How did Indigenous peoples of the Americas avoid scurvy when Citrus trees didn’t arrive in the Americas until after colonization began?

Question

I know there were a wide variety of indigenous populations with a wide variety of diets based on where they lived. I was wondering what kinds of foods different people from the Americas would eat to get their required dose of vitamin C? I imagine the answer would be different depending on if we are talking about indigenous peoples of the Amazon vs Central America vs Appalacia, vs the Rocky mountains, vs the Caribbeans, vs the far north of modern day Canada, ect…

Were there vitamin C rich food common to all these areas? If not what were some of the different sources available to different regions? I saw an answer from 8 years ago about Eskimos specifically ([https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t3m1c/eli5\_why\_did\_pirates\_get\_scurvy\_but\_eskimos\_dont/](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t3m1c/eli5_why_did_pirates_get_scurvy_but_eskimos_dont/)), but I was wondering how different the answer would be in other regions.

In: 1

Answer 1

Potatoes are a good source of Vitamin C and native Americans in parts of South America had access to Potatoes.

Answer 2

Citrus isn’t even a particularly good source of vitamin c. Vitamin c is in all sorts of plants and stuff like fish livers.

Answer 3

Pine needle tea carries a respectable amount of vitamin C. Not as much as fresh fruit, but it will get you by.

Answer 4

The importance of citrus fruit as a cure or preventative for scurvy has as much to do with how long they keep as their vitamin C content. Most vegetables and fruits have plenty of vitamin C but they go off earlier. Sauerkraut was also used because it’s pickled therefore keeps. Indigenous Americans had fresh fruit and veg around them most of the time.

Answer 5

Here in Brasil we have a South-America native fruit called acerola that is popularly known to have the vitamin C amount of 60 oranges. Check the paragraph “Nutritional value” on its [Wikipedia article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malpighia_emarginata) .

Just an example. Cashew also has a truckload of ascorbic acid.

EDIT : I forgot to mention thst it’s cashew the fruit, the pulp. I forgot that most people from Northern Hemisphere get surprised when they learn that cashew nuts are just the seed, a small part of a very tasty fruit, most used for the juice, that is one of the most popular here.