buckwheat

["Diane Burgess" <yfnb@home.com>]

The effort to translate the English definitions of Lojban words into Russian
has begun by Mr. Evgeny Sklyanin, and one of the first questions that
surfaced was the issue of buckwheat.  To wit:

>I am puzzled with mentioning buckwheat (гÑ?еÑ?ка, гÑ?еÑ?иÑ?а) together with
>rhubarb (Ñ?евенÑ?) and sorrel (Ñ?авелÑ?). For me rhubarb and sorrel are
>vegetables (juicy stem/leaves) with strong sour taste. The buckwheat,
>on the contrary, is a source of grain which, in Russia, we use to
>make a sort of porridge (гÑ?еÑ?неваÑ? каÑ?а). Do you, in America, eat
>buckwheat as a salad?

My answer to him sounds like a defense of a malglico-ism, but I don't have
enough botanical expertise to know if it makes sense in this case to use the
same word for family, genus, and species.

>Buckwheat in English designates both genus >_Fagopyrum_ (the grain from
which
>your porridge is made), and family
> _Polygonaceae_ (which includes rhubarb, dock, >and sorrel).

Request some helpful explanations.

garis