hottest take: the bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) is the best crop because it was carried over the bering land bridge (or coast) into america by the first human colonists who used them to carry water and store stuff and we know that they were carried over this way because today’s bottle gourds are most closely related to the bottle gourd populations in northeastern asia where the crossing was and they were already domesticated and important when maize and wheat were first domesticated 10,000 years ago and therefore are balling on all modern crops