Relating linguistic reconstructions of plant names in Berber to the archaeobotany of North Africa

•The paper links the linguistic reconstructions for Berber crop plants and the archaeobotanical evidence for agriculture in North Africa.•The paper focuses in particular on the evidence for the Canary Islands, since the dates and modes of settlement are controversial.•It proposes that a small number of proto-Berber reconstructions for crops are alos reflected in the Guanche language, in particular figs, barley and wheat.