Origin of Cultivated Plants

The Romans in Pliny’s time1771 already distinguished eight varieties, but we cannot discover from the text of this author whether they possessed the variety with a single kernel (Fr. marron). The best chestnuts came from Sardis in Asia Minor, and from the neighbourhood of Naples. Olivier de Serres,1772 in the sixteenth century, praises the chestnuts Sardonne and Tuscane, which produced the single-kernelled fruit called the Lyons marron.1773 He considered that these varieties came from Italy, and Targioni1774 tells us that the name marrone or marone was employed in that country in the Middle Ages (1170).

Wheat and Kindred Species.– The innumerable varieties of wheat, properly so called, of which the ripened grain detaches itself naturally from the husk, have been classed into four groups by Vilmorin,1775 which form distinct species, or modifications of the common wheat according to different authors. I am obliged to distinguish them in order to study their history, but this, as will be seen, supports the opinion of a single species.1776

1. Common Wheat—Triticum vulgare, Villars; Triticum hybernum and T. æstivum, Linnæus.

According to the experiments of the Abbé Rozier, and later of Tessier, the distinction between autumn and spring wheats has no importance. “All wheats,” says the latter,1777 “are either spring or autumn sown, according to the country. They all pass with time from the one state to the other, as I have ascertained. They only need to be gradually accustomed to the change, by sowing the autumn wheat a little later, spring wheat a little earlier, year by year.” The fact is that among the immense number of varieties there are some which feel the cold of the winter more than others, and it has become the custom to sow them in the spring.1778 We need take no note of this distinction in studying the question of origin, especially as the greater number of the varieties thus obtained date from a remote period.

The cultivation of wheat is prehistoric in the old world. Very ancient Egyptian monuments, older than the invasion of the shepherds, and the Hebrew Scriptures show this cultivation already established, and when the Egyptians or Greeks speak of its origin, they attribute it to mythical personages, Isis, Ceres, Triptolemus.1779 The earliest lake-dwellings of Western Switzerland cultivated a small-grained wheat, which Heer1780 has carefully described and figured under the name Triticum vulgare antiquorum. From various facts, taken collectively, we gather that the first lake-dwellers of Robenhausen were at least contemporary with the Trojan war, and perhaps earlier. The cultivation of their wheat persisted in Switzerland until the Roman conquest, as we see from specimens found at Buchs. Regazzoni also found it in the rubbish-heaps of the lake-dwellers of Varese, and Sordelli in those of Lagozza in Lombardy.1781 Unger found the same form in a brick of the pyramid of Dashur, Egypt, to which he assigns a date, 3359 B.C. (Unger, Bot. Streifzüge, vii.; Ein Ziegel, etc., p. 9), Another variety (Triticum vulgare compactum muticum, Heer) was less common in Switzerland in the earliest stone age, but it has been more often found among the less ancient lake-dwellers of Western Switzerland and of Italy.1782 A third intermediate variety has been discovered at Aggtelek in Hungary, cultivated in the stone age.1783 None of these is identical with the wheat now cultivated, as more profitable varieties have taken their place.

The Chinese, who grew wheat 2700 B.C., considered it a gift direct from heaven.1784 In the annual ceremony of sowing five kinds of seed, instituted by the Emperor Shen-nung or Chin-nong, wheat is one species, the others being rice, sorghum, Setaria italica, and soy.

The existence of different names for wheat in the most ancient languages confirms the belief in a great antiquity of cultivation. The Chinese name is mai, the Sanskrit sumana and gôdhûma, the Hebrew chittah, Egyptian br, Guancho yrichen, without mentioning several names in languages derived from the primitive Sanskrit, nor a Basque name, ogaia or okhaya, which dates perhaps from the Iberians,1785 and several Finn, Tartar, and Turkish names, etc.,1786 which are probably Turanian. This great diversity might be explained by a wide natural area in the case of a very common wild plant, but this is far from being the case of wheat. On the contrary, it is difficult to prove its existence in a wild state in a few places in Western Asia, as we shall see. If it had been widely diffused before cultivation, descendants would have remained here and there in remote countries. The manifold names of ancient languages must, therefore, be attributed to the extreme antiquity of its culture in the temperate parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa – an antiquity greater than that of the most ancient languages. We have two methods of discovering the home of the species previous to cultivation in the immense zone stretching from China to the Canaries: first, the opinion of ancient authors; second, the existence, more or less proved, of wheat in a wild state in a given country.

According to the earliest of all historians, Berosus, a Chaldean priest, fragments of whose writings have been preserved by Herodotus, wild wheat (Frumentum agreste1787) might be seen growing in Mesopotamia. The texts of the Bible alluding to the abundance of wheat in Canaan prove no more than that the plant was cultivated there, and that it was very productive. Strabo,1788 born 50 B.C., says that, according to Aristobulus, a grain very similar to wheat grew wild upon the banks of the Indus on the 25th parallel of latitude. He also says1789 that in Hircania the modern Mazanderan) the grains of wheat which fell from the ear sowed themselves. This may be observed to some degree at the present day in all countries, and the author says nothing upon the important question whether this accidental sowing reproduced itself in the same place from generation to generation. According to the Odyssey,1790 wheat grew in Sicily without the help of man. But it is impossible to attach great importance to the words of a poet, and of a poet whose very existence is contested. Diodorus Siculus at the beginning of the Christian era says the same thing, and deserves greater confidence, since he is a Sicilian. Yet he may easily have been mistaken as to the wild character, as wheat was then generally cultivated in Sicily. Another passage in Diodorus1791 mentions the tradition that Osiris found wheat and barley growing promiscuously with other plants at Nisa, and Dureau de la Malle has proved that this town was in Palestine. Among all this evidence, that of Berosus and that of Strabo for Mesopotamia and Western India alone appear to me of any value.

The five species of seed of the ceremony instituted by Chin-nong are considered by Chinese scholars to be natives of their country,1792 and Bretschneider adds that communication between China and Western Asia dates only from the embassy of Chang-kien in the second century before Christ. A more positive assertion is needed, however, before we can believe wheat to be indigenous in China; for a plant cultivated in western Asia two or three thousand years before the epoch of Chin-nong, and of which the seeds are so easily transported, may have been introduced into the north of China by isolated and unknown travellers, as the stones of peaches and apricots were probably carried from China into Persia in prehistoric time.

Botanists have ascertained that wheat is not wild in Sicily at the present day.1793 It sometimes escapes from cultivation, but it does not persist indefinitely.1794 The plant which the inhabitants call wild wheat, Frumentu sarvaggiu, which covers uncultivated ground, is Ægilops ovata, according to Inzenga.1795

A zealous collector, Balansa, believed that he had found wheat growing on Mount Sipylus, in Asia Minor, under circumstances in which it was impossible not to believe it wild;1796 but the plant he brought back is a spelt, Triticum monococcum, according to a very careful botanist, to whom it was submitted for examination.1797 Olivier,1798 before him, when he was on the right bank of the Euphrates, to the north-west of Anah, a country unfit for cultivation, “found in a kind of ravine, wheat, barley, and spelt, which,” he adds, “we have already seen several times in Mesopotamia.”

Linnæus says,1799 that Heintzelmann found wheat in the country of the Baschkirs, but no one has confirmed this statement, and no modern botanist has seen the species really wild in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus or the north of Persia. Bunge,1800 whose attention was drawn to this point, declares that he has seen no indication which leads him to believe that cereals are indigenous in that country. It does not even appear that wheat has a tendency in these regions to spring up accidentally outside cultivated ground. I have not discovered any mention of it as a wild plant in the north of India, in China, or Mongolia.

It is remarkable that wheat has been twice asserted to be indigenous in Mesopotamia, at an interval of twenty three centuries, once by Berosus, and once by Olivier in our own day. The Euphrates valley lying nearly in the middle of the belt of cultivation which formerly extended from China to the Canaries, it is infinitely probable that it was the principal habitation of the species in very early prehistoric times. The area may have extended towards Syria, as the climate is very similar, but to the east and west of Western Asia wheat has probably never existed but as a cultivated plant; anterior, it is true, to all known civilization.

2. Turgid, and Egyptian Wheat—Triticum turgidum and T. compositum, Linnæus.

Among the numerous common names of the varieties which come under this head, we find that of Egyptian wheat. It appears that it is now much cultivated in that country and in the whole of the Nile valley. A. P. de Candolle says1801 that he recognized this wheat amongst seeds taken from the sarcophagi of ancient mummies, but he had not seen the ears. Unger1802 thinks it was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians, yet he gives no proof founded on drawings or specimens. The fact that no Hebrew or Armenian name1803 can be attributed to the species seems to me important. It proves at least that the remarkable forms with branching ears, commonly called wheat of miracle, wheat of abundance, did not exist in antiquity, for they would not have escaped the knowledge of the Israelites. No Sanskrit name is known, nor even any modern Indian names, and I cannot discover any Persian name. The Arab names which Delile1804 attributes to the species belong perhaps to other varieties of wheat. There is no Berber name.1805 From all this it results, I think, that the plants united under the name of Triticum turgidum, and especially the varieties with branching ears, are not ancient in the north of Africa or in the west of Asia.

Oswald Heer,1806 in his curious paper upon the plants of the lake-dwellers of the stone age in Switzerland, attributes to T. turgidum two non-branched ears, the one bearded, the other almost without beard, of which he gives drawings. Later, in an exploration of the lake-dwellings of Robenhausen, Messicommer did not find it, although there was abundant store of grain.1807 Strœbel and Pigorini said they found wheat with grano grosso duro (T. turgidum), in the lake-dwellings of Parmesan.1808 For the rest, Heer1809 considers this to be a variety or race of the common wheat, and Sordelli inclines to the same opinion.

Fraas thinks that the krithanias of Theophrastus was T. turgidum, but this is absolutely uncertain. According to Heldreich,1810 the great wheat is of modern introduction into Greece. Pliny1811 spoke briefly of a wheat with branching ears, yielding one hundred grains, which was most likely our miraculous wheat.

Thus history and philology alike lead us to consider the varieties of Triticum turgidum as modifications of the common wheat obtained by cultivation. The form with branching ears is not perhaps earlier than Pliny’s time.

These deductions would be overthrown by the discovery of the T. turgidum in a wild state, which has not hitherto been made with certainty. In spite of C. Koch,1812 no one admits that it grows, outside cultivation, at Constantinople and in Asia Minor. Boissier’s herbarium, so rich in Eastern plants, has no specimen of it. It is given as wild in Egypt by Schweinfurth, and Ascherson, but this is the result of a misprint.1813

3. Hard Wheat—Triticum durum, Desfontaines.

Long cultivated in Barbary, in the south of Switzerland and elsewhere, it has never been found wild. In the different provinces of Spain it has no less than fifteen names,1814 and none are derived from the Arab name quemah used in Algeria1815 and Egypt.1816 The absence of names in several other countries, especially of original names, is very striking. This is a further indication of a derivation from the common wheat obtained in Spain and the north of Africa at an unknown epoch, perhaps within the Christian era.

4. Polish Wheat—Triticum polonicum, Linnæus.

This other hard wheat, with yet longer grain, cultivated chiefly in the east of Europe, has not been found wild. It has an original name in German, Gäner, Gommer, Gümmer,1817 and in other languages names which are connected only with persons or with countries whence the seed was obtained. It cannot be doubted that it is a form obtained by cultivation, probably in the east of Europe, at an unknown, perhaps recent epoch.

Conclusion as to the Specific Unity of the Principal Races of Wheat

We have just shown that the history and the vernacular names of the great races of wheat are in favour of a derivation contemporary with man, probably not very ancient, from the common kind of wheat, perhaps from the small-grained wheat formerly cultivated by the Egyptians, and by the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy. Alefeld1818 arrived at the specific unity of T. vulgare, T. turgidum, and T. durum, by means of an attentive observation of the three cultivated together, under the same conditions. The experiments of Henri Vilmorin1819 on the artificial fertilization of these wheats lead to the same result. Although the author has not yet seen the product of several generations, he has ascertained that the most distinct principal forms can be crossed with ease and produce fertile hybrids. If fertilization be taken as a measure of the intimate degree of affinity which leads to the grouping of individuals into the same species, we cannot hesitate in the case in question, especially with the support of the historical considerations which I have given.

On the supposed Mummy Wheat

Before concluding this article, I think it pertinent to say that no grain taken from an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus and sown by horticulturists has ever been known to germinate. It is not that the thing is impossible, for grains are all the better preserved that they are protected from the air and from variations of temperature or humidity, and certainly these conditions are fulfilled by Egyptian monuments; but, as a matter of fact, the attempts at raising wheat from these ancient seeds have not been successful. The experiment which has been most talked of is that of the Count of Sternberg, at Prague.1820 He had received the grains from a trustworthy traveller, who assured him they were taken from a sarcophagus. Two of these seeds germinated, it is said, but I have ascertained that in Germany well-informed persons believe there is some imposture, either on the part of the Arabs, who sometimes slip modern seeds into the tombs (even maize, an American plant), or on that of the employés of the Count of Sternberg. The grain known in commerce as mummy wheat has never had any proof of antiquity of origin.

Spelt and Allied Varieties or Species. 1821

Louis Vilmorin,1822 in imitation of Seringe’s excellent work on cereals,1823 has grouped together those wheats whose seeds when ripe are closely contained in their envelope or husk, necessitating a special operation to free them from it, a character rather agricultural than botanical. He then enumerates the forms of these wheats under three names, which correspond to as many species of most botanists.

1. Spelt—Triticum spelta, Linnæus.

Spelt is now hardly cultivated out of south Germany and German-Switzerland. This was not the case formerly. The descriptions of cereals by Greek authors are so brief and insignificant that there is always room for hesitation as to the sense of the words they use. Yet, judging from the customs of which they speak, scholars think1824 that the Greeks first called spelt olyra, afterwards zeia, names which we find in Herodotus and Homer. Dioscorides1825 distinguishes two sorts of zeia, which apparently answer to Triticum spelta and T. monococcum. It is believed that spelt was the semen (corn, par excellence) and the far of Pliny, which he said was used as food by the Latins for 360 years before they knew how to make bread.1826 As spelt has not been found among the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy, and as the former cultivated the allied varieties called T. dicoccum and T. monococcum,1827 it is possible that the far of the Latins was rather one of these.

The existence of the true spelt in ancient Egypt and the neighbouring countries seems to me yet more doubtful. The olyra of the Egyptians, of which Herodotus speaks, was not the olyra of the Greeks; some authors have supposed it to be rice, oryza.1828 As to spelt, it is a plant which is not grown in such hot countries. Modern travellers from Rauwolf onwards have not seen it in Egyptian cultivation,1829 nor has it been found in the ancient monuments. This is what led me to suppose1830 that the Hebrew word kussemeth, which occurs three times in the Bible,1831 ought not to be attributed to spelt, as it is by Hebrew scholars.1832 I imagined it was perhaps the allied form, T. monococcum, but neither is this grown in Egypt.

Spelt has no name in Sanskrit, nor in any modern Indian languages, nor in Persian,1833 and therefore, of course, none in Chinese. European names, on the contrary, are numerous, and bear witness to an ancient cultivation, especially in the east of Europe. Spelta in Saxon, whence the English name, and the French, épeautre; Dinkel in modern German, orkiss in Polish, pobla in Russian,1834 are names which seem to come from very different roots. In the south of Europe the names are rarer. There is a Spanish one, however, of Asturia, escandia,1835 but I know of none in Basque.

History, and especially philology, point to an origin in eastern temperate Europe and the neighbouring countries of Asia. We have to discover whether the plant has been found wild.

Olivier,1836 in a passage already quoted, says that he several times found it in Mesopotamia, in particular upon the right bank of the Euphrates, north of Anah, in places unfit for cultivation. Another botanist, André Michaux, saw it in 1783, near Hamadan, a town in the temperate region of Persia. Dureau de la Malle says that he sent some grains of it to Bosc, who sowed them at Paris and obtained the common spelt; but this seems to me doubtful, for Lamarck, in 1786,1837 and Bosc himself, in the Dictionnaire d’Agriculture, article Épeautre (spelt), published in 1809, says not a word of this. The herbariums of the Paris Museum contain no specimens of the cereals mentioned by Olivier.

There is, as we have seen, much uncertainty as to the origin of the species as a wild plant. This leads me to attribute more importance to the hypothesis that spelt is derived by cultivation from the common wheat, or from an intermediate form at some not very early prehistoric time. The experiments of H. Vilmorin1838 support this theory, for cross fertilizations of the spelt by the downy white wheat, and vice versâ, yield “hybrids whose fertility is complete, with a mixture of the characters of both parents, those of the spelt preponderating.”

2. Starch Wheat—Triticum dicoccum, Schrank; Triticum amyleum, Seringe.

This form (Emmer, or Aemer in German), cultivated for starch chiefly in Switzerland, resists a hard winter. It contains two grains in each little ear, like the true spelt.

Heer1839 attributes to a variety of T. dicoccum an ear found in a bad state of preservation in the lake-dwellings of Wangen, Switzerland. Messicommer has since found some at Robenhausen.

It has never been found wild; and the rarity of common names is remarkable. These two circumstances, and the slight value of the botanical characters which serve to distinguish it from Tr. spelta, lead to the conclusion that it is an ancient cultivated variety of the latter.

3. One-grained Wheat—Triticum monococcum, Linnæus.

The one-grained wheat, or little spelt, Einkorn in German, is distinguished from the two preceding by a single seed in the little ear, and by other characters which lead the majority of botanists to consider it as a really distinct species. The experiments of H. Vilmorin confirm this opinion so far, for he has not yet succeeded in crossing T. monococcum with other spelts or wheats. This may be due, as he says himself, to some detail in the manner of operating. He intends to renew his attempts, and may perhaps succeed. [In the Bulletin de la Société Botanique de France, 1883, p. 62, Mr. Vilmorin says that he has not met with better success in the third and fourth years in his attempts at crossing T. monococcum with other species. He intends to make the experiment with T. bœoticum, Boissier, wild in Servia, of which I sent him some seeds gathered by Pancic. As this species is supposed to be the original stock of T. monococcum, the experiment is an interesting one. – Author’s Note, 1884.] In the mean time let us see whether this form of spelt has been long in cultivation, and if it has anywhere been found growing wild.

The one-grained wheat thrives in the poorest and most stony soil. It is not very productive, but yields excellent meal. It is sown especially in mountainous districts, in Spain, France, and the east of Europe, but I do not find it mentioned in Barbary, Egypt, the East, or in India or China.

From some expressions it has been believed to be the tiphai of Theophrastus.1840 It is easier to invoke Dioscorides,1841 for he distinguishes two kinds of zeia, one with two seeds, another with only one. The latter would be the one-grained wheat. Nothing proves that it was commonly cultivated by the Greeks and Romans. Their modern descendants do not sow it.1842 There are no Sanskrit, Persian, or Arabic names. I suggested formerly that the Hebrew word kussemeth might apply to this species, but this hypothesis now seems to me difficult to maintain.

Marschall Bieberstein1843 mentions Triticum monococcum, or a variety of it, growing wild in the Crimea and the eastern Caucasus, but no botanist has confirmed this assertion. Steven,1844 who lived in the Crimea, declares that he never saw the species except cultivated by the Tartars. On the other hand, the plant which Balansa gathered in a wild state near Mount Sipylus, in Anatolia, is T. monococcum, according to J. Gay,1845 who takes with this form Triticum bœoticum, Boissier, which grows wild in the plains of Bœotia1846 and in Servia.1847

Admitting these facts, T. monococcum is a native of Servia, Greece, and Asia Minor, and as the attempts to cross it with other spelts or wheats have not been successful, it is rightly termed a species in the Linnæan sense.

The separation of wheat with free grains from spelt must have taken place before all history, perhaps before the beginning of agriculture. Wheat must have appeared first in Asia, and then spelt, probably in Eastern Europe and Anatolia. Lastly, among spelts T. monococcum seems to be the most ancient form, from which the others have gradually developed in several thousand years of cultivation and selection.