Origin of Cultivated Plants

Regarding the two cottons of the old world, I have made as little use as possible of arguments based upon Greek names, such as βυσσος, σινδον, ξυλον, Οθων etc., or Sanskrit names, and their derivatives, as carbasa, carpas, or Hebrew names, schesch, buz, which are doubtfully attributed to the cotton tree. This has been a fruitful subject of discussion,2042 but the clearer distinction of species and the discovery of their origin greatly diminishes the importance of these questions – to naturalists, at least, who prefer facts to words. Moreover, Reynier, and after him C. Ritter, arrived in their researches at a conclusion which we must not forget: that these same names were often applied by ancient peoples to different plants and tissues – to linen and cotton, for example. In this case as in others, modern botany explains ancient words where words and the commentaries of philologists may mislead.

Barbados Cotton—Gossypium barbadense, Linnæus.

At the time of the discovery of America, the Spaniards found the cultivation and use of cotton established from the West India Islands to Peru, and from Mexico to Brazil. The fact is proved by all the historians of the epoch. But it is still very difficult to tell what were the species of these American cottons and in what countries they were indigenous. The botanical distinction of the American species or varieties is in the last degree confused. Authors, even those who have seen large collections of growing cotton plants, are not agreed as to the characters. They are also embarrassed by the difficulty of deciding which of the specific names of Linnæus should be retained, for the original definitions are insufficient. The introduction of American seed into African and Asiatic plantations has given rise to further complications, as botanists in Java, Calcutta, Bourbon, etc., have often described American forms as species under different names. Todaro admits ten American species; Parlatore reduced them to three, which answer, he says, to Gossypium hirsutum, G. barbadense, and G. religiosum of Linnæus; lastly, Dr. Masters unites all the American forms into a single species which he calls G. barbadense, giving as the chief character that the seed bears only long hairs, whereas the species of the old world have a short down underneath the longer hairs.2043 The flower is yellow, with a red centre. The cotton is white or yellow. Parlatore strove to include fifty or sixty of the cultivated forms under one or other of the three heads he admits, from the study of plants in gardens or herbaria. Dr. Masters mentions but few synonyms, and it is possible that certain forms with which he is not acquainted do not come under the definition of his single species.

Where there is such confusion it would be the best course for botanists to seek with care the Gossypia, which are wild in America, to constitute the one or more species solely upon these, leaving to the cultivated species their strange and often absurd and misleading names. I state this opinion because with regard to no other genus of cultivated plants have I felt so strongly that natural history should be based upon natural facts, and not upon the artificial products of cultivation. If we start from this point of view, which has the merit of being a truly scientific method, we find unfortunately that our knowledge of the cottons indigenous in America is still in a very elementary state. At most we can name only one or two collectors who have found Gossypia really identical with or very similar to certain cultivated forms.

We can seldom trust early botanists and travellers on this head. The cotton plant grows sometimes in the neighbourhood of plantations, and becomes more or less naturalized, as the down on the seeds facilitates accidental transport. The usual expression of early writers – such a cotton plant grows in such a country – often means a cultivated plant. Linnæus himself in the eighteenth century often says of a cultivated species, “habitat,” and he even says it sometimes without good ground.2044 Hernandez, one of the most accurate among sixteenth-century authors, is quoted as having described and figured a wild Gossypium in Mexico, but the text suggests some doubts as to the wild condition of this plant,2045 which Parlatore believes to be G. hirsutum, Linnæus. Hemsley,2046 in his catalogue of Mexican plants, merely says of a Gossypium which he calls barbadense, “wild and cultivated.” He gives no proof of the former condition. Macfadyen2047 mentions three forms wild and cultivated in Jamaica. He attributes specific names to them, and adds that they possibly all may be included in Linnæus’ G. hirsutum. Grisebach2048 admits that one species, G. barbadense, is wild in the West Indies. As to the specific distinctions, he declares himself unable to establish them with certainty.

With regard to New Grenada, Triana2049 describes a Gossypium which he calls G. barbadense, Linnæus, and which he says is “cultivated and half wild along the Rio Seco, in the province of Bogota, and in the valley of the Cauca near Cali;” and he adds a variety, hirsutum, growing (he does not say whether spontaneously or no) along the Rio Seco. I cannot discover any similar assertion for Peru, Guiana, and Brazil;2050 but the flora of Chili, published by Cl. Gay,2051 mentions a Gossypium, “almost wild in the province of Copiapo,” which the writer attributes to the variety G. peruvianum, Cavanilles. Now, this author does not say the plant is wild, and Parlatore classes it with G. religiosum, Linnæus.

An important variety of cultivation is that of the cotton with long silky down, called by Anglo-Americans sea island, or long staple cotton, which Parlatore ranks with G. barbadense, Linnæus. It is considered to be of American origin, but no one has seen it wild.

In conclusion, if historical records are positive in all that concerns the use of cotton in America from a time far earlier than the arrival of Europeans, the natural wild habitation of the plant or plants which yield this product is yet but little known. We become aware on this occasion of the absence of floras of tropical America, similar to those of the Dutch and English colonies of Asia and Africa.

Mandubi, Pea-nut, Monkey-nut—Arachis hypogæa, Linnæus.

Nothing is more curious than the manner in which this leguminous plant matures its fruits. It is cultivated in all hot countries, either for the seed, or for the oil contained in the cotyledons.2052 Bentham has given, in his Flora of Brazil, in folio, vol. xv. pl. 23, complete details of the plant, in which may be seen how the flower-stalk bends downwards and plunges the pod into the earth to ripen.

The origin of the species was disputed for a century, even by those botanists who employ the best means to discover it. It is worth while to show how the truth was arrived at, as it may serve as a guide in similar cases. I will quote, therefore, what I wrote in 1855,2053 giving in conclusion new proofs which allow no possibility of further doubt.

“Linnæus2054 said of the Arachis, ‘it inhabits Surinam Brazil, and Peru.’ As usual with him, he does not specify whether the species was wild or cultivated in these countries. In 1818, R. Brown2055 writes: ‘It was probably introduced from China into the continent of India, Ceylon, and into the Malay Archipelago, where, in spite of its now general cultivation, it is thought not to be indigenous, particularly from the names given to it. I consider it not improbable that it was brought from Africa into different parts of equatorial America, although, however, it is mentioned in some of the earliest writings on this continent, particularly on Peru and Brazil. According to Sprengel, it is mentioned by Theophrastus as cultivated in Egypt, but it is not at all evident that the Arachis is the plant to which Theophrastus alludes in the quoted passage. If it had been formerly cultivated in Egypt it would probably still exist in that country, whereas it does not occur in Forskal’s catalogue nor in Delile’s more extended flora. There is nothing very unlikely,’ continues Brown, ‘in the hypothesis that the Arachis is indigenous both in Africa and America; but if it is considered as existing originally in one of these continents only, it is more probable that it was brought from China through India to Africa, than that it took the contrary direction.’ My father in 1825, in the Prodromus (ii. p. 474), returned to Linnæus’ opinion, and admitted without hesitation the American origin. “Let us reconsider the question” (I said in 1855) “with the aid of the discoveries of modern science.

“Arachis hypogœa was the only species of this singular genus known. Six other species, all Brazilian, have since been discovered.2056 Thus, applying the rule of probability of which Brown first made great use, we incline à priori to the idea of an American origin. We must remember that Maregraf2057 and Piso2058 describe and figure the plant as used in Brazil, under the name mandubi, which seems to be indigenous. They quote Monardes, a writer of the end of the sixteenth century, as having indicated it in Peru under a different name, anchic. Joseph Acosta2059 merely mentions an American name, mani, and speaks of it with other species which are not of foreign origin in America. The Arachis was not ancient in Guiana, in the West Indies, and in Mexico. Aublet2060 mentions it as a cultivated plant, not in Guiana, but in the Isle of France. Hernandez does not speak of it. Sloane2061 had seen it only in a garden, grown from seeds brought from Guinea. He says that the slave-dealers feed the negroes with it on their passage from Africa, which indicates a then very general cultivation in Africa. Pison, in his second edition (1638, p. 256), not in that of 1648, gives a figure of a similar fruit imported from Africa into Brazil under the name mandobi, very near to the name of the Arachis, mandubi. From the three leaflets of the plant it would seem to be the Voandzeia, so often cultivated; but the fruit seems to me to be longer than in this genus, and it has two or three seeds instead of one or two. However this may be, the distinction drawn by Piso between these two subterranean seeds, the one Brazilian, the other African, tends to show that the Arachis is Brazilian.

“The antiquity and the generality of its cultivation in Africa is, however, an argument of some force, which compensates to a certain degree its antiquity in Brazil, and the presence of six other Arachis in the same country. I would admit its great value if the Arachis had been known to the ancient Egyptians and to the Arabs; but the silence of Greek, Latin, and Arab authors, and the absence of the species in Egypt in Forskal’s time, lead me to think that its cultivation in Guinea, Senegal,2062 and the east coast of Africa2063 is not of very ancient date. Neither has it the marks of a great antiquity in Asia. No Sanskrit name for it is known,2064 but only a Hindustani one. Rumphius2065 says that it was imported from Japan into several islands of the Indian Archipelago. It would in that case have borne only foreign names, like the Chinese name, for instance, which signifies only ‘earth-bean.’ At the end of the last century it was generally cultivated in China and Cochin-China. Yet, in spite of Rumphius’s theory of an introduction into the islands from China or Japan, I see that Thunberg does not speak of it in his Japanese Flora. Now, Japan has had dealings with China for sixteen centuries, and cultivated plants, natives of one of the two countries, were commonly early introduced into the other. It is not mentioned by Forster among the plants employed in the small islands of the Pacific. All these facts point to an American, I might even say a Brazilian, origin. None of the authors I have consulted mentions having seen the plant wild, either in the old or the new world. Those who indicate it in Africa or Asia are careful to say the plant is cultivated. Marcgraf does not say so, writing of Brazil, but Piso says the species is planted.”

Seeds of Arachis have been found in the Peruvian tombs at Ancon,2066 which shows some antiquity of existence in America, and supports the opinion I expressed in 1855. Dr. Bretschneider’s study of Chinese works2067 oversets Brown’s hypothesis. The Arachis is not mentioned in the ancient works of this country, nor even in the Pent-sao, published in the sixteenth century. He adds that he believes the plant was only introduced in the last century.

All the recent floras of Asia and Africa mention the species as a cultivated one, and most authors believe it to be of American origin. Bentham, after satisfying himself that it had not been found wild in America or elsewhere, adds that it is perhaps a form derived from one of the six other species wild in Brazil, but he does not say which. This is probable enough, for a plant provided with an efficacious and very peculiar manner of germinating does not seem of a nature to become extinct. It would have been found wild in Brazil in the same condition as the cultivated plant, if the latter were not a product of cultivation. Works on Guiana and other parts of America mention the species as a cultivated one; Grisebach2068 says, moreover, that in several of the West India islands it becomes naturalized from cultivation.

A genus of which all the well-known species are thus placed in a single region of America can scarcely have a species common to both hemispheres; it would be too great an exception to the law of geographical botany. But then how did the species (or cultivated variety) pass from the American continent to the old world? This is hard to guess, but I am inclined to believe that the first slave-ships carried it from Brazil to Guinea, and the Portuguese from Brazil into the islands to the south of Asia, in the end of the fifteenth century.

Coffee—Coffea arabica, Linnæus.

This shrub, belonging to the family of the Rubiaceæ, is wild in Abyssinia,2069 in the Soudan,2070 and on the coasts of Guinea and Mozambique.2071 Perhaps in these latter localities, so far removed from the centre, it may be naturalized from cultivation. No one has yet found it in Arabia, but this may be explained by the difficulty of penetrating into the interior of the country. If it is discovered there it will be hard to prove it wild, for the seeds, which soon lose their faculty of germinating, often spring up round the plantations and naturalize the species. This has occurred in Brazil and the West India Islands,2072 where it is certain that the coffee plant was never indigenous.

The use of coffee seems to be very ancient in Abyssinia. Shehabeddin Ben, author of an Arab manuscript of the fifteenth century (No. 944 of the Paris Library), quoted in John Ellis’s excellent work,2073 says that coffee had been used in Abyssinia from time immemorial. Its use, even as a drug, had not spread into the neighbouring countries, for the crusaders did not know it, and the celebrated physician Ebn Baithar, born at Malaga, who had travelled over the north of Africa and Syria at the beginning of the thirteenth century of the Christian era, does not mention coffee.2074 In 1596 Bellus sent to de l’Ecluse some seeds from which the Egyptians extracted the drink cavé.2075 Nearly at the same time Prosper Alpin became acquainted with coffee in Egypt itself. He speaks of the plant as the “arbor bon, cum fructu suo buna.” The name bon recurs also in early authors under the forms bunnu, buncho, bunca.2076 The names cahue, cahua, chaubé,2077 cavé,2078 refer rather in Egypt and Syria to the prepared drink, whence the French word café. The name bunnu, or something similar, is certainly the primitive name of the plant which the Abyssinians still call boun.2079

If the use of coffee is more ancient in Abyssinia than elsewhere, that is no proof that its cultivation is very ancient. It is very possible that for centuries the berries were sought in the forests, where they were doubtless very common. According to the Arabian author quoted above, it was a mufti of Aden, nearly his contemporary, who, having seen coffee drunk in Persia, introduced the practice at Aden, whence it spread to Mocha, into Egypt, etc. He says that the coffee plant grew in Arabia.2080 Other fables or traditions exist, according to which it was always an Arabian priest or a monk who invented the drink,2081 but they all leave us in uncertainty as to the date of the first cultivation of the plant. However this may be, the use of coffee having been spread first in the east, afterwards in the west, in spite of a number of prohibitions and absurd conflicts,2082 its production became important to the colonies. Boerhave tells us that the Burgermeister of Amsterdam, Nicholas Witsen, director of the East India Company, urged the Governor of Batavia, Van Hoorn, to import coffee berries from Arabia to Batavia. This was done, and in 1690 Van Hoorn sent some living plants to Witsen. These were placed in the Botanical Gardens of Amsterdam, founded by Witsen, where they bore fruit. In 1714, the magistrates of the town sent a flourishing plant covered with fruit to Louis XIV., who placed it in his garden at Marly. Coffee was also grown in the hothouses of the king’s garden in Paris. One of the professors of this establishment, Antoine de Jussieu, had already published in 1713, in the Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences, an interesting description of the plant from one which Pancras, director of the Botanical Garden at Amsterdam, had sent to him.

The first coffee plants grown in America were introduced into Surinam by the Dutch in 1718. The Governor of Cayenne, de la Motte-Aigron, having been at Surinam, obtained some plants in secret and multiplied them in 1725.2083 The coffee plant was introduced into Martinique by de Clieu,2084 a naval officer, in 1720, according to Deleuze;2085 in 1723, according to the Notices Statistiques sur les Colonies Françaises.2086 Thence it was introduced into the other French islands, into Guadaloupe, for instance, in 1730.2087 Sir Nicholas Lawes first grew it in Jamaica.2088 From 1718 the French East India Company had sent plants of Mocha coffee to Bourbon;2089 others say2090 that it was even in 1717 that a certain Dufougerais-Grenier had coffee plants brought from Mocha into this island. It is known how the cultivation of this shrub has been extended in Java, Ceylon, the West Indies, and Brazil. Nothing prevents it from spreading in nearly all tropical countries, especially as the coffee plant thrives on sloping ground and in poor soils where other crops cannot flourish. It corresponds in tropical agriculture to the vine in Europe and tea in China.

Further details may be found in the volume published by H. Welter2091 on the economical and commercial history of coffee. The author adds an interesting chapter on the various fair or very bad substitutes used for a commodity which it is impossible to overrate in its natural condition.

Liberian Coffee—Coffea liberica, Hiern.2092

Plants of this species have for some years been sent from the Botanical Gardens at Kew into the English colonies. It grows wild in Liberia, Angola, Golungo Alto,2093 and probably in several other parts of western tropical Africa.

It is of stronger growth than the common coffee, and the berries, which are larger, yield an excellent product. The official reports of Kew Gardens by the learned director, Sir Joseph Hooker, show the progress of this introduction, which is very favourably received, especially in Dominica.

Madia—Madia sativa, Molina.

The inhabitants of Chili before the discovery of America cultivated this annual species of the Composite family, for the sake of the oil contained in the seed. Since the olive has been extensively planted, the madia is despised by the Chilians, who only complain of the plant as a weed which chokes their gardens.2094 The Europeans began to cultivate it with indifferent success, owing to its bad smell.

The madia is indigenous in Chili and also in California.2095 There are other examples of this disjunction of habitation between the two countries.2096

Nutmeg—Myristica fragrans, Houttuyn.

The nutmeg, a little tree of the order Myristiceœ, is wild in the Moluccas, principally in the Banda Islands.2097 It has long been cultivated there, to judge from the considerable number of its varieties. Europeans have received the nutmeg by the Asiatic trade since the Middle Ages, but the Dutch long possessed the monopoly of its cultivation. When the English owned the Moluccas at the end of the last century, they carried live nutmeg trees to Bencoolen and into Prince Edward’s Islands.2098 It afterwards spread to Bourbon, Mauritius, Madagascar, and into some of the colonies of tropical America, but with indifferent success from a commercial point of view.

Sesame—Sesamum indicum, de Candolle; S. indicum and S. orientale, Linnæus.

Sesame has long been cultivated in the hot regions of the old world for the sake of the oil extracted from the seeds.

The order Pedalineœ to which this annual belongs is composed of several genera distributed through the tropical parts of Asia, Africa, and America. Each genus has only a small number of species. Sesamum, in the widest sense of the name,2099 has ten, all African except perhaps the cultivated species whose origin we are about to seek. The latter forms alone the true genus Sesamum, which is a section in Bentham and Hooker’s work. Botanical analogy points to an African origin, but the area of a considerable number of plants is known to extend from the south of Asia into Africa. Sesame has two races, the one with black, the other with white seed, and several varieties differing in the shape of the leaf. The difference in the colour of the seeds is very ancient, as in the case of the poppy.

The seeds of sesame often sow themselves outside plantations, and more or less naturalize the species. This has been observed in regions very remote one from the other; for instance, in India, the Sunda Isles, Egypt, and even in the West India Islands, where its cultivation is certainly of modern introduction.2100 This is perhaps the reason that no author asserts he has found it in a wild state except Blume,2101 a trustworthy observer, who mentions a variety with redder flowers than usual growing in the mountains of Java. This is doubtless an indication of origin, but we need others to establish a proof. I shall seek them in the history of its cultivation. The country where this began should be the ancient habitation of the species, or have had dealings with this ancient habitation.

That its cultivation dates in Asia from a very early epoch is clear from the diversity of names. Sesame is called in Sanskrit tila,2102 in Malay widjin, in Chinese moa (Rumphius) or chi-ma (Bretschneider), in Japanese koba.2103 The name sesam is common to Greek, Latin, and Arabic, with trifling variations of letter. Hence it might be inferred that its area was very extended, and that the cultivation of the plant was begun independently in several different countries. But we must not attribute too much importance to such an argument. Chinese works seem to show that sesame was not introduced into China before the Christian era. The first certain mention of it occurs in a book of the fifth or sixth century, entitled Tsi-min-yao-chou.2104 Before this there is confusion between the name of this plant and that of flax, of which the seed also yields an oil, and which is not very ancient in China.2105

Theophrastus and Dioscorides say that the Egyptians cultivated a plant called sesame for the oil contained in its seed, and Pliny adds that it came from India.2106 He also speaks of a sesame wild in Egypt from which oil was extracted, but this was probably the castor-oil plant.2107 It is not proved that the ancient Egyptians before the time of Theophrastus cultivated sesame. No drawing or seeds have been found in the monuments. A drawing from the tomb of Rameses III. show the custom of mixing small seeds with flour in making pastry, and in modern times this is done with sesame seeds, but others are also used, and it is not possible to recognize in the drawing those of the sesame in particular.2108 If the Egyptians had known the species at the time of the Exodus, eleven hundred years before Theophrastus, there would probably have been some mention of it in the Hebrew books, because of the various uses of the seed and especially of the oil. Yet commentators have found no trace of it in the Old Testament. The name semsem or simsim is clearly Semitic, but only of the more recent epoch of the Talmud,2109 and of the agricultural treatise of Alawwam,2110 compiled after the Christian era began. It was perhaps a Semitic people who introduced the plant and the name semsem (whence the sesam of the Greeks) into Egypt after the epoch of the great monuments and of the Exodus. They may have received it with the name from Babylonia, where Herodotus says2111 that sesame was cultivated.