Origin of Cultivated Plants

Egyptian Lupin—Lupinus termis, Forskal.

This species of lupin, so nearly allied to L. albus that it has sometimes been proposed to unite them,1638 is largely cultivated in Egypt and even in Crete. The most obvious difference is that the upper part of the flowers of L. termis is blue. The stem is taller than that of L. albus. The seeds are used like those of the common lupin, after they have been steeped to get rid of their bitterness.

L. termis is wild in sandy soil and mountainous districts, in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica;1639 in Syria and Egypt, according to Boissier;1640 but Schweinfurth and Ascherson1641 say that it is only cultivated in Egypt. Hartmann saw it wild in Upper Egypt.1642 Unger1643 mentions it among the cultivated specimens of the ancient Egyptians, but he gives neither specimen nor drawing. Wilkinson1644 says only that it has been found in the tombs.

No lupin is grown in India, nor is there any Sanskrit name; its seeds are sold in bazaars under the name tourmus (Royle, Ill., p. 194).

The Arabic name, termis or termus, is also that of the Greek lupin, termos. It may be inferred that the Greeks had it from the Egyptians. As the species was known to the ancient Egyptians, it seems strange that it has no Hebrew name;1645 but it may have been introduced into Egypt after the departure of the Israelites.

Field-Pea—Pisum arvense, Linnæus.

This pea is grown on a large scale for the seed, and also sometimes for fodder. Although its appearance and botanical characters allow of its being easily distinguished from the garden-pea, Greek and Roman authors confounded them, or are not explicit about them. Their writings do not prove that it was cultivated in their time. It has not been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, France, and Italy. Bobbio has a legend (A.D. 930), in which it is said that the Italian peasants called a certain seed herbilia, whence it has been supposed to be the modern rubiglia or the Pisum sativum of botanists.1646 The species is cultivated in the East, and as far as the north of India.1647 It is of recent cultivation in the latter country, for there is no Sanskrit name, and Piddington gives only one name in one of the modern languages.

Whatever may be the date of the introduction of its culture, the species is undoubtedly wild in Italy, not only in hedges and near cultivated ground, but also in forests and wild mountainous districts.1648 I find no positive indication in the floras that it grows in like manner in Spain, Algeria, Greece, and the East. The plant is said to be indigenous in the south of Russia, but sometimes its wild character is doubtful, and sometimes the species itself is not certain, from a confusion with Pisum sativum and P. elatius. Of all Anglo-Indian botanists, only Royle admits it to be indigenous in the north of India.

Garden-Pea—Pisum sativum, Linnæus.

The pea of our kitchen gardens is more delicate than the field-pea, and suffers from frost and drought. Its natural area, previous to cultivation, was probably more to the south and more restricted. It has not hitherto been found wild, either in Europe or in the west of Asia, whence it is supposed to have come. Bieberstein’s indication of the species in the Crimea is not correct, according to Steven, who was a resident in the country.1649 Perhaps botanists have overlooked its habitation; perhaps the plant has disappeared from its original dwelling; perhaps also it is a mere modification, effected by culture, of Pisum arvense. Alefeld held the latter opinion,1650 but he has published too little on the subject for us to be able to conclude anything from it. He only says that, having cultivated a great number of varieties both of the field and garden pea, he concludes that they belong to the same species. Darwin1651 learnt through a third person that Andrew Knight had crossed the field-pea with a garden variety known as the Prussian pea, and that the product was fertile. This would certainly be a proof of specific unity, but further observation and experiment is required. In the mean time, in the search for geographic origin, etc., I am obliged to consider the two forms separately.

Botanists who distinguish many species in the genus Pisum, admit eight, all European or Asiatic. Pisum sativum was cultivated by the Greeks in the time of Theophrastus.1652 They called it pisos, or pison. The Albanians, descendants of the Pelasgians, call it pizelle.1653 The Latins had pisum.1654 This uniformity of nomenclature seems to show that the Aryans knew the plant when they arrived in Greece and Italy, and perhaps brought it with them. Other Aryan languages have several names for the generic sense of pea; but it is evident, from Adolphe Pictet’s learned discussion on the subject,1655 that none of these names can be applied to Pisum sativum in particular. Even when one of the modern languages, Slav or Breton, limits the sense to the garden-pea, it is very probable that formerly the word signified field-pea, lentil, or any other leguminous plant.

The garden-pea1656 has been found among the remains in the lake-dwellings of the age of bronze, in Switzerland and Savoy. The seed is spherical, wherein it differs from Pisum arvense. It is smaller than our modern pea. Heer says he found it also among relics of the stone age, at Moosseedorf; but he is less positive, and only gives figures of the less ancient pea of St. Peter’s Island. If the species dates from the stone age in Switzerland, it would be anterior to the immigration of the Aryans.

There is no indication of the culture of Pisum sativum in ancient Egypt or in India. On the other hand, it has long been cultivated in the north of India, if it had, as Piddington says, a Sanskrit name, harenso, and if it has several names very different to this in modern Indian languages.1657 It has been introduced into China from Western Asia. The Pent-sao, drawn up at the end of the sixteenth century, calls it the Mahometan pea.1658 In conclusion: the species seems to have existed in Western Asia, perhaps from the south of the Caucasus to Persia, before it was cultivated. The Aryans introduced it into Europe, but it perhaps existed in Northern India before the arrival of the eastern Aryans. It no longer exists in a wild state, and when it occurs in fields, half-wild, it is not said to have a modified form so as to approach some other species.

Soy—Dolichos soja, Linnæus; Glycine soja, Bentham.

This leguminous annual has been cultivated in China and Japan from remote antiquity. This might be gathered from the many uses of the soy bean and from the immense number of varieties. But it is also supposed to be one of the farinaceous substances called shu in Chinese writings of Confucius’ time, though the modern name of the plant is ta-tou.1659 The bean is nourishing, and contains a large proportion of oil, and preparations similar to butter, oil, and cheese are extracted from it and used in Chinese and Japanese cooking.1660 Soy is also grown in the Malay Archipelago, but at the end of the eighteenth century it was still rare in Amboyna,1661 and Forster did not see it in the Pacific Isles at the time of Cook’s voyages. It is of modern introduction in India, for Roxburgh had only seen the plant in the botanical gardens at Calcutta, where it was brought from the Moluccas.1662 There are no common Indian names.1663 Besides, if its cultivation had been ancient in India, it would have spread westward into Syria and Egypt, which is not the case.

Kæmpfer1664 formerly published an excellent illustration of the soy bean, and it had existed for a century in European botanical gardens, when more extensive information about China and Japan excited about ten years ago a lively desire to introduce it into our countries. In Austria, Hungary, and France especially, attempts have been made on a large scale, of which the results have been summed up in works worthy of consultation.1665 It is to be hoped these efforts may be successful; but we must not digress from the aim of our researches, the probable origin of the species.

Linnæus says, in his Species, “habitat in India,” and refers to Kæmpfer, who speaks of the plant in Japan, and to his own flora of Ceylon, where he gives the plant as cultivated. Thwaites’s modern flora of Ceylon makes no mention of it. We must evidently go further east to find the origin both of the species and of its cultivation. Loureiro says that it grows in Cochin-China and that it is often cultivated in China.1666 I find no proof that it is wild in the latter country, but it may perhaps be discovered, as its culture is so ancient. Russian botanists1667 have only found it cultivated in the north of China and in the basin of the river Amur. It is certainly wild in Japan.1668 Junghuhn1669 found it in Java on Mount Gunung-Gamping, and a plant sent also from Java by Zollinger is supposed to belong to this species, but it is not certain that the specimen was wild.1670 A Malay name, kadelee,1671 a quite different to the Japanese and Chinese common names, is in favour of its indigenous character in Java.

Known facts and historical and philological probabilities tend to show that the species was wild from Cochin-China to the south of Japan and to Java when the ancient inhabitants of this region began to cultivate it at a very remote period, to use it for food in various ways, and to obtain from it varieties of which the number is remarkable, especially in Japan.

Pigeon-Pea—Cajanus indicus, Sprengel; Cytisus Cajan, Linnæus.

This leguminous plant, often grown in tropical countries, is a shrub, but it fruits in the first year, and in some countries it is grown as an annual. Its seed is an important article of the food of the negroes and natives, but the European colonists do not care for it unless cooked green like our garden-pea. The plant is easily naturalized in poor soil round cultivated plots, even in the West India Islands, where it is not indigenous.1672

In Mauritius it is called ambrevade; in the English colonies, doll, pigeon-pea; and in the French Antilles, pois d’Angola, pois de Congo, pois pigeon.

It is remarkable that, though the species is diffused in three continents, the varieties are not numerous. Two are cited, based only upon the yellow or reddish colour of the flower, which were formerly regarded as distinct species; but a more attentive examination has resulted in their being classed as one, in accordance with Linnæus’ opinion.1673 The small number of variations obtained even in the organ for which the species is cultivated is a sign of no very ancient culture. Its habitation previous to culture is uncertain. The best botanists have sometimes supposed it to be a native of India, sometimes of tropical Africa. Bentham, who has made a careful study of the leguminous plants, believed in 1861 in the African origin; in 1865 he inclined rather to Asia.1674 The problem is, therefore, an interesting one. There is no question of an American origin. The cajan was introduced into the West Indies from the coast of Africa by the slave trade, as the common names quoted above show,1675 and the unanimous opinion of authors or American floras. It has also been taken to Brazil, Guiana, and into all the warm parts of the American continent.

The facility with which the species is naturalized would alone prevent attaching great importance to the statements of collectors, who have found it more or less wild in Asia or in Africa; and besides, these assertions are not precise, but are usually doubtful. Most writers on the flora of continental India have only seen the plant cultivated,1676 and none, to my knowledge, affirms that it exists wild. For the island of Ceylon Thwaites says,1677 “It is said not to be really wild, and the country names seem to confirm this.” Sir Joseph Hooker, in his Flora of British India, says, “Wild (?) and cultivated to the height of six thousand feet in the Himalayas.” Loureiro1678 gives it as cultivated and non-cultivated in China and Cochin-China. Chinese authors do not appear to have spoken of it, for the species is not named by Bretschneider in his work On the Study, etc. In the Sunda Isles it is mentioned as cultivated, and that rarely, at Amboyna at the end of the eighteenth century, according to Rumphius.1679 Forster had not seen it in the Pacific Isles at the time of Cook’s voyages, but Seemann says that it has been recently introduced by missionaries into the Fiji Isles.1680 All this argues no very ancient extension of cultivation to the east and south of the continent of Asia. Besides the quotation from Loureiro, I find the species indicated on the mountain of Magelang, Java;1681 but, supposing this to be a true and ancient wild growth in both cases, it would be very extraordinary not to find the species in many other Asiatic localities.

The abundance of Indian and Malay names1682 shows a somewhat ancient cultivation. Piddington even gives a Sanskrit name, arhuku, which was not known to Roxburgh, but he gives no proof in support of his assertion. The name may have been merely supposed from the Hindu and Bengali names urur and orol. No Semitic name is known.

In Africa the cajan is often found from Zanzibar to the coast of Guinea.1683 Authors say it is cultivated, or else make no statement on this head, which would seem to show that the specimens are sometimes wild. In Egypt this cultivation is quite modern, of the nineteenth century.1684

Briefly, then, I doubt that the species is really wild in Asia, and that it has been grown there for more than three thousand years. If more ancient peoples had known it, it would have come to the knowledge of the Arabs and Egyptians before our time. In tropical Africa, on the contrary, it is possible that it has existed wild or cultivated for a very long time, and that it was introduced into Asia by ancient travellers trading between Zanzibar and India or Ceylon.

The genus Cajanus has only one species, so that no analogy of geographical distribution leads us to believe it to be rather of Asiatic than African origin, or vice versâ.

Carob Tree 1685—Ceratonia siliqua, Linnæus.

The seeds and pods of the carob are highly prized in the hotter parts of the Mediterranean basin, as food for animals and even for man. De Gasparin1686 has given interesting details about the raising, uses, and habitation of the species as a cultivated tree. He notes that it does not pass the northern limit beyond which the orange cannot be grown without shelter. This fine evergreen tree does not thrive either in very hot countries, especially where there is much humidity. It likes the neighbourhood of the sea and rocky places. Its original country, according to Gasparin, is “probably the centre of Africa. Denham and Clapperton found it in Burnou.” This proof seems to me insufficient, for in all the Nile Valley and in Abyssinia the carob is not wild nor even cultivated.1687 R. Brown does not mention it in his account of Denham and Clapperton’s journey. Travellers have seen it in the forests of Cyrenaica between the high-lands and the littoral; but the able botanists who have drawn up the catalogue of the plants of this country are careful to say,1688 “perhaps indigenous.” Most botanists merely mention the species in the centre and south of the Mediterranean basin, from Spain and Marocco to Syria and Anatolia, without inquiring closely whether it is indigenous or cultivated, and without entering upon the question of its true country previous to cultivation. Usually they indicate the carob tree, as “cultivated and subspontaneous, or nearly wild.” However, it is stated to be wild in Greece by Heldreich, in Sicily by Gussone and Bianca, in Algeria by Munby;1689 and these authors have each lived long enough in the country for which each is quoted to form an enlightened opinion.

Bianca remarks, however, that the carob tree is not always healthy and productive in those restricted localities where it exists in Sicily, in the small adjacent islands, and on the coast of Italy. He puts forward the opinion, moreover, based upon the similarity of the Italian name carrubo with the Arabic word, that the species was anciently introduced into the south of Europe, the species being of Syrian or north African origin. He maintains as probable the theory of Hœfer and Bonné,1690 that the lotus of the lotophagi was the carob tree, of which the flower is sweet and the fruit has a taste of honey, which agrees with the expressions of Homer. The lotus-eaters dwelt in Cyrenaica, so that the carob must have been abundant in their country. If we admit this hypothesis we must suppose that Pliny and Herodotus did not know Homer’s plant, for the one describes the lotus as bearing a fruit like a mastic berry (Pistacia lentiscus), the other as a deciduous tree.1691

An hypothesis regarding a doubtful plant formerly mentioned by a poet can hardly serve as the basis of an argument upon facts of natural history. After all, Homer’s lotus plant perhaps existed only in the fabled garden of Hesperides. I return to more serious arguments, on which Bianca has said a few words.

The carob has two names in ancient languages – the one Greek, keraunia or kerateia;1692 the other Arabic, chirnub or charûb. The first alludes to the form of the pod, which is like a slightly curved horn; the other means merely pod, for we find in Ebn Baithar’s1693 work that four other leguminous plants bear the same name, with a qualifying epithet. The Latins had no special name; they used the Greek word, or the expression siliqua, siliqua græca (Greek pod).1694 This dearth of names is the sign of a once restricted area, and of a culture which probably does not date from prehistoric time. The Greek name is still retained in Greece. The Arab name persists among the Kabyles, who call the fruit kharroub, the tree takharrout,1695 and the Spaniards algarrobo. Curiously enough, the Italians also took the Arab name currabo, carubio, whence the French caroubier. It seems that it must have been introduced after the Roman epoch by the Arabs of the Middle Ages, when there was another name for it. These details are all in favour of Bianca’s theory of a more southern origin than Sicily. Pliny says the species belonged to Syria, Ionia, Cnidos, and Rhodes, but he does not say whether it was wild or cultivated in these places. Pliny also says that the carob tree did not exist in Egypt. Yet it has been recognized in monuments belonging to a much earlier epoch than that of Pliny, and Egyptologists even attribute two Egyptian names to it, kontrates or jiri.1696 Lepsius gives a drawing of a pod which appears to him to be certainly a carob, and the botanist Kotschy made certain by microscopic investigation that a stick taken from a sarcophagus was made from the wood of the carob tree.1697 There is no known Hebrew name for the species, which is not mentioned in the Old Testament. The New Testament speaks of it by the Greek name in the parable of the prodigal son. It is a tradition of the Christians in the East that St. John Baptist fed upon the fruit of the carob in the desert, and hence came the names given to it in the Middle Ages —bread of St. John, and Johannis brodbaum.

Evidently this tree became important at the beginning of the Christian era, and it spread, especially through the agency of the Arabs, towards the West. If it had previously existed in Algeria, among the Berbers, and in Spain, older names would have persisted, and the species would probably have been introduced into the Canaries by the Phœnicians.

The information gained on the subject may be summed up as follows: —

The carob grew wild in the Levant, probably on the southern coast of Anatolia and in Syria, perhaps also in Cyrenaica. Its cultivation began within historic time. The Greeks diffused it in Greece and Italy; but it was afterwards more highly esteemed by the Arabs, who propagated it as far as Marocco and Spain. In all these countries the tree has become naturalized here and there in a less productive form, which it is needful to graft to obtain good fruit.

The carob has not been found in the tufa and quaternary deposits of Southern Europe. It is the only one of its kind in the genus Ceratonia, which is somewhat exceptional among the Leguminosæ, especially in Europe. Nothing shows that it existed in the ancient tertiary or quaternary flora of the south-west of Europe.

Common Haricot Kidney Bean—Phaseolus vulgaris, Savi.

When, in 1855, I wished to investigate the origin of the genera Phaseolus and Dolichos,1698 the distinction of species was so little defined, and the floras of tropical countries so rare, that I was obliged to leave several questions on one side. Now, thanks to the works of Bentham and Georg von Martens,1699 completing the previous labours of Savi,1700 the Leguminæ of hot countries are better known; lastly, the seeds discovered quite recently in the Peruvian tombs of Ancon, examined by Wittmack, have completely modified the question of origin.

I will speak first of the common haricot bean, afterwards of some other species, without, however, enumerating all those which are cultivated, for several of these are still ill defined.

Botanists held for a long time that the common haricot was of Indian origin. No one had found it wild, nor has it yet been found, but it was supposed to be of Indian origin, although the species was also cultivated in Africa and America, in temperate and hot regions, at least in those where the heat and humidity are not excessive. I called attention to the fact that there is no Sanskrit name, and that sixteenth-century gardeners often called the species Turkish bean. Convinced, moreover, that the Greeks cultivated this plant under the names fasiolos and dolichos, I suggested that it came originally from Western Asia, and not from India. Georg von Martens adopted this hypothesis.

However, the meaning of the words dolichos of Theophrastus, fasiolos of Dioscorides, faseolus and phaseolus of the Romans,1701 is far from being sufficiently defined to allow them to be attributed with certainty to Phaseolus vulgaris. Several cultivated Leguminosæ are supported by the trellises mentioned by authors, and have pods and seeds of a similar kind. The best argument for translating these names by Phaseolus vulgaris is that the modern Greeks and Italians have names derived from fasiolus for the common haricot. In modern Greek it is fasoulia, Albanian (Pelasgic?) fasulé, in Italian fagiolo. It is possible, however, that the name has been transferred from a species of pea or vetch, or from a haricot formerly cultivated, to our modern haricot. It is rather bold to determine a species of Phaseolus from one or two epithets in an ancient author, when we see how difficult is the distinction of species to modern botanists with the plants under their eyes. Nevertheless, the dolichos of Theophrastus has been definitely referred to the scarlet runner, and the fasiolos to the dwarf haricot of our gardens, which are the two principal modern varieties of the common haricot, with an immense number of sub-varieties in the form of the pods and seed. I can only say it may be so.

If the common haricot was formerly known in Greece, it was not one of the earliest introductions, for the faseolos did not exist at Rome in Cato’s time, and it is only at the beginning of the empire that Latin authors speak of it. Virchow brought from the excavations at Troy the seeds of several leguminæ, which Wittmack1702 has ascertained to belong to the following species: broad bean (Faba vulgaris), garden-pea (Pisum sativum), ervilla (Ervum ervilia), and perhaps the flat-podded vetchling (Lathyrus Cicera), but no haricot. Nor has the species been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, Austria, and Italy.