Tartary Buckwheat is a domesticated

Domestication

Domestication or taming is the process whereby a population of animals or plants, through a process of selection, becomes accustomed to human provision and control. In the Convention on Biological Diversity a domesticated species is defined as a 'species in which the evolutionary process has been...

 food plant

Plant

Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...

 in the genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 Fagopyrum

Fagopyrum

The genus Fagopyrum in the flowering plant family Polygonaceae contains 15 to 16 species of plants, including two important crop plants, the Buckwheat or Japanese Buckwheat Fagopyrum esculentum, and the Tartary Buckwheat Fagopyrum tataricum. They have similar uses, and are classed as pseudocereals,...

(sometimes merged into the genus Polygonum

Polygonum

Polygonum is a genus in the Polygonaceae family. Common names include knotweed, knotgrass, bistort, tear-thumb, mile-a-minute, and several others. In the Middle English glossary of herbs "Alphita" , it was known as ars-smerte. There have been various opinions about how broadly the genus should be...

) in the family Polygonaceae

Polygonaceae

Polygonaceae is a family of flowering plants known informally as the "knotweed family" or "smartweed family"— "buckwheat family" in the United States. The name is based on the genus Polygonum and was first used by Antoine Laurent de Jussieu in 1789 in his book, Genera Plantarum. The name refers...

. With its congener

Congener

Congener has several different meanings depending on the field in which it is used. Colloquially, it is used to mean a person or thing like another, in character or action.-Biology:In biology, congeners are organisms within the same genus...

 Common Buckwheat

Buckwheat

Buckwheat refers to a variety of plants in the dicot family Polygonaceae: the Eurasian genus Fagopyrum, the North American genus Eriogonum, and the Northern Hemisphere genus Fallopia. Either of the latter two may be referred to as "wild buckwheat"...

, it is often counted as a cereal

Cereal

Cereals are grasses cultivated for the edible components of their grain , composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran...

, but unlike the true cereals the buckwheats are not members of the grass

Poaceae

The Poaceae is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of flowering plants. Members of this family are commonly called grasses, although the term "grass" is also applied to plants that are not in the Poaceae lineage, including the rushes and sedges...

 family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

. Thus they are not related to true wheat

Wheat

Wheat is a cereal grain, originally from the Levant region of the Near East, but now cultivated worldwide. In 2007 world production of wheat was 607 million tons, making it the third most-produced cereal after maize and rice...

. Tartary Buckwheat is bitterer, but contains more rutin

Rutin

Rutin, also called rutoside, quercetin-3-O-rutinoside and sophorin, is a citrus flavonoid glycoside found in buckwheat, the leaves and petioles of Rheum species, and asparagus...

 than common buckwheat. It also contains quercitrin

Quercitrin

Quercitrin is a glycoside formed from the flavonoid quercetin and the deoxy sugar rhamnose. It is a constituent of the dye quercitron. It can be found in Tartary buckwheat ....

.

Tartar buckwheat was domesticated in east Asia

East Asia

East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...

. While it is unfamiliar to the West, it is still eaten in the Himalayan region today.