Origin of Cultivated Plants

The sorghum has not been found among the remains of the lake-dwellings of Switzerland and Italy. The Greeks never spoke of it. Pliny’s phrase1934 about a milium introduced into Italy from India in his time has been supposed to refer to the sorghum; but it was a taller plant, perhaps Holcus saccharatus. The sorghum has not been found in a natural state in the tombs of ancient Egypt. Dr. Hannerd thought he recognized it in some crushed seeds brought by Rosellini from Thebes;1935 but Mr. Birch, the keeper of Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum, has more recently declared that the species has not been found in the ancient tombs.1936 Pickering says he recognized its leaves mixed with those of the papyrus. He says he also saw paintings of it; and Leipsius has copies of drawings which he, as well as Unger and Wilkinson, takes to be the dourra of modern cultivation.1937 The height and the form of the ear are undoubtedly those of the sorghum. It is possible that this species is the dochan, once mentioned in the Old Testament1938 as a cereal from which bread was made; yet the modern Arabic word dokhn refers to the sweet sorghum.

Common names tell us nothing, either from their lack of meaning, or because in many cases the same name has been applied to the different kinds of panicum and sorghum. I can find none which is certain in the ancient languages of India or Western Asia, which argues an introduction of but few centuries before the Christian era.

No botanist mentions the dourra as wild in Egypt or in Arabia. An analogous form is wild in equatorial Africa, but R. Brown has not been able to identify it,1939 and the flora of tropical Africa in course of publication at Kew has not yet reached the order Graminæ. There remains, therefore, the single assertion of Dr. Bretschneider, that the tall sorghum is indigenous in China. If it is really the species in question, it spread westward very late. But it was known to the ancient Egyptians, and how could they have received it from China while it remained unknown to the intermediate peoples? It is easier to understand that it is indigenous in tropical Africa, and was introduced into Egypt in prehistoric time, afterwards into India, and finally into China, where its cultivation does not seem to be very ancient, for the first work which mentions it belongs to the fourth century of our era.

In support of the theory of African origin, I may quote the observation of Schmidt,1940 that the species abounds in the island of San Antonio, in the Cape Verde group, in rocky places. He believes it to be “completely naturalized,” which perhaps conceals a true origin.

Sweet Sorghum—Holcus saccharatus, Linnæus; Andropogon saccharatus, Roxburgh; Sorghum saccharatum, Persoon.

This species, taller than the common sorghum and with a loose panicle,1941 is cultivated in tropical countries for the seed – which, however, is not so good as that of the common sorghum – and in less hot countries as fodder, or even for the sugar which the stem contains in considerable quantities. The Chinese extract a spirit from it, but not sugar.

The opinion of botanists and of the public in general is that it comes from India; but Roxburgh says that it is only cultivated in that country. It is the same in the Sunda Isles, where the battari is certainly this species. It is the kao-liang, or great millet of the Chinese. It is not said to be indigenous in China, nor is it mentioned by Chinese authors who lived before the Christian era.1942 From these facts, and the absence of any Sanskrit name, the Asiatic origin seems to me a delusion.

The plant is now cultivated in Egypt less than the common sorghum, and in Arabia under the name dokhna or dokhn.1943 No botanist has seen it wild in these countries. There is no proof that the ancient Egyptians cultivated it. Herodotus1944 spoke of a “tree-millet” in the plains of Assyria. It might be the species in question, but it is not possible to prove it.

The Greeks and Romans were not acquainted with it, not at least before the Roman empire, but it is possible that this was the millet, seven feet high, which Pliny mentions1945 as having been introduced from India in his lifetime.

We must probably seek its origin in tropical Africa, where the species is generally cultivated. Sir William Hooker1946 mentions specimens from the banks of the river Nun, which were perhaps wild. The approaching publication of the Graminæ in the flora of tropical Africa will probably throw some light on this question. The spread of its cultivation from the interior of Africa to Egypt after the Pharaohs, to Arabia, the Indian Archipelago, and, after the epoch of Sanskrit, to India, lastly to China, towards the beginning of our era, tallies with historical data, and is not difficult to admit. The inverse hypothesis of a transmission from east to west presents a number of objections.

Several varieties of sorghum are cultivated in Asia and in Africa; for instance, cernuus with drooping panicles, mentioned by Roxburgh, and which Prosper Alpin had seen in Egypt; bicolor, which in height resembles the saccharatus; and niger and rubens, which also seem to be varieties of cultivation. None of these has been found wild, and it is probable that a monograph would connect them with one or other of the above-mentioned species.

Coracan—Eleusine coracana, Gærtner.

This annual grass, which resembles the millets, is cultivated especially in India and the Malay Archipelago. It is also grown in Egypt1947 and in Abyssinia;1948 but the silence of many botanists, who have mentioned the plants of the interior and west of Africa, shows that its cultivation is not widely spread on that continent. In Japan1949 it sometimes escapes from cultivation. The seeds will ripen in the south of Europe, but the plant is valueless there except as fodder.1950

No author mentions having found it in a wild state in Asia or in Africa. Roxburgh,1951 who is attentive to such matters, after speaking of its cultivation, adds, “I never saw it wild.” He distinguishes under the name Eleusine stricta a form even more commonly cultivated in India, which appears to be simply a variety of E. coracana, and which also he has not found uncultivated.

We shall discover its country by other means.

In the first place, the species of the genus Eleusine are more numerous in the south of Asia than in other tropical regions. Besides the cultivated plant, Royle1952 mentions other species, of which the poorer natives of India gather the seeds in the plains. According to Piddington’s Index, there is a Sanskrit name, rajika, and several other names in the modern languages of India. That of coracana comes from an old name used in Ceylon, kourakhan.1953 In the Malay Archipelago the names appear less numerous and less original.

In Egypt the cultivation of this species is perhaps not very ancient. The monuments of antiquity bear no trace of it. Græco-Roman authors who knew the country did not speak of it, nor later Prosper Alpin, Forskal, and Delile. We must refer to a modern work, that of Schweinfurth and Ascherson, to find mention of the species, and I cannot even discover an Arab name.1954 Thus botany, history, and philology point to an Indian origin. The flora of British India, in which the Graminæ have not yet appeared, will perhaps tell us the plant has been found wild in recent explorations.

A nearly allied species is grown in Abyssinia, Eleusine Tocussa, Fresenius,1955 a plant very little known, which is perhaps a native of Africa.

Rice—Oryza sativa, Linnæus.

In the ceremony instituted by the Chinese Emperor Chin-nong, 2800 years B.C., rice plays the principal part. The reigning emperor must himself sow it, whereas the four other species are or may be sown by the princes of his family.1956 The five species are considered by the Chinese as indigenous, and it must be admitted that this is probably the case with rice, which is in general use, and has been so for a long time; in a country intersected by canals and rivers, and hence peculiarly favourable to aquatic plants. Botanists have not sufficiently studied Chinese plants for us to know whether rice is often found outside cultivated ground; but Loureiro1957 had seen it in marshes in Cochin-China.

Rumphius and modern writers upon the Malay Archipelago give it only as a cultivated plant. The multitude of names and varieties points to a very ancient cultivation. In British India it dates at least from the Aryan invasion, for rice has Sanskrit names, vrihi, arunya1958 whence come, probably, several names in modern Indian languages, and oruza or oruzon of the ancient Greeks, rouz or arous of the Arabs. Theophrastus1959 mentioned rice as cultivated in India. The Greeks became acquainted with it through Alexander’s expedition. “According to Aristobulus,” says Strabo,1960 “rice grows in Bactriana, Babylonia, Susida;” and he adds, “we may also add in Lower Syria.” Further on he notes that the Indians use it for food, and extract a spirit from it. These assertions, doubtful perhaps for Bactriana, show that this cultivation was firmly established, at least, from the time of Alexander (400 B.C.), in the Euphrates valley, and from the beginning of our era in the hot and irrigated districts of Syria. The Old Testament does not mention rice, but a careful and judicious writer, Reynier,1961 has remarked several passages in the Talmud which relate to its cultivation. These facts lead us to suppose that the Indians employed rice after the Chinese, and that it spread still later towards the Euphrates – earlier, however, than the Aryan invasion into India. A thousand years elapsed between the existence of this cultivation in Babylonia and its transportation into Syria, whence its introduction into Egypt after an interval of probably two or three centuries. There is no trace of rice among the grains or paintings of ancient Egypt.1962 Strabo, who had visited this country as well as Syria, does not say that rice was cultivated in Egypt in his time, but that the Garamantes1963 grew it, and this people is believed to have inhabited an oasis to the south of Carthage. It is possible that they received it from Syria. At all events, Egypt could not long fail to possess a crop so well suited to its peculiar conditions of irrigation. The Arabs introduced the species into Spain, as we see from the Spanish name arroz. Rice was first cultivated in Italy in 1468, near Pisa.1964 It is of recent introduction into Louisiana.

When I said that the cultivation of rice in India was probably more recent than in China, I did not mean that the plant was not wild there. It belongs to a family of which the species cover wide areas, and, besides, aquatic plants have commonly more extensive habitations than others. Rice existed, perhaps, before all cultivation in Southern Asia from China to Bengal, as is shown by the variety of names in the monosyllabic languages of the races between India and China.1965 It has been found outside cultivation in several Indian localities, according to Roxburgh.1966 He says that wild rice, called newaree by the Telingas, grows in abundance on the shores of lakes in the country of the Circars. Its grain is prized by rich Hindus, but it is not planted because it is not very productive. Roxburgh has no doubt that this is the original plant. Thomson1967 found wild rice at Moradabad, in the province of Delhi. Historical reasons support the idea that these specimens are indigenous. Otherwise they might be supposed to be the result of the habitual cultivation of the species, all the more that there are examples of the facility with which rice sows itself and becomes naturalized in warm, damp climates.1968 In any case historical evidence and botanical probability tend to the belief that rice existed in India before cultivation.1969

Maize—Zea mays, Linnæus.

“Maize is of American origin, and has only been introduced into the old world since the discovery of the new. I consider these two assertions as positive, in spite of the contrary opinion of some authors, and the doubts of the celebrated agriculturist Bonafous, to whom we are indebted for the most complete treatise upon maize.”1970 I used these words in 1855, after having already contested the opinion of Bonafous at the time of the publication of his work.1971 The proofs of an American origin have been since reinforced. Yet attempts have been made to prove the contrary, and as the French name, blé de Turquie, gives currency to an error, it is as well to resume the discussion with new data.

No one denies that maize was unknown in Europe at the time of the Roman empire, but it has been said that it was brought from the East in the Middle Ages. The principal argument is based upon a charter of the thirteenth century, published by Molinari,1972 according to which two crusaders, companions in arms of Boniface III., Marquis of Monferrat, gave in 1204 to the town of Incisa a piece of the true cross … and a purse containing a kind of seed of a golden colour and partly white, unknown in the country and brought from Anatolia, where it was called meliga. etc. The historian of the crusades, Michaux, and later Daru and Sismondi, said a great deal about this charter; but the botanist Delile, as well as Targionitozzetti and Bonafous himself, thought that the seed in question might belong to some sorghum and not to maize. These old discussions have been rendered absurd by the Comte de Riant’s discovery1973 that the charter of Incisa is the fabrication of a modern impostor. I quote this instance to show how scholars who are not naturalists may make mistakes in the interpretation of the names of plants, and also how dangerous it is to rely upon an isolated proof in historical questions.

The names blé de Turquie, Turkish wheat (Indian corn), given to maize in almost all modern European languages no more prove an Eastern origin than the charter of Incisa. These names are as erroneous as that of coq d’Inde, in English turkey, given to an American bird. Maize is called in Lorraine and in the Vosges Roman corn; in Tuscany, Sicilian corn; in Sicily, Indian corn; in the Pyrenees, Spanish corn; in Provence, Barbary or Guinea corn. The Turks call it Egyptian corn, and the Egyptians, Syrian dourra. This last case proves at least that it is neither Egyptian nor Syrian. The widespread name of Turkish wheat dates from the sixteenth century. It sprang from an error as to the origin of the plant, which was fostered perhaps by the tufts which terminate the ears of maize, which were compared to the beard of the Turks, or by the vigour of the plant, which may have given rise to an expression similar to the French fort comme un turc. The first botanist who uses the name, Turkish wheat, is Ruellius, in 1536.1974 Bock or Tragus,1975 in 1552, after giving a drawing of the species which he calls Frumentum turcicum, Welschkorn, in Germany, having learnt by merchants that it came from India, conceived the unfortunate idea that it was a certain typha of Bactriana, to which ancient authors alluded in vague terms. Dodoens in 1583, Camerarius in 1588, and Matthiole1976 rectified these errors, and positively asserted the American origin. They adopted the name mays, which they knew to be American. We have seen (p. 363) that the zea of the Greeks was a spelt. Certainly the ancients did not know maize. The first travellers1977 who described the productions of the new world were surprised at it, a clear proof that they had not known it in Europe. Hernandez,1978 who left Europe in 1571, according to some authorities, in 1593 according to others,1979 did not know that from the year 1500 maize had been sent to Seville for cultivation. This fact, attested by Fée, who has seen the municipal records,1980 clearly shows the American origin, which caused Hernandez to think the name of Turkish wheat a very bad one.

It may perhaps be urged that maize, new to Europe in the sixteenth century, existed in some parts of Asia or Africa before the discovery of America. Let us see what truth there may be in this.

The famous orientalist D’Herbelot1981 had accumulated several errors pointed out by Bonafous and by me, on the subject of a passage in the Persian historian Mirkoud of the fifteenth century, about a cereal which Rous, son of Japhet, sowed upon the shores of the Caspian Sea, and which he takes to be the Indian corn of our day. It is hardly worth considering these assertions of a scholar to whom it had never occurred to consult the works of the botanists of his own day, or earlier. What is more important is the total silence on the subject of maize of the travellers who visited Asia and Africa before the discovery of America; also the absence of Hebrew and Sanskrit names for this plant; and lastly, that Egyptian monuments present no specimen or drawing of it.1982 Rifaud, it is true, found an ear of maize in a sarcophagus at Thebes, but it is believed to have been the trick of an Arab impostor. If maize had existed in ancient Egypt, it would be seen in all monuments, and would have been connected with religious ideas like all other remarkable plants. A species so easy of cultivation would have spread into all neighbouring countries. Its cultivation would not have been abandoned; and we find, on the contrary, that Prosper Alpin, visiting Egypt in 1592, does not speak of it, and that Forskal,1983 at the end of the eighteenth century, mentioned maize as still but little grown in Egypt, where it had no name distinct from the sorghums. Ebn Baithar, an Arab physician of the thirteenth century, who had travelled through the countries lying between Spain and Persia, indicates no plant which can be supposed to be maize.

J. Crawfurd,1984 having seen maize generally cultivated in the Malay Archipelago under a name jarung, which appears to be indigenous, believed that the species was a native of these islands. But then how is it Rumphius makes no mention of it. The silence of this author points to an introduction later than the seventeenth century. Maize was so little diffused on the continent of India in the last century, that Roxburgh1985 wrote in his flora, which was published long after it was drawn up, “Cultivated in different parts of India in gardens, and only as an ornament, but nowhere on the continent of India as an object of cultivation on a large scale.” We have seen that there is no Sanskrit name.

Maize is frequently cultivated in China in modern times, and particularly round Pekin for several generations,1986 although most travellers of the last century make no mention of it. Dr. Bretschneider, in his work published in 1870, does not hesitate to say that maize is not indigenous in China; but some words in his letter of 1881 make me think that he now attributes some importance to an ancient Chinese author, of whom Bonafous and afterwards Hance and Mayers have said a great deal. This is a work by Li-chi-tchin, entitled Phen-thsao-kang-mou, or Pên-tsao-kung-mu, a species of treatise on natural history, which Bretschneider1987 says was written at the end of the sixteenth century. Bonafous says it was concluded in 1578, and the edition which he had seen in the Huzard library was of 1637. It contains a drawing of maize with the Chinese character. This plate is copied in Bonafous’ work, at the beginning of the chapter on the original country of the maize. It is clear that it represents the plant. Dr. Hance1988 appears to have based his arguments upon the researches of Mayers, who says that early Chinese authors assert that maize was imported from Sifan (Lower Mongolia, to the west of China) long before the end of the fifteenth century, at an unknown date. The article contains a copy of the drawing in the Pên-tsao-kung-mu, to which he assigns the date 1597.

The importation through Mongolia is improbable to such a degree that it is hardly worth speaking of it, and as for the principal assertion of the Chinese author, the dates are uncertain and late. The work was finished in 1578 according to Bonafous, in 1597 according to Mayers. If this be true, and especially if the second of these dates is the true one, it may be admitted that maize was brought to China after the discovery of America. The Portuguese came to Java in 1496,1989 that is to say four years after the discovery of America, and to China in 1516.1990 Magellan’s voyage from South America to the Philippine Islands took place in 1520. During the fifty-eight or seventy-seven years between 1516 and the dates assigned to the Chinese work, seeds of maize may have been taken to China by navigators from America or from Europe. Dr. Bretschneider wrote to me recently that the Chinese did not know the new world earlier than the Europeans, and that the lands to the east of their country, to which there are some allusions in their ancient writings, are the islands of Japan. He had already quoted the opinion of a Chinese savant, that the introduction of maize in the neighbourhood of Pekin dates from the last years of the Ming dynasty, which ended in 1644. This date agrees with the other facts. The introduction into Japan was probably of later date, since Kæmpfer makes no mention of the species.1991

From all these facts, we conclude that maize is not a native of the old world. It became rapidly diffused in it after the discovery of America, and this very rapidity completes the proof that, had it existed anywhere in Asia or Africa, it would have played an important part in agriculture for thousands of years.

We shall see that the facts are quite contrary to these in America.

At the time of the discovery of the new continent, maize was one of the staples of its agriculture, from the La Plata valley to the United States. It had names in all the languages.1992 The natives planted it round their temporary dwellings where they did not form a fixed population. The burial-mounds of the natives of North America who preceded those of our day, the tombs of the Incas, the catacombs of Peru, contain ears or grains of maize, just as the monuments of ancient Egypt contain grains of barley and wheat and millet-seed. In Mexico, a goddess who bore a name derived from that of maize (Cinteutl, from Cintli) answered to the Ceres of the Greeks, for the first-fruits of the maize harvest were offered to her, as the first-fruits of our cereals to the Greek goddess. At Cusco the virgins of the sun offered sacrifices of bread made from Indian corn. Nothing is better calculated to show the antiquity and generality of the cultivation of a plant than this intimate connection with the religious rites of the ancient inhabitants. We must not, however, attribute to these indications the same importance in America as in the old world. The civilization of the Peruvians under the Incas, and that of the Toltecs and Aztecs in Mexico, has not the extraordinary antiquity of the civilizations of China, Chaldea, and Egypt. It dates at earliest from the beginning of the Christian era; but the cultivation of maize is more ancient than the monuments, to judge from the numerous varieties of the species found in them, and their dispersal into remote regions.

A yet more remarkable proof of antiquity has been discovered by Darwin. He found ears of Indian corn, and eighteen species of shells of our epoch, buried in the soil of the shore in Peru, now at least eighty-five feet above the level of the sea.1993 This maize was perhaps not cultivated, but in this case it would be yet more interesting, as an indication of the origin of the species.

Although America has been explored by a great number of botanists, none have found maize in the conditions of a wild plant.

Auguste de Saint-Hilaire1994 thought he recognized the wild type in a singular variety, of which each grain is enclosed within its sheath or bract. It is known at Buenos-Ayres under the name pinsigallo. It is Zea Mays tunicata of Saint-Hilaire, of which Bonafous gives an illustration, pl. 5, bis, under the name Zea cryptosperma. Lindley1995 also gives a description and a drawing from seeds brought, it is said, from the Rocky Mountains, but this is not confirmed by recent Californian floras. A young Guarany, born in Paraguay on its frontiers, had recognized this maize, and told Saint-Hilaire that it grew in the damp forests of his country. This is very insufficient proof that it is indigenous. No traveller to my knowledge has seen this plant wild in Paraguay or Brazil. But it is an interesting fact that it has been cultivated in Europe, and that it often passes into the ordinary state of maize. Lindley observed it when it had been only two or three years in cultivation, and Professor Radic obtained from one sowing 225 ears of the form tunicata, and 105 of the common form with naked grains.1996 Evidently this form, which might be believed a true species, but whose country is, however, doubtful, is hardly even a race. It is one of the innumerable varieties, more or less hereditary, of which botanists who are considered authorities make only a single species, because of their want of stability and the transitions which they frequently present.