60

This paper studies the cultivation of Medicago (Spanish alfalfa and French luzerne) in Europe and into the Americas, to show the connections between old and new centres of diffusion and the international market. Alfalfa left Spain with the Conquest and ca. 1550 the Andean region had become a new self-sufficient centre of diffusion away from declining Spain. Conversely, luzerne benefitted from regional growth in France, at first as a cultivated fodder crop, mainly in Provence, which provided seed to improve the larger pastures and meadows around Paris and in Southern England in the late 17th century. The ability of luzernières to restore soil fertility was the basis for the explosive growth of luzerne cultivation in the 18th century in eastern France, Germany and the eastern United States. Instead California and the West of the US benefitted from Chilean alfalfa from 1848-1849 on, and alfalfa eventually met luzerne in the Midwest in the 1880s.