Seeds and plant remains preserved in a well at America’s first permanent English settlement suggest the Jamestown colonists were not just gentlemen with few wilderness survival skills, as they are often portrayed, but tried to live off the land by gathering berries and nuts.

At least one tobacco seed, possibly representing the earliest known evidence of the cultivation at Jamestown of the cash crop that helped the settlement survive financially, was also discovered among samples from the 17th-century well.

While more research needs to be done elsewhere at Jamestown, the lack of plant material from Europe in this well suggests the settlers adapted to the environment by using local food resources as they learned what was edible from their contact with Indians.

Seeds from blueberries were the most commonly found. Other evidence of wild food colonists gathered included blackberries, huckleberries, persimmons, passion fruit, cherries, grapes, hickory nuts, beech nuts and walnuts.

[Read](http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/01/10/jamestown_arc.html?category=archaeology&guid=20070110093030&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000 “Read the Story”) (AP via the Discovery Channel)