Juncaceae) or sedges (Cyperaceae, with triangular stems) as far as I recall. Grasses are Graminae (or Graminaceae, I am so out of date I can't remember what it is at the mo.) and haven't the pithy, spongy stems of the others.
Sam.
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