Buckwheat isn't wheat, isn't a grass, and is closer to rhubarb
Despite the name, buckwheat is no cereal. It belongs to the knotweed family alongside sorrel and rhubarb, and its name compares its three-sided seeds to beech nuts. First farmed in southwest China perhaps 8,000 years ago, it is the world's highest-altitude crop, grown on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau.
Fagopyrum esculentum is called a pseudocereal because its starchy seeds cook up like grain. The English word probably echoes the Middle Dutch boecweite, beech-wheat. Domestication most likely happened in western Yunnan around the 6th millennium BC, where its wild ancestor still grows. The oldest remains in China date to about 2600 BC, but buckwheat pollen in Japan goes back to around 4000 BC. The crop moved through Central Asia and Tibet into the Middle East and reached Europe by the 15th century, and Europeans brought it early to North America.
Farmers value it for speed. It matures in just 10 to 12 weeks, thrives in poor or acidic soil and actually yields less with heavy nitrogen fertiliser. It shades out summer weeds, so it serves as a cover crop, green manure or erosion control, and its flowers feed pollinators and the insects that prey on pests; bees make a dark honey from them. Russia grew 52 percent of the world's 1.97 million tonnes in 2024.
Because it has no gluten, turning buckwheat into noodles is hard, and Japan developed a whole handmade craft around soba. Korea makes cold noodles and a starch jelly called memilmuk, eastern Europeans eat groats as the porridge kasha, and Italians make flat pizzoccheri. The French call the dark flour blé noir, black wheat. In northern India, kuttu flour is eaten on Hindu fast days when wheat and rice are forbidden, and the Russian Orthodox eat it during the St. Philip fast.
It carries risks too. Buckwheat is the fourth most frequent cause of food anaphylaxis in Japan, so US grain elevators reject any shipment contaminated with it, fearing loss of Asian markets. Compounds called fagopyrins can make skin sensitive to sunlight in people who consume large amounts of sprouts, flowers or extracts, and in dog food buckwheat has been linked to a dry-eye condition that can cause blindness.
Source: Buckwheat
