Origin of Cultivated Plants

Maté—Ilex paraguariensis, Saint-Hilaire.

The inhabitants of Brazil and of Paraguay have employed from time immemorial the leaves of this shrub, as the Chinese have those of the tea plant. They gather them especially in the damp forests of the interior, between the degrees of 20 and 30 south latitude, and commerce transports them dried to great distances throughout the greater part of South America. These leaves contain, with aroma and tannin, a principle analogous to that of tea and coffee; they are not, however, much liked in the countries where Chinese tea is known. The plantations of maté are not yet as important as the product of the wild shrub, but they may increase as the population increases. Moreover, the preparation is simpler than that of tea, as the leaves are not rolled.

Illustrations and descriptions of the species, with a number of details about its use and properties, may be found in the works of Saint-Hilaire, of Sir William Hooker, and of Martius.646

Coca.—Erythroxylon Coca, Lamarck.

The natives of Peru and of the neighbouring provinces, at least in the hot moist regions, cultivate this shrub, of which they chew the leaves, as the natives of India chew the leaves of the betel. It is a very ancient custom, which has spread even into elevated regions, where the species cannot live. Now that it is known how to extract the essential part of the coca, and its virtues are recognized as a tonic, which gives strength to endure fatigue without having the drawbacks of alcoholic liquors, it is probable that an attempt will be made to extend its cultivation in America and elsewhere. In Guiana, for instance, the Malay Archipelago, or the valleys of Sikkim and Assam, or in Hindustan, since both moisture and heat are requisite. Frost is very injurious to the species. The best sites are the slopes of hills where water cannot lie. An attempt made in the neighbourhood of Lima failed, because of the infrequency of rain and perhaps because of insufficient heat.647

I shall not repeat here what may be found in several excellent treatises on the coca;648 I need only say that the original home of the species in America is not yet clearly ascertained. Gosse has shown that early authors, such as Joseph de Jussieu, Lamarck, and Cavanilles, had only seen cultivated specimens. Mathews gathered it in Peru, in the ravine (quebrada) of Chinchao,649 which appears to be a place beyond the limits of cultivation. Some specimens from Cuchero, collected by Poeppig,650 are said to be wild; but the traveller himself was not convinced of their wild nature.651 D’Orbigny thinks he saw the wild coca on a hill in the eastern part of Bolivia.652 Lastly, M. André has had the courtesy to send me the specimens of Erythroxylon in his herbarium, and I recognized the coca in several specimens from the valley of the river Cauca in New Granada, with the note “in abundance, wild or half-wild.” Triana, however, does not admit that the species is wild in his country, New Granada.653 Its extreme importance in Peru at the time of the Incas, compared to the rarity of its use in New Granada, seems to show that it has escaped from cultivation in places where it occurs in the latter country, and that the species is indigenous only in the east of Peru and Bolivia, according to the indications of the travellers mentioned above.

Dyer’s Indigo.—Indigofera tinctoria, Linnæus.

The Sanskrit name is nili.654 The Latin name, indicum, shows that the Romans knew that the indigo was a substance brought from India. As to the wild nature of the plant, Roxburgh says, “Native place unknown, for, though it is now common in a wild state in most of the provinces of India, it is seldom found far from the districts where it is now cultivated, or has been cultivated formerly.” Wight and Royle, who have published illustrations of the species, tell us nothing on this head, and more recent Indian floras mention the plant as cultivated.655 Several other indigoes are wild in India.

This species has been found in the sands of Senegal,656 but it is not mentioned in other African localities, and as it is often cultivated in Senegal, it seems probable that it is naturalized. The existence of a Sanskrit name renders its Asiatic origin most probable.

Silver Indigo—Indigofera argentea.

This species is certainly wild in Abyssinia, Nubia, Kordofan, and Senaar.657 It is cultivated in Egypt and Arabia. Hence we might suppose that it was from this species that the ancient Egyptians extracted a blue dye;658 but perhaps they imported their indigo from India, for its cultivation in Egypt is probably not of earlier date than the Middle Ages.659

A slightly different form, which Roxburgh gives as a separate species (Indigofera cærulea), and which appears rather to be a variety, is wild in the plains of the peninsula of Hindustan and of Beluchistan.

American Indigoes.

There are probably one or two indigoes indigenous in America, but ill defined, and often intermixed in cultivation with the species of the old world, and naturalized beyond the limits of cultivation. This interchange makes the matter too uncertain for me to venture upon any researches into their original habitat. Some authors have thought that I. Anil, Linnæus, was one of these species. Linnæus, however, says that his plant came from India (Mantissa, p. 273). The blue dye of the ancient Mexicans was extracted from a plant which, according to Hernandez’account,660 differs widely from the indigoes.

Henna—Lawsonia alba, Lamarck (Lawsonia inermis and L. spinosa of different authors).

The custom among Eastern women of staining their nails red with the juice of henna-leaves dates from a remote antiquity, as ancient Egyptian paintings and mummies show.

It is difficult to know when and in what country this species was first cultivated to fulfil the requirements of a fashion as absurd as it is persistent, but it may be from a very early epoch, since the inhabitants of Babylon, Nineveh, and the towns of Egypt had gardens. It may be left to scholars to show whether the practice of staining the nails began in Egypt under this or that dynasty, before or after certain relations were established with Eastern nations. It is enough for our purpose to know that Lawsonia, a shrub belonging to the order of the Lythraceæ, is more or less wild in the warm regions of Western Asia and of Africa to the north of the equator.

I have in my possession specimens from India, Java, Timor, even from China661 and Nubia, which are not said to be taken from cultivated plants, and others from Guiana and the West Indies, which are doubtless furnished by the imported species. Stocks found it indigenous in Beluchistan.662 Roxburgh also considered it to be wild on the Coromandel663 coast, and Thwaites664 mentions it in Ceylon in a manner which seems to show that it is wild there. Clarke665 says, “very common, and cultivated in India, perhaps wild in the eastern part.” It is possible that it spread into India from its original home, as into Amboyna666 in the seventeenth century, and perhaps more recently into the West Indies,667 in the wake of cultivation; for the plant is valued for the scent of its flowers, as well as for the dye, and is easily propagated by seed. There is the same doubt as to whether it is indigenous in Persia, Arabia, and Egypt (an essentially cultivated country), in Nubia, and even in Guinea, where specimens have been gathered.668 It is even possible that the area of this shrub extends from India to Nubia. Such a wide geographical distribution is, however, always somewhat rare. The common names may furnish some indication.

A Sanskrit name, sakachera,669 is attributed to the species, but as it has left no trace in the different modern languages of India, I am inclined to doubt its reality. The Persian name hanna is more widely diffused and retained than any other (hina of the Hindus, henneh and alhenna of the Arabs, kinna of the modern Greeks). That of cypros, used by the Syrians of the time of Dioscorides,670 has not found so much favour. This fact supports the opinion that the species grew originally on the borders of Persia, and that its use as well as its cultivation spread from the East to the West, from Asia into Africa.

Tobacco—Nicotiana Tabacum, Linnæus; and other species of Nicotiana.

At the time of the discovery of America, the custom of smoking, of snuff-taking, or of chewing tobacco was diffused over the greater part of this vast continent. The accounts of the earliest travellers, of which the famous anatomist Tiedemann671 has made a very complete collection, show that the inhabitants of South America did not smoke, but chewed tobacco or took snuff, except in the district of La Plata, Uruguay, and Paraguay, where no form of tobacco was used. In North America, from the Isthmus of Panama and the West Indies as far as Canada and California, the custom of smoking was universal, and circumstances show that it was also very ancient. Pipes, in great numbers and of wonderful workmanship, have been discovered in the tombs of the Aztecs in Mexico672 and in the mounds of the United States; some of them represent animals foreign to North America.673

As the tobacco plant is an annual which gives a great quantity of seeds, it was easy to sow and to cultivate or naturalize them more or less in the neighbourhood of dwellings, but it must be noted that different species of the genus Nicotiana were employed in different parts of America, which shows that they had not all the same origin. Nicotiana Tabacum, commonly cultivated, was the most widely diffused, and sometimes the only one in use in South America and the West Indies. The use of tobacco was introduced into La Plata, Paraguay,674 and Uruguay by the Spaniards, consequently we must look further to the north for the origin of the plant. De Martius does not think it was indigenous in Brazil,675 and he adds that the ancient Brazilians smoked the leaves of a species belonging to their country known to botanists as Nicotiana Langsdorfii. When I went into the question in 1855,676 I had not been able to discover any wild specimens of Nicotiana Tabacum except those sent by Blanchet from the province of Bahia, numbered 3223, a. No author, either before or since that time, has been more fortunate, and I see that Messrs. Flückiger and Hanbury, in their excellent work on vegetable drugs,677 say positively, “The common tobacco is a native of the new world, though not now known in a wild state.” I venture to gainsay this assertion, although the wild nature of a plant may always be disputed in the case of a plant which spreads so easily from cultivation.

We find in herbaria a number of specimens gathered in Peru without indication that they were cultivated or that they grew near plantations. Boissier’s herbarium contains two specimens collected by Pavon, from different localities.678 Pavon says in his flora that the species grows in the moist warm forests of the Peruvian Andes, and that it is cultivated. But – and this is more significant – Edouard André gathered specimens in the republic of Ecquador at Saint Nicholas, on the western slope of the volcano of Corazon in a virgin forest. These he was kind enough to send me. They are evidently the tall variety (four to six feet) of N. Tabacum, with the upper leaves narrow and acuminate, as they are represented in the plates of Hayne and Miller.679 The lower leaves are wanting. The flower, which gives the true characters of the species, is certainly that of N. Tabacum, and it is well known that the height of this plant and the breadth of the leaves vary in cultivation.680 It is very possible that its original country extended north as far as Mexico, as far south as Bolivia, and eastward to Venezuela.

Nicotiana rustica, Linnæus, a species with yellow flowers, very different from Tabacum,681 and which yields a coarse kind of tobacco, was more often cultivated by the Mexicans and the native tribes north of Mexico. I have a specimen brought from California by Douglas in 1837, a time when colonists were still few; but American authorities do not admit that the plant is wild, and Dr. Asa Gray says that it sows itself in waste places.682 This was perhaps the case with the specimens in Boissier’s herbarium, gathered in Peru by Pavon, and which he does not mention in the Peruvian flora. The species grows in abundance about Cordova in the Argentine Republic,683 but from what epoch is unknown. From the ancient use of the plant and the home of the most analogous species, the probabilities are in favour of a Mexican, Texan, or Californian origin.

Several botanists, even Americans, have believed that the species came from the old world. This is certainly a mistake, although the plant has spread here and there even into our forests, and sometimes in abundance,684 having escaped from cultivation. Authors of the sixteenth century spoke of it as a foreign plant introduced into gardens and sometimes spreading from them.685 It occurs in some herbaria under the names of N. tartarica, turcica, or sibirica; but these are garden-grown specimens, and no botanist has found the species in Asia, or on the borders of Asia, with any appearance of wildness.

This leads me to refute a widespread and more persistent error, in spite of what I proved in 1855, namely, that of regarding some species ill described from cultivated specimens as natives of the old world, of Asia in particular. The proofs of an American origin are so numerous and consistent that, without entering much into detail, I may sum them up as follows: —

A. Out of fifty species of the genus Nicotiana found in a wild state, two only are foreign to America; namely, N. suavolens of New Holland, with which is joined N. rotundifolia of the same country, and that which Ventinat had wrongly styled N. undulata; and N. fragans, Hooker, of the Isle of Pines, near New Caledonia, which differs very little from the preceding.

B. Though the Asiatic people are great lovers of tobacco, and have from a very early epoch sought the smoke of certain narcotic plants, none of them made use of tobacco before the discovery of America. Tiedemann has distinctly proved this fact by thorough researches into the writings of travellers in the Middle Ages.686 He even quotes for a later epoch, not long after the discovery of America, between 1540 and 1603, the fact that several travellers, some of whom were botanists, such as Belon and Rauwolf, who travelled through the Turkish and Persian empires, observing their customs with much attention, have not once mentioned tobacco. It was evidently introduced into Turkey at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and the Persians soon received it from the Turks. The first European who mentions the smoking of tobacco in Persia is Thomas Herbert, in 1626. No later travellers have omitted to notice the use of the hookah as well established. Olearius describes this apparatus, which he saw in 1633. The first mention of tobacco in India is in 1605,687 and it is probable that it was of European introduction. It was first introduced at Arracan and Pegu, in 1619, according to the traveller Methold.688 There are doubts about Java, because Rumphius, a very accurate observer, who wrote in the second half of the seventeenth century, says689 that, according to the tradition of some old people, tobacco had been employed as a medicine before the arrival of the Portuguese in 1496, and that only the practice of smoking it had been communicated by the Europeans. Rumphius adds, it is true, that the name tabaco or tambuco, which is in use in all these places, is of foreign origin. Sir Stamford Raffles,690 in his numerous historical researches on Java, gives, on the other hand, the year 1601 as the date of the introduction of tobacco into Java. The Portuguese had certainly discovered the coasts of Brazil between 1500 and 1504, but Vasco di Gama and his successors went to Asia round the Cape, or through the Red Sea, so that they could hardly have established frequent or direct communications between America and Java. Nicot had seen the plant in Portugal in 1560, so that the Portuguese probably introduced it into Asia in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Thunberg affirms691 that the use of tobacco was introduced into Japan by the Portuguese, and according to early travellers quoted by Tiedemann, this was at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Lastly, the Chinese have no original and ancient sign for tobacco; their paintings on china in the Dresden collection often present, from the year 1700 and never before that date, details relating to tobacco,692 and Chinese students are agreed that Chinese works do not mention the plant before the end of the sixteenth century.693 If it be remembered with what rapidity the use of tobacco has spread wherever it has been introduced, these data about Asia have an incontestable force.

C. The common names of tobacco confirm its American origin. If there had been any indigenous species in the old world there would be a great number of different names; but, on the contrary, the Chinese, Japanese, Javanese, Indian, Persian, etc., names are derived from the American names, petum, or tabak, tabok, tamboc, slightly modified. It is true that Piddington gives Sanskrit names, dhumrapatra and tamrakouta,694 but Adolphe Pictet informs me that the first of these names, which is not in Wilson’s dictionary, means only leaf for smoking, and appears to be of modern composition; while the second is probably no older, and seems to be a modern modification of the American names. The Arabic word docchan simply means smoke.695

Lastly, we must inquire into the two so-called Asiatic Nicotianæ. The one, called by Lehmann Nicotiana chinensis, came from the Russian botanist Fischer, who said it was Chinese. Lehmann said he had seen it in a garden. Now, it is well known how often an erroneous origin is attributed to plants grown by horticulturists, and besides, from the description, it seems that it was simply N. Tabacum, of which the seeds had perhaps come from China.696 The second species is N. persica, Lindley, figured in the Botanical Register (pl. 1592), of which the seeds had been sent from Ispahan to the Horticultural Society of London, as those of the best tobacco cultivated in Persia, that of Schiraz. Lindley did not observe that it corresponded exactly to N. alata, drawn three years before by Link and Otto697 from a plant in the gardens at Berlin. The latter was grown from seed sent by Sello from Southern Brazil. It is certainly a Brazilian species, with a white elongated corolla, allied to N. suaveolens of New Holland. Thus the tobacco cultivated sometimes in Persia along with the common species, is of American origin, as I declared in my Geographical Botany of 1855. I do not understand how this species was introduced into Persia. It must have been from seed taken from a garden, or brought by chance from America, and it is not likely that its cultivation is common in Persia, for Olivier and Bruguière, and other naturalists who have observed the tobacco plantations in that country, make no mention of it.

From all these reasons I conclude that no species of tobacco is a native of Asia. They are all American, except N. suaveolens of New Holland, and N. fragrans of the Isle of Pines to the south of New Caledonia.

Several Nicotianæ, besides N. tabacum and N. rustica, have been cultivated here and there by savages, or as a curiosity by Europeans. It is strange that so little notice is taken of these attempts, by means of which very choice tobacco might be obtained. The species with white flowers would yield probably a light and perfumed tobacco, and as some smokers seek the strongest tobaccos and the most disagreeable to non-smokers, I would recommend to their notice N. angustifolia of Chili, which the natives call tabaco del diablo.698

Cinnamon—Cinnamonum zeylanicum, Breyn.

This little tree, belonging to the laurel tribe, of which the bark of the young branches forms the cinnamon of commerce, grows in great quantities in the forests of Ceylon. Certain varieties which grow wild on the continent of India were formerly considered to be so many distinct species, but Anglo-Indian botanists are agreed in connecting them with that of Ceylon.699

The bark of C. zeylanicum, and that of several uncultivated species of Cinnamonum, which produce the cassia, or Chinese cassia, have been an important article of commerce from a very early period. Flückiger and Hanbury700 have treated of this historical question with so much learning and thoroughness, that we need only refer to their work, entitled Pharmacographia, or History of the Principal Drugs of Vegetable Origin. It is important from our point of view to note how modern the culture is of the cinnamon tree in comparison with the trade in its product. It was only between 1765 and 1770 that a Ceylon colonist, named de Koke, aided by Falck, the governor of the island, made some plantations which were wonderfully successful. They have diminished in Ceylon in the last few years, but others have been established in the tropical regions of the old and new worlds. The species becomes easily naturalized beyond the limits of cultivation,701 as birds are fond of the fruit, and drop the seeds in the forests.

China Grass—Boehmeria nivea, Hooker and Arnott.

The cultivation of this valuable Urticacea has been introduced into the south of France and of the United States for about thirty years, but commerce had previously acquainted us with the great value of its fibres, more tenacious than hemp and in some cases flexible as silk. Interesting details on the manner of cultivating the plant and of extracting its fibres702 may be found in several books; I shall confine myself here to defining as clearly as I can its geographical origin.

To attain this end we must not trust to the vague expressions of most authors, nor to the labels attached to the specimens in herbaria, since frequently no distinction has been made between cultivated, naturalized, or truly wild plants, and the two varieties of Boehmeria nivea (Urtica nivea, Linnæus), and Boehmeria tenacissima, Gaudichaud, or B. candicans, Hasskarl, have been confounded together; forms which appear to be varieties of the same species, because transitions between them have been observed by botanists. There is also a sub-variety, with leaves green on both sides, cultivated by Americans and by M. de Malartic in the south of France.

The variety earliest known (Urtica nivea, L.), with leaves white on the under side, is said to grow in China and some neighbouring countries. Linnæus says it is found on walls in China, which would imply a plant naturalized on rubbish-heaps from cultivation. But Loureiro703 says, “habitat et abundanter colitur in Cochin-China et China,” and according to Bentham,704 the collector Champion found it in abundance in the ravines of the island of Hongkong. According to Franchet and Savatier,705 it exists in Japan in clearings and hedges (in fruticetis umbrosis et sepibus). Blanco706 says it is common in the Philippine Isles. I find no proof that it is wild in Java, Sumatra, and other islands of the Malay Archipelago. Rumphius707 knew it only as a cultivated plant. Roxburgh708 believed it to be a native of Sumatra, but Miquel709 does not confirm this belief. The other varieties have nowhere been found wild, which supports the theory that they are only the result of cultivation.

Hemp—Cannabis sativa, Linnæus.

Hemp is mentioned, in its two forms, male and female, in the most ancient Chinese works, particularly in the Shu-King, written 500 B.C.710

It has Sanskrit names, bhanga and gangika.711 The root of these words, ang or an, recurs in all the Indo-European and modern Semitic languages: bang in Hindu and Persian, ganga in Bengali,712 hanf in German, hemp in English, chanvre in French, kanas in Keltic and modern Breton,713 cannabis in Greek and Latin, cannab in Arabic.714