An Italian farmer found some unknown seeds in his attic and planted them

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Sometime in the early 1990s, Claudio Grossi, a 40-year-old farmer in Parma, in northern Italy, was cleaning his attic when he turned up an old sack full of seeds that he couldn’t identify. The bag, he was sure, had been left by his late great-grandfather, who’d started the farmstead around 1915. Grossi had no idea how long the seeds had been sitting there, deprived of water, soil and sun. Dry and cracked, the kernels looked so old in the palm of his hand that he doubted anything would ever sprout from them. He carried the bag down the stairs, shook the seeds out into a pile of manure and then forgot about them.

20世纪90年代初，意大利北部帕尔马一位40岁的农民克劳迪奥·格罗西（Claudio Grossi）在清理阁楼时，发现了一袋无法辨认的旧种子。他确信这袋种子是他已故的曾祖父留下的，他的曾祖父大约在1915年开始经营这个农场。格罗西不知道这些种子在没有水、土壤和阳光的情况下在那里存放了多久。这些种子干瘪开裂，在他手心里看起来非常古老，他怀疑它们是否还能发芽。他把袋子搬下楼，把种子倒在一堆肥料上，然后就把它们忘了。

To his surprise, the seeds soon sprouted a few different types of wheat. One was particularly striking: At six feet high, its plants were about twice as tall as commercial wheat. But the most remarkable feature came when it developed ears—the grain-studded parts at the top of the plant. All of the wheat types Grossi had previously seen grew only one such ear. But the tall wheat grew a full seven ears, always in the same pattern: a long one with six shorties bunched up around it like little fingers. Even the kernels themselves were bigger than those of average wheat. And unlike the typical pale-yellow wheat kernels, they came in a rainbow of colors—yellow, black, red, white and even green, sometimes all on the same stem. Grossi, a grain farmer his whole life, had never seen anything like it. “I thought it was a freak of nature,” he says. He couldn’t find a mention of it in agricultural books.

令他惊讶的是，这些种子很快长出了几种不同的小麦。其中一种特别引人注目：它高达六英尺，植株高度大约是商业小麦的两倍。但最显著的特征出现在它长出麦穗时——即植株顶部结满谷粒的部分。格罗西以前见过的小麦品种都只长一个麦穗，但这种高大的小麦却长了整整七个麦穗，而且总是呈现出同样的图案：一个长的麦穗周围簇拥着六个短小的麦穗，就像小手指一样。甚至麦粒本身也比普通小麦大。与典型的淡黄色麦粒不同，它们呈现出彩虹般的颜色——黄色、黑色、红色、白色，甚至绿色，有时在同一根茎上就能看到多种颜色。格罗西一生都是谷物农民，从未见过这样的东西。“我以为这是自然界的畸形，”他说。他在农业书籍中找不到任何关于它的记载。

This article is a selection from the November 2026 issue of Smithsonian magazine.

本文选自《史密森尼》杂志2026年11月刊。

For Grossi, a practicing Catholic, the next insight came from a different book altogether. Leafing through a Bible at church one Sunday, he found a passage in the Book of Genesis describing a stalk with seven ears, in a dream that Joseph interprets for the Pharaoh: “And he slept and dreamed the second time: And, behold, seven ears of grain came up upon one stalk, rank and good. And, behold, seven thin ears and blasted with the east wind sprung up after them. And the seven thin ears devoured the seven rank and full ears.” To Grossi, that sounded just like the mysterious crop in his manure pile.

对于身为虔诚天主教徒的格罗西来说，接下来的灵感来自另一本书。一个周日，他在教堂翻阅《圣经》时，在《创世记》中发现了一段描述七穗麦秆的经文，那是约瑟为法老解梦的内容：“他又睡着，第二次做梦，见一根麦秆上长了七个穗子，又肥大又饱满。随后又长了七个细弱的穗子，被东风吹焦了。这七个细弱的穗子吞了那七个又肥大又饱满的穗子。”在格罗西看来，这听起来就像他肥料堆里那种神秘的作物。

“I connected the dots,” Grossi says. That grain must be really ancient, he thought. And if people were farming this odd-looking wheat in biblical times, why does no one today?

“我把这些线索联系起来了，”格罗西说。他心想，这种谷物一定非常古老。如果人们在圣经时代种植这种看起来很奇怪的小麦，为什么今天没有人种了呢？

Back on his farm, Grossi harvested the grain, milled it into flour and baked a loaf of bread in his kitchen. Compared with commercial wheat, the dough didn’t rise well, but as the loaf sat in the oven, it filled the kitchen with a surprisingly nutty and delicious aroma. Once finished, it had a rich, satisfying taste. “You get these notes of sweetness that you can’t find in regular commercial flour,” he says.

回到农场后，格罗西收割了这些谷物，磨成面粉，并在厨房里烤了一个面包。与商业小麦相比，面团发酵得并不好，但当面包在烤箱里烘烤时，厨房里弥漫着一种令人惊喜的坚果般的美味香气。烤好后，它口感丰富，令人满足。“你能尝到普通商业面粉中找不到的那种甜味，”他说。

Did you know? More miracles of grain in the Bible. In 2 Kings 4:42-44, Elisha multiplies 20 barley loaves in order to feed 100 men—anticipating Jesus’s “Feeding of the 5,000” in the gospels. In 1 Kings 17:8-16, Elisha helps a widow at Zarephath to outlast a drought and famine with only a handful of flour and a little oil. In Judges 7:9-15, a Midianite soldier recounts a dream in which a barley loaf tumbles into the camp and overturns a tent. Gideon, the judge and military leader, recognizes the dream as a sign that God will deliver the Midianites into Israel’s hands. In 2 Kings 4:38-41, during a famine, someone gathers wild gourds and cuts them into a pot of stew. The diners discover that the stew is dangerous and cry out to Elisha. He calls for flour and throws it into the pot—and the stew becomes miraculously safe to eat.

你知道吗？《圣经》中还有更多关于谷物的神迹。《列王纪下》4:42-44中，以利沙将20个大麦饼变多，喂饱了100个人，这预示了福音书中耶稣“五饼二鱼喂饱五千人”的神迹。《列王纪上》17:8-16中，以利沙帮助撒勒法的寡妇仅凭一把面粉和一点油就度过了旱灾和饥荒。《士师记》7:9-15中，一名米甸士兵讲述了一个梦，梦见一个大麦饼滚进营地，掀翻了帐篷。士师兼军事领袖基甸将此梦视为上帝将把米甸人交在以色列人手中的预兆。《列王纪下》4:38-41中，饥荒期间，有人采集野瓜切入炖锅。用餐者发现炖菜有毒，便向以利沙呼救。他要来面粉撒入锅中，炖菜奇迹般地变得可以安全食用。

Grossi discovered it had other advantages: It was hardier and more self-sufficient than commercial varieties. It fared better during droughts, growing so tall that it overshadowed the weeds. It didn’t need fertilizer or herbicides. Indeed, it seemed so superior to its industrial cousins that he thought of it no longer as a freak of nature but as a wonder. He dubbed it grano del miracolo—“miracle grain” or “miracle wheat.”

格罗西发现它还有其他优点：它比商业品种更耐寒、更具自给自足的能力。它在干旱期间表现更好，长得很高，遮住了杂草。它不需要化肥或除草剂。事实上，它看起来比工业化品种优越得多，以至于他不再认为它是自然界的畸形，而是一个奇迹。他将其命名为“grano del miracolo”——即“奇迹谷物”或“奇迹小麦”。

Grossi’s discovery came at just the right time. In Italy in the 1990s, a burgeoning slow-food movement aimed to preserve traditional farming practices and promote natural diets.

格罗西的发现恰逢其时。在20世纪90年代的意大利，一场新兴的“慢食运动”旨在保护传统农业实践并推广自然饮食。

Grossi hoped that miracolo could ride this slow-food wave, becoming both a portal to the past and a passage to a future. Perhaps, he thought, miracolo could help other farmers bring back ancient grains, leading the movement that is changing how we make bread, a staple of the human diet. And today, as climate change makes droughts, heat waves and plant disease outbreaks more frequent and intense, a grain that has shown it can fend for itself would help keep that bread on the table.

格罗西希望“奇迹小麦”能乘上这股慢食浪潮，既成为通往过去的门户，也成为通向未来的通道。他认为，也许“奇迹小麦”可以帮助其他农民恢复种植古老谷物，引领一场正在改变我们制作面包方式的运动，而面包正是人类饮食的主食。如今，随着气候变化导致干旱、热浪和植物病害爆发变得更加频繁和剧烈，这种展现出自我生存能力的谷物将有助于确保面包继续出现在餐桌上。

Farmers began cultivating wheat about 10,000 years ago, in the Fertile Crescent—the area of the Middle East known as the Cradle of Civilization. Thousands of years ago, the hardy and adaptable plant took hold in Europe and Asia. Compared with our modern crops, these ancient wheats were much taller, outperforming other grasses in the field.

农民大约在10,000年前开始在“新月沃土”种植小麦——这是中东地区被称为文明摇篮的地方。几千年前，这种耐寒且适应性强的植物在欧洲和亚洲扎根。与我们的现代作物相比，这些古老的小麦要高得多，在田间表现优于其他草类。

Over the millennia, humans bred different varieties of wheat, some yielding less grain and others more. As human populations grew, the strains of wheat that brought plentiful harvests became more desirable. That pattern accelerated amid the upheavals of the early 20th century. By the early 1920s, Italy was still recovering from World War I and unable to grow enough grain to sustain itself; the country was importing roughly a third of its wheat. When fascist leader Benito Mussolini became prime minister in 1922, he launched a campaign to “free the Italian people from the slavery of foreign bread,” by pushing for wheat varieties that yielded greater harvests. The Italian government promoted and planted these “elite” varieties, then distributed the seeds to farmers. Named la Battaglia del Grano, or the Battle of Wheat, this campaign became a global model for agrarian development.

几千年来，人类培育了不同品种的小麦，有些产量较低，有些产量较高。随着人口增长，能带来丰收的小麦品种变得更受欢迎。这种模式在20世纪初的动荡中加速了。到20世纪20年代初，意大利仍在从第一次世界大战中恢复，无法种植足够的谷物来维持自身需求；该国大约三分之一的小麦依赖进口。1922年，法西斯领导人贝尼托·墨索里尼出任总理，他发起了一场运动，旨在通过推广高产小麦品种，使“意大利人民从外国面包的奴役中解放出来”。意大利政府推广并种植了这些“精英”品种，然后将种子分发给农民。这场被称为“小麦之战”（la Battaglia del Grano）的运动成为了全球农业发展的典范。

In the United States, wheat harve

在美国，小麦收割