Origin of Cultivated Plants

Almond—Amygdalus communis, Linnæus; Pruni species, Baillon; Prunus Amygdalus, Hooker.

The almond grows apparently wild or half wild in the warm, dry regions of the Mediterranean basin and of western temperate Asia. As the nuts from cultivated trees naturalize the species very easily, we must have recourse to various indications to discern its ancient home.

We may first discard the notion of its origin in Eastern Asia. Japanese floras make no mention of the almond. That which M. de Bonge saw cultivated in the north of China was the Persica Davidiana.1083 Dr. Bretschneider,1084 in his classical work, tells us that he has never seen the almond cultivated in China, and that the compilation entitled Pent-sao, published in the tenth or eleventh century of our era, describes it as a tree of the country of the Mahometans, which signifies the north-west of India, or Persia.

Anglo-Indian botanists1085 say that the almond is cultivated in the cool parts of India, but some add that it does not thrive, and that many almonds are brought from Persia.1086 No Sanskrit name is known, nor even any in the languages derived from Sanskrit. Evidently the north-west of India is not the original home of the species.

On the other hand, there are many localities in the region extending from Mesopotamia and Turkestan to Algeria, where excellent botanists have found the almond tree quite wild. Boissier1087 has seen specimens gathered in rocky ground in Mesopotamia, Aderbijan, Turkestan, Kurdistan, and in the forests of the Anti-Lebanon. Karl Koch1088 has not found it wild to the south of the Caucasus, nor Tchihatcheff in Asia Minor. Cosson1089 found natural woods of almond trees near Saida in Algeria. It is also regarded as wild on the coasts of Sicily and of Greece;1090 but there, and still more in the localities in which it occurs in Italy, Spain, and France, it is probable, and almost certain, that it springs from the casual dispersal of the nuts from cultivation.

The antiquity of its existence in Western Asia is proved by Hebrew names for the almond tree —schaked, luz or lus (which recurs in the Arabic louz), and schekedim for the nut.1091 The Persians have another name, badam, but I do not know how old this is. Theophrastus and Dioscorides1092 mention the almond by an entirely different name, amugdalai, translated by the Latins into amygdalus. It may be inferred from this that the Greeks did not receive the species from the interior of Asia, but found it in their own country, or at least in Asia Minor. The almond tree is represented in several frescoes found at Pompeii.1093 Pliny1094 doubts whether the species was known in Italy in Cato’s time, because it was called the Greek nut. It is very possible that the almond was introduced into Italy from the Greek islands. Almonds have not been found in the terra-mare of the neighbourhood of Parma, even in the upper layers.

The late introduction of the species into Italy, and the absence of naturalization in Sardinia and Spain,1095 incline me to doubt whether it is really indigenous in the north of Africa and Sicily. In the latter countries it was more probably naturalized some centuries ago. In confirmation of this hypothesis, I note that the Berber name of the almond, talouzet,1096 is evidently connected with the Arabic louz, that is to say with the language of the conquerors who came after the Romans. In Western Asia, on the contrary, and even in some parts of Greece, it may be regarded as indigenous from prehistoric time. I do not say primitive, for everything was preceded by something else. I remark finally that the difference between bitter and sweet almonds was known to the Greeks and even to the Hebrews.

Peach—Amygdalus persica, Linnæus; Persica vulgaris, Miller; Prunus persica, Bentham and Hooker.

I will quote the article in which I formerly1097 attributed a Chinese origin to the peach, a contrary opinion to that which prevailed at the time, and which people who are not on a par with modern science continue to reproduce. I will afterwards give the facts discovered since 1855.

“The Greeks and Romans received the peach shortly after the beginning of the Christian era. The names persica, malum persicum, indicate whence they had it. I need not dwell upon those well-known facts.1098 Several kinds of peach are now cultivated in the north of India,1099 but, what is remarkable, no Sanskrit name is known;1100 whence we may infer that its existence and its cultivation are of no great antiquity in these regions. Roxburgh, who is usually careful to give the modern Indian names, only mentions Arab and Chinese names. Piddington gives no Indian name, and Royle only Persian names. The peach does not succeed, or requires the greatest care to ensure success, in the north-east of India.1101 In China, on the contrary, its cultivation dates from the remotest antiquity. A number of superstitious ideas and of legends about the properties of its different varieties exist in that country.1102 These varieties are very numerous;1103 and in particular the singular variety with compressed or flattened fruit,1104 which appears to be further removed than any other from the natural state of the peach; lastly, a simple name, to, is given to the common peach.1105

“From all these facts, I am inclined to believe that the peach is of Chinese rather than of western Asiatic origin. If it had existed in Persia or Armenia from all time, the knowledge and cultivation of so pleasant a fruit would have spread earlier into Asia Minor and Greece. The expedition of Alexander probably was the means of making it known to Theophrastus (332 B.C.), who speaks of it as a Persian fruit. Perhaps this vague idea of the Greeks dates from the retreat of the ten thousand (401 B.C.); but Xenophon does not mention the peach. Nor do the Hebrew writings speak of it. The peach has no Sanskrit name, yet the peoples who spoke this language came into India from the north-west; that is to say, from the generally received home of the species. On this hypothesis, how are we to account for the fact that neither the Greeks of the early times of Greece, nor the Hebrews, nor the Sanskrit-speaking peoples, who all radiated from the upper part of the Euphrates valley or communicated with it, did not cultivate the peach? On the other hand, it is very possible that the stones of a fruit tree cultivated in China from the remotest times, should have been carried over the mountains from the centre of Asia into Kashmir, Bokhara, and Persia. The Chinese had very early discovered this route. The importation would have taken place between the epoch of the Sanskrit emigrations and the relations of the Persians with the Greeks. The cultivation of the peach, once established in Persia, would have easily spread on the one side towards the west; on the other, through Cabul towards the north of India, where it is not so very ancient.

“In confirmation of the hypothesis of a Chinese origin, it may be added that the peach was introduced into Cochin-China from China,1106 and that the Japanese give the Chinese name Tao1107 to the peach. M. Stanislas Julien was kind enough to read to me in French some passages of the Japanese encyclopædia (bk. lxxxvi. p. 7), in which the peach tree tao is said to be a tree of Western countries, which should be understood to mean the interior of China as compared to the eastern coast, since the passage is taken from a Chinese author. The tao occurs in the writings of Confucius in the fifth century before the Christian era, and even in the Ritual in the tenth century before Christ. Its wild nature is not specified in the encyclopædia of which I have just spoken; but Chinese authors pay little attention to this point.”

After a few details about the common names of the peach in different languages, I went on to say, “The absence of Sanskrit and Hebrew names remains the most important fact, whence we may infer an introduction into Western Asia from a more distant land, that is to say, from China.

“The peach has been found wild in different parts of Asia; but it is always a question whether it is indigenous there, or whether it sprang from the dispersion of stones produced by cultivated trees. The question is the more necessary since the stones germinate easily, and several of the modifications of the peach are hereditary.1108 Apparently wild peach trees have often been found in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus. Pallas1109 saw several on the banks of the Terek, where the inhabitants give it a name which he calls Persian, scheptata.1110 Its fruit is velvety, sour, not very fleshy, and hardly larger than a walnut; the tree small. Pallas suspects that this tree has degenerated from cultivated peaches. He adds that it is found in the Crimea, to the south of the Caucasus, and in Persia; but Marshall, Bieberstein, Meyer, and Hohenacker do not give the wild peach in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus. Early travellers, Gmelin, Guldenstadt, and Georgi, quoted by Ledebour, mentioned it. C. Koch1111 is the only modern botanist who said he found the peach tree in abundance in the Caucasian provinces. Ledebour, however, prudently adds, Is it wild? The stones which Brugnière and Olivier brought from Ispahan, which were sown in Paris and yielded a good velvety peach, were not, as Bosc1112 asserted, taken from a peach tree wild in Persia, but from one growing in a garden at Ispahan.1113 I do not know of any proof of a peach tree found wild in Persia, and if travellers mention any it is always to be feared that these are only sown trees. Dr. Royle1114 says that the peach grows wild in several places south of the Himalayas, notably near Mussouri, but we have seen that its culture is not ancient in these regions, and neither Roxburgh nor Don’s Flora Nepalensis mention the peach. Bunge1115 only found cultivated trees in the north of China. This country has hardly been explored, and Chinese legends seem sometimes to indicate wild peaches. Thus the Chou-y-ki, according to the author previously quoted, says, ‘Whosoever eats of the peaches of Mount Kouoliou shall obtain eternal life.’ For Japan, Thunberg1116 says, Crescit ubique vulgaris, præcipue juxta Nagasaki. In omni horto colitur ob elegantiam florum. It seems from this passage that the species grows both in and out of gardens, but perhaps in the first case he only alludes to peaches growing in the open air and without shelter.

“I have said nothing hitherto of the distinction to be established between the different varieties or species of the peach, since most of them are cultivated in all countries – at least the clearly defined kinds, which may be considered as botanical species. Thus the great distinction between the downy and smooth-skinned fruits (peaches proper and nectarines), on which it is proposed to found two species (Persica vulgaris, Mill, and P. levis, D. C.), exists in Japan1117 and in Europe, as in most of the intermediate countries.1118 Less importance is attached to distinctions founded on the adherence or non-adherence of the skin, on the white, yellow, or red colour of the flesh, and on the general form of the fruit. The great division into peaches and nectarines presents most of these modifications in Europe, in Western Asia, and probably in China. It is certain that in the latter country the form of the fruit varies more than elsewhere; for there are as in Europe oval peaches, and also the peaches of which I spoke just now, which are quite flattened, in which the top of the stone is not even covered with flesh.1119 The colour also varies greatly.1120 In Europe the most distinct varieties, nectarines and peaches, freestones and clingstones, existed three centuries ago, for J. Bauhin enumerates them very clearly;1121 and before him Dalechamp, in 1587, also gave the principal ones.1122 At that time nectarines were called Nucipersica, because of their resemblance in shape, size, and colour to the walnut. It is in the same sense that the Italians call them pescanoce.

“I have sought in vain for a proof that the nectarine existed in Italy in the time of ancient Rome. Pliny,1123 who confounds in his compilation peaches, plums, the Laurus Persea,1124 and perhaps other trees, says nothing which can apply to such a fruit. Sometimes people have thought they recognized it in the tuberes of which he speaks. It was a tree imported from Syria in the time of Augustus. There were both red and white tuberes. Others (tuberes? or mala?) of the neighbourhood of Verona were downy. Some graceful verses of Petronus, quoted by Dalechamp,1125 clearly prove that the tuberes of the Romans in Nero’s time were a smooth-skinned fruit; but this might be the jujube (Zizyphus), Diospyros, or some Cratægus, just as well as the smooth-skinned peach. Each author in the time of the Renaissance had his opinion on this point, or criticized that of the others.1126 Perhaps there were two or three species of tuberes, as Pliny says, and one of them which was grafted on plum trees was the nectarine (?)1127 but I doubt whether this question can ever be cleared up.1128

“Even admitting that the Nucipersica was only introduced into Europe in the Middle Ages, we cannot help remarking that in European gardens for centuries, and in Japan from time unknown, there was an intermixture of all the principal kinds of peach. It seems that its different qualities were produced everywhere from a primitive species, which was probably the downy peach. If the two kinds had existed from the beginning, either they would have been in different countries, and their cultivation would have been established separately, or they would have been in the same country, and in this case it is probable that one kind would have been anciently introduced into this country and the other into that.”

I laid stress, in 1855, on other considerations in support of the theory that the nectarine is derived from the common peach; but Darwin has given such a large number of cases in which a branch of nectarine has unexpectedly appeared upon a peach tree, that it is useless to insist longer upon this point, and I will only add that the nectarine has every appearance of an artificial tree. Not only is it not found wild, but it never becomes naturalized, and each tree lives for a shorter time than the common peach. It is, in fact, a weakened form.

“The facility,” I said, “with which our peach trees are multiplied from seed in America, and have produced fleshy fruits, sometimes very fine ones, without the resource of grafting, inclines me to think that the species is in a natural state, little changed by a long cultivation or by hybrid fertilization. In Virginia and the neighbouring states there are peaches grown on trees raised from seed and not grafted, and their abundance is so great that brandy is made from them.1129 On some trees the fruit is magnificent.1130 At Juan Fernandez, says Bertero,1131 the peach tree is so abundant that it is impossible to form an idea of the quantity of fruit which is gathered; it is usually very good, although the trees have reverted to a wild condition. From these instances it would not be surprising if the wild peaches with indifferent fruit found in Western Asia were simply naturalized trees in a climate not wholly favourable, and that the species was of Chinese origin, where its cultivation seems most ancient.”

Dr. Bretschneider,1132 who at Pekin has access to all the resources of Chinese literature, merely says, after reading the above passages, “Tao is the peach tree. De Candolle thinks that China is the native country of the peach. He may be right.”

The antiquity of the existence of the species and its wild nature in Western Asia have become more doubtful since 1855. Anglo-Indian botanists speak of the peach solely as a cultivated tree,1133 or as cultivated and becoming naturalized and apparently wild in the north-west of India.1134 Boissier1135 mentions specimens gathered in Ghilan and to the south of the Caucasus, but he says nothing as to their wild nature; and Karl Koch,1136 after travelling through this district, says, speaking of the peach, “Country unknown, perhaps Persia. Boissier saw trees growing in the gorges on Mount Hymettus, near Athens.”

The peach spreads easily in the countries in which it is cultivated, so that it is hard to say whether a given tree is of natural origin and anterior to cultivation, or whether it is naturalized. But it certainly was first cultivated in China; it was spoken of there two thousand years before its introduction into the Greco-Roman world, a thousand years perhaps before its introduction into the lands of the Sanskrit-speaking race.

The group of peaches (genus or subgenus) is composed of five forms, which Decaisne1137 regards as species, but which other botanists are inclined to call varieties. The one is the common peach; the second the nectarine, which we know to be derived; the third is the flattened peach (P. platycarpa, Decaisne) cultivated in China; and the two last are indigenous in China (P. simonii, Decaisne, and P. Davidii, Carrière). It is, therefore, essentially a Chinese group.

It is difficult, from all these facts, not to admit the Chinese origin of the common peach, as I had formerly inferred from more scanty data. Its arrival in Italy at the beginning of the Christian era is now confirmed by the absence of peach stones in the terra-mare or lake-dwellings of Parma and Lombardy, and by the representations of the peach tree in the paintings on the walls of the richer houses in Pompeii.1138

I have yet to deal with an opinion formerly expressed by Knight, and supported by several horticulturists, that the peach is a modification of the almond. Darwin1139 collected facts in support of this idea, not omitting to mention one which seems opposed to it. They may be concisely put as follows: – (1) Crossed fertilization, which presented Knight with somewhat doubtful results; (2) intermediate forms, as to the fleshiness of the fruit and the size of the nut or stone, obtained by sowing peach stones, or by chance in plantations, forms of which the almond-peach is an example which has long been known. Decaisne1140 pointed out differences between the almond and peach in the size and length of the leaves independently of the fruit. He calls Knight’s theory a “strange hypothesis.”

Geographical botany opposes his hypothesis, for the almond tree has its origin in Western Asia; it was not indigenous in the centre of the Asiatic continent, and its introduction into China as a cultivated species was not anterior to the Christian era. The Chinese, however, had already possessed for thousands of years different varieties of the common peach besides the two wild forms I have just mentioned. The almond and the peach, starting from two such widely separated regions, can hardly be considered as the same species. The one was established in China, the other in Syria and in Anatolia. The peach, after being transported from China into Central Asia, and a little before the Christian era into Western Asia, cannot, therefore, have produced the almond, since the latter existed already in Syria. And if the almond of Western Asia had produced the peach, how could the latter have existed in China at a very remote period while it was not known to the Greeks and Latins?

Pear—Pyrus communis, Linnæus.

The pear grows wild over the whole of temperate Europe and Western Asia, particularly in Anatolia, to the south of the Caucasus and in the north of Persia,1141 perhaps even in Kashmir,1142 but this is very doubtful. Some authors hold that its area extends as far as China. This opinion is due to the fact that they regard Pyrus sinensis, Lindley, as belonging to the same species. An examination of the leaves alone, of which the teeth are covered with a fine silky down, convinced me of the specific difference of the two trees.1143

Our wild pear does not differ much from some of the cultivated varieties. Its fruit is sour, spotted, and narrowing towards the stalk, or nearly spherical on the same tree.1144 With many other cultivated species, it is hard to distinguish the individuals of wild origin from those which the chance transport of seeds has produced at a distance from dwellings. In the present case it is not difficult. Pear trees are often found in woods, and they attain to a considerable height, with all the conditions of fertility of an indigenous plant.1145 Let us examine, however, whether in the wide area they occupy a less ancient existence may be suspected in some countries than in others.

No Sanskrit name for the pear is known, whence it may be concluded that its cultivation is of no long standing in the north-west of India, and that the indication, which is moreover very vague, of wild trees in Kashmir is of no importance. Neither are there any Hebrew or Aramaic names,1146 but this is explained by the fact that the pear does not flourish in the hot countries in which these tongues were spoken.

Homer, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides mention the pear tree under the names ochnai, apios, or achras. The Latins called it pyrus or pirus,1147 and cultivated a great number of varieties, at least in Pliny’s time. The mural paintings at Pompeii frequently represent the tree with its fruit.1148

The lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy gathered wild apples in great quantities, and among their stores pears are sometimes, but rarely, found. Heer has given an illustration of one which cannot be mistaken, found at Wangen or Robenhausen. It is a fruit narrowing towards the stalk, 28 mm. (about an inch and a half) long by 19 mm. (an inch) wide, cut longitudinally so as to show the small quantity of pulp as compared to the cartilaginous central part.1149 None have been found in the lake-dwellings of Bourget in Savoy. In those of Lombardy, Professor Raggazzoni1150 found a pear cut lengthways, 25 mm. by 16. This was at Bardello, Lago di Varese. The wild pears figured in Duhamel, Traité des Arbres, edit. 2, are 30 to 33 by 30 to 32 mm.; and those of Laristan, figured in the Jardin Fruitier du Muséum under the name P. balansæ, which seem to me to be of the same species, and undoubtedly wild, are 26 to 27 mm. by 24 to 25. In modern wild pears the fleshy part is a little thicker, but the ancient lake-dwellers dried their fruits after cutting them lengthways, which must have caused them to shrink a little. No knowledge of metals or of hemp is shown in the settlements where these were found; but, considering their distance from the more civilized centres of antiquity, especially in the case of Switzerland, it is possible that these remains are not more ancient than the Trojan war, or than the foundation of Rome.

I have mentioned three Greek and one Roman name, but there are many others; for instance, pauta in Armenian and Georgian; vatzkor in Hungarian; in Slav languages gruscha (Russian), hrusska (Bohemian), kruska (Illyrian). Names similar to the Latin pyrus recur in the Keltic languages; peir in Erse, per in Kymric and Armorican.1151 I leave philologists to conjecture the Aryan origin of some of these names, and of the German Birn; I merely note their number and diversity as an indication of the very ancient existence of the species from the Caspian Sea to the Atlantic. The Aryans certainly did not carry pears nor pear pips with them in their wanderings westward; but if they found in Europe a fruit they knew, they would have given it the name or names they were accustomed to use, while other earlier names may have survived in some countries. As an example of the latter case, I may mention two Basque names, udarea and madaria,1152 which have no analogy with any known European or Asiatic name. The Basques being probably the descendants of the conquered Iberians who were driven back to the Pyrenees by the Kelts, the antiquity of their language is very great, and it is clear that their names for the species in question were not derived from Keltic or Latin.

The modern area of the pear extending from the north of Persia to the western coast of temperate Europe, principally in mountainous regions, may therefore be considered as prehistoric, and anterior to all cultivation. It must be added, however, that in the north of Europe and in the British Isles an extensive cultivation must have extended and multiplied naturalizations in comparatively modern times which can scarcely be now distinguished.