Origin of Cultivated Plants

When forms and physiological conditions pass from one into another, and are distinguished by characters which vary according to circumstances, we are led to consider the individuals as constituting a single species, although these forms and conditions possess a certain degree of heredity, and date perhaps from very early times. We are, however, forced to consider them separately in our researches into their origin. I shall first indicate in what country each variety has been discovered in a wild or half-wild state. I shall then speak of cultivation, and we shall see how far geographical and historical facts confirm the opinion of the unity of species.

The common annual flax has not yet been discovered, with absolute certainty, in a wild state. I possess several specimens of it from India, and Planchon saw others in the herbarium at Kew; but Anglo-Indian botanists do not admit that the plant is indigenous in British India. The recent flora of Sir Joseph Hooker speaks of it as a species cultivated principally for the oil extracted from the seeds; and Mr. C. B. Clarke, formerly director of the botanical gardens in Calcutta, writes to me that the specimens must have been cultivated, its cultivation being very common in winter in the north of India. Boissier583 mentions L. humile, with narrow leaves, which Kotschy gathered “near Schiraz in Persia, at the foot of the mountain called Sabst Buchom.” This is, perhaps, a spot far removed from cultivation; but I cannot give satisfactory information on this head. Hohenacker found L. usitatissimum “half wild” in the province of Talysch, to the south of the Caucasus, towards the Caspian Sea.584 Steven is more positive with regard to Southern Russia.585 According to him, it “is found pretty often on the barren hills to the south of the Crimea, between Jalta and Nikita; and Nordmann found it on the eastern coast of the Black Sea.” Advancing westward in Southern Russia, or in the region of the Mediterranean, the species is but rarely mentioned, and only as escaped from cultivation, or half wild. In spite of doubts and of the scanty data which we possess, I think it very possible that the annual flax, in one or other of these two forms, may be wild in the district between the south of Persia and the Crimea, at least in a few localities.

The winter flax is only known under cultivation in a few provinces of Italy.586

The Linum ambiguum of Jordan grows on the coast of Provence and of Languedoc in dry places.587

Lastly, Linum angustifolium, which hardly differs from the preceding, has a well-defined and rather large area. It grows wild, especially on hills throughout the region of which the Mediterranean forms the centre; that is, in the Canaries and Madeira, in Marocco,588 Algeria,589 and as far as the Cyrenaic;590 from the south of Europe, as far as England,591 the Alps, and the Balkan Mountains; and lastly, in Asia from the south of the Caucasus592 to Lebanon and Palestine.593 I do not find it mentioned in the Crimea, nor beyond the Caspian Sea.

Let us now turn to the cultivation of flax, destined in most instances to furnish a textile substance, often also to yield oil, and cultivated among certain peoples for the nutritious properties of the seed. I first studied the question of its origin in 1855,594 and with the following result: —

It was abundantly shown that the ancient Egyptians and the Hebrews made use of linen stuffs. Herodotus affirms this. Moreover, the plant may be seen figured in the ancient Egyptian drawings, and the microscope indubitably shows that the bandages which bind the mummies are of linen.595 The culture of flax is of ancient date in Europe; it was known to the Kelts, and in India according to history. Lastly, the widely different common names indicate likewise an ancient cultivation or long use in different countries. The Keltic name lin, and Greco-Latin linon or linum, has no analogy with the Hebrew pischta,596 nor with the Sanskrit names ooma, atasi, utasi.597 A few botanists mention the flax as “nearly wild” in the south-east of Russia, to the south of the Caucasus and to the east of Siberia, but it was not known to be truly wild. I then summed up the probabilities, saying, “The varying etymology of the names, the antiquity of cultivation in Egypt, in Europe, and in the north of India, the circumstance that in the latter district flax is cultivated for the yield of oil alone, lead me to believe that two or three species of different origin, confounded by most authors under the name of Linum usitatissimum, were formerly cultivated in different countries, without imitation or communication the one with the other… I am very doubtful whether the species cultivated by the ancient Egyptians was the species indigenous in Russia and in Siberia.”

My conjectures were confirmed ten years later by a very curious discovery made by Oswald Heer. The lake-dwellers of Eastern Switzerland, at a time when they only used stone implements, and did not know the use of hemp, cultivated and wove a flax which is not our common annual flax, but the perennial flax called Linum angustifolium, which is wild south of the Alps. This is shown by the examination of the capsules, seeds, and especially of the lower part of a plant carefully extracted from the sediment at Robenhausen.598 The illustration published by Heer shows distinctly a root surmounted by from two to four stems after the manner of perennial plants. The stems had been cut, whereas our common flax is plucked up by the roots, another proof of the persistent nature of the plant. With the remains of the Robenhausen flax some grains of Silene cretica were found, a species which is also foreign to Switzerland, and abundant in Italy in the fields of flax.599 Hence Heer concluded that the Swiss lake-dwellers imported the seeds of the Italian flax. This was apparently the case, unless we suppose that the climate of Switzerland at that time differed from that of our own epoch, for the perennial flax would not at the present day survive the winters of Eastern Switzerland.600 Heer’s opinion is supported by the surprising fact that flax has not been found among the remains of the lake-dwellings of Laybach and Mondsee of the Austrian States, where bronze has been discovered.601 The late epoch of the introduction of flax into this region excludes the hypothesis that the inhabitants of Switzerland received it from Eastern Europe, from which, moreover, they were separated by immense forests.

Since the ingenious observations of the Zurich savant, a flax has been discovered which was employed by the prehistoric inhabitants of the peat-mosses of Lagozza, in Lombardy; and Sordelli has shown that it was the same as that of Robenhausen, L. angustifolium.602 This ancient people was ignorant of the use of hemp and of metals, but they possessed the same cereals as the Swiss lake-dwellers of the stone age, and ate like them the acorns of Quercus robur, var. sessiliflora. There was, therefore, a civilization which had reached a certain development on both sides of the Alps, before metals, even bronze, were in common use, and before hemp and the domestic fowl were known.603 It was probably before the arrival of the Aryans in Europe, or soon after that event.604

The common names of the flax in ancient European languages may throw some light on this question.

The name lin, llin, linu, linon, linum, lein, lan, exists in all the European languages of Aryan origin of the centre and south of Europe, Keltic, Slavonic, Greek, or Latin. This name is, however, not common to the Aryan languages of India; consequently, as Pictet605 justly says, the cultivation must have been begun by the western Aryans, and before their arrival in Europe. Another idea occurred to me which led me into further researches, but they were unproductive. I thought that, since this flax was cultivated by the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy before the arrival of the Aryan peoples, it was probably also grown by the Iberians, who then occupied Spain and Gaul; and perhaps some special name for it has remained among the Basques, the supposed descendants of the Iberians. Now, according to several dictionaries of their language,606 liho, lino, or li, according to the dialects, signifies flax, which agrees with the name diffused throughout Southern Europe. The Basques seem, therefore, to have received flax from peoples of Aryan origin, or perhaps they have lost the ancient name and substituted that of the Kelts and Romans. The name flachs or flax of the Teutonic languages comes from the Old German flahs. There are also special names in the north-west of Europe —pellawa, aiwina, in Finnish;607 hor, härr, hor, in Danish;608 hor and tone in ancient Gothic.609 Haar exists in the German of Salzburg.610 This word may be in the ordinary sense of the German for thread or hair, as the name li may be connected with the same root as ligare, to bind, and as hör, in the plural hörvar, is connected by philologists611 with harva, the German root for Flachs; but it is, nevertheless, a fact that in Scandinavian countries and in Finland terms have been used which differ from those employed throughout the south of Europe. This variety shows the antiquity of the cultivation, and agrees with the fact that the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy cultivated a species of flax before the first invasion of the Aryans. It is possible, I might even say probable, that the latter imported the name li rather than the plant or its cultivation; but as there is no wild flax in the north of Europe, an ancient people, the Finns, of Turanian origin, introduced the flax into the north before the Aryans. In this case they must have cultivated the annual flax, for the perennial variety will not bear the severity of the northern winters; while we know how favourable the climate of Riga is in summer to the cultivation of the annual flax. Its first introduction into Gaul, Switzerland, and Italy may have been from the south, by the Iberians, and in Finland by the Finns; and the Aryans may have afterwards diffused those names which were commonest among themselves – that of linum in the south, and of flahs in the north. Perhaps the Aryans and Finns had brought the annual flax from Asia, which would soon have been substituted for the perennial variety, which is less productive and less adapted to cold countries. It is not known precisely at what epoch the cultivation of the annual flax in Italy took the place of that of the perennial linum angustifolium, but it must have been before the Christian era; for Latin authors speak of a well-established cultivation, and Pliny says that the flax was sown in spring and rooted up in the summer.612 Metal implements were not then wanting, and therefore the flax would have been cut if it had been perennial. Moreover, the latter, if sown in spring, would not have ripened till autumn.

For the same reasons the flax cultivated by the ancient Egyptians must have been an annual. Hitherto neither entire plants nor a great number of capsules have been found in the catacombs of a nature to furnish direct and incontestable proof. Unger613 alone was able to examine a capsule taken from the bricks of a monument, which Leipsius attributes to the thirteenth or fourteenth century before Christ, and he found it more like those of L. usitatissimum than of L. angustifolium. Out of three seeds which Braun614 saw in the Berlin Museum, mixed with those of other cultivated plants, one appeared to him to belong to L. angustifolium, and the other to L. humile; but it must be owned that a single seed without plant or capsule is not sufficient proof. Ancient Egyptian paintings show that flax was not reaped with a sickle like cereals, but uprooted.615 In Egypt flax is cultivated in the winter, for the summer drought would no more allow of a perennial variety, than the cold of northern countries, where it is sown in spring, to be gathered in in summer. It may be added that the annual flax of the variety called humile is the only one now grown in Abyssinia, and also the only one that modern collectors have seen in Egypt.616

Heer suggests that the ancient Egyptians may have cultivated L. angustifolium of the Mediterranean region, sowing it as an annual plant.617 I am more inclined to believe that they had previously imported or received their flax from Egypt, already in the form of the species L. humile. Their modes of cultivation, and the figures on the monuments, show that their knowledge of the plant dated from a remote antiquity. Now it is known that the Egyptians of the first dynasties before Cheops belonged to a proto-semitic race, which came into Egypt by the isthmus of Suez.618 Flax has been found in a tomb of ancient Chaldea prior to the existence of Babylon,619 and its use in this region is lost in the remotest antiquity. Thus the first Egyptians of white race may have imported the cultivated flax, or their immediate successors may have received it from Asia before the epoch of the Phœnician colonies in Greece, and before direct communication was established between Greece and Egypt under the fourteenth dynasty.620

A very early introduction of the plant into Egypt from Asia does not prevent us from admitting that it was at different times taken from the East to the West at a later epoch than that of the first Egyptian dynasties. Thus the western Aryans and the Phœnicians may have introduced into Europe a flax more advantageous than L. angustifolium during the period from 2500 to 1200 years before our era.

The cultivation of the plant by the Aryans must have extended further north than that by the Phœnicians. In Greece, at the time of the Trojan war, fine linen stuffs were still imported from Colchis; that is to say, from that region at the foot of the Caucasus where the common annual flax has been found wild in modern times. It does not appear that the Greeks cultivated the plant at that epoch.621 The Aryans had perhaps already introduced its cultivation into the valley of the Danube. However, I noticed just now that the lacustrine remains of Mondsee and Laybach show no trace of any flax. In the last centuries before the Christian era the Romans procured very fine linen from Spain, although the names of the plant in that country do not tend to show that the Phœnicians introduced it. There is not any Oriental name existing in Europe belonging either to antiquity or to the Middle Ages. The Arabic name kattan, kettane, or kittane, of Persian origin,622 has spread westward only among the Kabyles of Algeria.623

The sum of facts and probabilities appear to me to lead to the following statements, which may be accepted until they are modified by further discoveries.

1. Linum angustifolium, usually perennial, rarely biennial or annual, which is found wild from the Canary Isles to Palestine and the Caucasus, was cultivated in Switzerland and the north of Italy by peoples more ancient than the conquerors of Aryan race. Its cultivation was replaced by that of the annual flax.

2. The annual flax (L. usitatissimum), cultivated for at least four thousand or five thousand years in Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Egypt, was and still is wild in the districts included between the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, and the Black Sea.

3. This annual flax appears to have been introduced into the north of Europe by the Finns (of Turanian race), afterwards into the rest of Europe by the western Aryans, and perhaps here and there by the Phœnicians; lastly into Hindustan by the eastern Aryans, after their separation from the European Aryans.

4. These two principal forms or conditions of flax exist in cultivation, and have probably been wild in their modern areas for the last five thousand years at least. It is not possible to guess at their previous condition. Their transitions and varieties are so numerous that they may be considered as one species comprising two or three hereditary varieties, which are each again divided into subvarieties.

Jute—Corchorus capsularis and Corchorus olitorius, Linnæus.

The fibres of the jute, imported in great quantities in the last few years, especially into England, are taken from the stem of these two species of Corchorus, annuals of the family of the Tiliaceæ. The leaves are also used as a vegetable.

C. capsularis has a nearly spherical fruit, flattened at the top, and surrounded by longitudinal ridges. There is a good coloured illustration of it in the work of the younger Jacquin, Eclogæ, pl. 119. C. olitorius, on the contrary, has a long fruit, like the pod of a Crucifer. It is figured in the Botanical Magazine, fig. 2810, and in Lamarck, fig. 478.

The species of the genus are distributed nearly equally in the warm regions of Asia, Africa, and America; consequently the origin of each cannot be guessed. It must be sought in floras and herbaria, with the help of historical and other data.

Corchorus capsularis is commonly cultivated in the Sunda Islands, in Ceylon, in the peninsula of Hindustan, in Bengal, in Southern China, in the Philippine Islands,624 generally in Southern Asia. Forster does not mention it in his work on the plants in use among the inhabitants of the Pacific, whence it may be inferred that at the time of Cook’s voyages, a century ago, its cultivation had not spread in that direction. It may even be suspected from this fact that it does not date from a very remote epoch in the isles of the Indian Archipelago.

Blume says that Corchorus capsularis grows in the marshes of Java near Parang,625 and I have two specimens from Java which are not given as cultivated.626 Thwaites mentions it as “very common” in Ceylon.627

On the continent of Asia, authors speak more of it as a plant cultivated in Bengal and China. Wight, who gives a good illustration of the plant, does not mention its native place. Edgeworth,628 who has studied on the spot the flora of the district of Banda, says that it is found in “the fields.” In the Flora of British India, Masters, who drew up the article on the Tiliaceæ from the herbarium at Kew, says “in the hottest regions of India, cultivated in most tropical countries.”629 I have a specimen from Bengal which is not given as cultivated. Loureiro says “wild, and cultivated in the province of Canton in China,”630 which probably means wild in Cochin-China, and cultivated in Canton. In Japan the plant grows in cultivated soil.631 In conclusion, I am not convinced that the species exists in a truly wild state north of Calcutta, although it may perhaps have spread from cultivation and have sown itself here and there.

C. capsularis has been introduced into various parts of tropical Africa and even of America, but it is only cultivated on a large scale for the production of jute thread in Southern Asia, and especially in Bengal.

C. olitorius is more used as a vegetable than for its fibres. Out of Asia it is employed exclusively for the leaves. It is one of the commonest of culinary plants among the modern Egyptians and Syrians, who call it in Arabic melokych, but it is not likely that they had any knowledge of it in ancient times, as we know of no Hebrew name.632 The present inhabitants of Crete cultivate it under the name of mouchlia,633 evidently derived from the Arabic, and the ancient Greeks were not acquainted with it.

According to several authors634 this species of Corchorus is wild in several provinces of British India. Thwaites says it is common in the hot districts of Ceylon; but in Java, Blume only mentions it as growing among rubbish (in ruderatis). I cannot find it mentioned in Cochin-China or Japan. Boissier saw specimens from Mesopotamia, Afghanistan, Syria, and Anatolia, but gives as a general indication, “culta, et in ruderatis subspontanea.” No Sanskrit name for the two cultivated species of Corchorus is known.635

Touching the indigenous character of the plant in Africa, Masters, in Oliver’s Flora of Tropical Africa (i. p. 262), says, “wild, or cultivated as a vegetable throughout tropical Africa.” He attributes to the same species two plants from Guinea which G. Don had described as different, and as to whose wild nature he probably knew nothing. I have a specimen from Kordofan gathered by Kotschy, No. 45, “on the borders of the fields of sorghum.” Peters, as far as I know, is the only author who asserts that the plant is wild. He found C. olitorius “in dry places, and also in the meadows in the neighbourhood of Sena and Tette.” Schweinfurth only gives it as a cultivated plant in the whole Nile Valley.636 This is also the case in the flora of Senegambia by Guillemin, Perrottet, and Richard.

To sum up, C. olitorius seems to be wild in the moderately warm regions of Western India, of Kordofan, and probably of some intermediate countries. It must have spread from the coast of Timor, and as far as Northern Australia, into Africa and towards Anatolia, in the wake of a cultivation not perhaps of earlier date than the Christian era, even at its origin.

In spite of the assertions made in various works, the cultivation of this plant is rarely indicated in America. I note, however, on Grisebach’s authority,637 that it has become naturalized in Jamaica from gardens, as often happens in the case of cultivated annuals.

Sumach.—Rhus coriaria.

This tree is cultivated in Spain and Italy638 for the young shoots and leaves, which are dried and made into a powder for tanning. I recently saw a plantation in Sicily, of which the product was exported to America. As oak-bark becomes more rare and substances for tanning are more in demand, it is probable that this cultivation will spread; all the more that it is suitable to sandy, sterile regions. In Algeria, Australia, at the Cape, and in the Argentine Republic, it might be introduced with advantage.639 Ancient peoples used the slightly acid fruits as a seasoning, and the custom has lingered here and there; but I find no proof that they cultivated the species.

It grows wild in the Canaries and in Madeira, in the Mediterranean region and in the neighbourhood of the Black Sea, preferring dry and stony ground. In Asia its area extends as far as the south of the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea, and Persia.640 The species is so common that it may have been in use before it was cultivated.

Sumach is the Persian and Tartar name;641 rous, rhus, the ancient name among the Greeks and Romans.642 A proof of the persistence of certain common names is found in the French “Currier’s roux or roure.”

Khât, or Arab Tea—Catha edulis, Forskal; Celastrus edulis, Vahl.

This shrub, belonging to the family of the Celastraceæ, is largely cultivated in Abyssinia, under the name of tchut or tchat, and in Arabia under that of cat or gat. Its leaves are chewed, when green, like those of the coca in America, and they have the same exciting and strengthening properties. Those of uncultivated plants have a stronger taste, and are even intoxicating. Botta saw that in Yemen as much importance is attributed to the cultivation of the Catha as to that of coffee, and he mentions that a sheik, who is obliged to receive many visits of ceremony, bought as much as a hundred francs’ worth of leaves a day.643 In Abyssinia an infusion is also made from the leaves.644 In spite of the eagerness with which stimulants are sought, this species has not spread into the adjoining countries, such as Beluchistan, Southern India, etc., where it might succeed.

The Catha is wild in Abyssinia,645 but has not yet been found wild in Arabia. It is true that the interior of the country is nearly unknown to botanists. It cannot be ascertained from Botta’s account whether the wild plants he mentions are wild and indigenous, or escaped from cultivation and more or less naturalized. Perhaps the Catha was introduced from Abyssinia with the coffee plant, which likewise has not been discovered wild in Arabia.