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Originally Posted by Alfirin
I agree that they'd need land to grow the grain. Given that the recipie was supposedly given to them by Yavanna herself, it's tempting to think that wild wheat could be used for maximum connection to nature (and since lembas is unleavened, gluten contents don't really apply here.) But the problem is the same as the one with the chickpeas; assuming most wild plants are roughly where they are latitude wise in our world (someone once correct my question about finding bay laurels in Ithillien by pointing out that, latitude wise, Ithillien would be roughly where Tuscany is in our world) The third age elves are mostly too far north to have it. Wild einkorn and emmer (which are basically the wild ancestors of wheat, give or take some goat grass genes) are really only found in places like Turkey and Macedonia, which I keep thinking would actually put them somewhere in Mordor in ME.
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Yeah, Turkey = Mordor seems about right; much of Mordor is a bit more northerly though, going by Letter 294 which places the mouths of Anduin and Pelargir at the latitude of Troy. Maybe Bulgaria?
Of the Darkening of Valinor has a note referring to "the fields and pastures of Yavanna, gold beneath the tall wheat of the gods" (I think this is the sole reference to "gods" in the published Silmarillion and I wonder how and why CT missed it) but we don't have any comparative latitude.