Chia — an oil trade printed in Nahuatl in 1571, and the crop that nearly disappeared

Molina's 1571 dictionary gives chia its own vocabulary: the seed, the oil, the verb for pressing it, the presser, the maker, the seller, and the verb for varnishing an object with it. The 1615 Quatro libros describes the toasted seed kept a whole year and stirred into water. A 2019 genome paper reports that after the conquest the crop was "almost eradicated" — and that its seed carries more alpha-linolenic acid than almost any food known.