Origin of Cultivated Plants

An ancient cultivation in the Euphrates valley agrees with the existence of a Sanskrit name, tila, the tilu of the Brahmans (Rheede, Malabar, i., ix., pp 105-107), a word of which there are traces in several modern languages of India, particularly in Ceylon.2112 Thus we are carried back to India in accordance with the origin of which Pliny speaks, but it is possible that India itself may have received the species from the Sunda Isles before the arrival of the Aryan conquerors. Rumphius gives three names for the sesame in these islands, very different one from the other, and from the Sanskrit word, which supports the theory of a more ancient existence in the archipelago than on the continent.

In conclusion, from the fact that the sesame is wild in Java, and from historical and philological arguments, the plant seems to have had its origin in the Sunda Isles, It was introduced into India and the Euphrates valley two or three thousand years ago, and into Egypt at a less remote epoch, from 1000 to 500 B.C. It was transported from the Guinea coast to Brazil by the Portuguese,2113 but it is unknown how long it has been cultivated in the rest of Africa.

Castor-oil Plant—Ricinus communis, Linnæus.

The most modern works and those in highest repute consider the south of Asia to be the original home of this Euphorbiacea; sometimes they indicate certain varieties in Africa or America without distinguishing the wild from the cultivated plant. I have reason to believe that the true origin is to be found in tropical Africa, in accordance with the opinion of Ball.2114

The difficulties with which the question is attended arise from the antiquity of cultivation in different countries, from the facility with which the plant sows itself and becomes naturalized on rubbish-heaps and in waste ground, lastly from the diversity of its forms, which have often been described as species. This latter point need not detain us, for Dr. J. Müller’s careful monograph2115 proves the existence of sixteen varieties, scarcely hereditary, which pass one into the other by many transitions, and constitute, therefore, but one species.

The number of varieties is the sign of a very ancient cultivation. They differ more or less as to capsules, seeds, inflorescence, etc. Moreover, they are small trees in hot countries, but they do not endure frost, and become annuals north of the Alps and in similar regions. They are in such cases planted in gardens for ornament, while in the tropics, and even in Italy, they are grown for the sake of the oil contained in the seed. This oil, which is more or less purgative, is used for lamps in Bengal and elsewhere.

In no country has the species been found wild with such certainty as in Abyssinia, Sennaar, and the Kordofan. The expressions of authors and collectors are distinct on this head. The castor-oil plant is common in rocky places in the valley of Chiré, near Goumalo, says Quartin Dillon; it is wild in those parts of Upper Sennaar which are flooded during the rains, says Hartmann.2116 I have a specimen from Kotschy, No. 243, gathered on the northern slope of Mount Kohn, in the Kordofan. The indications of travellers in Mozambique and on the coast of Guinea are not so clear, but it is possible that the natural area of the species covers a great part of tropical Africa. As it is a useful species, and one very conspicuous and easily propagated, the negroes must have early diffused it. However, as we draw near the Mediterranean, it is no longer said to be indigenous. In Egypt, Schweinfurth and Ascherson2117 say the species is only cultivated and naturalized. Probably in Algeria, Sardinia, and Morocco, and even in the Canaries, where it is principally found in the sand on the sea-shore, it has been naturalized for centuries. I believe this to be the case with specimens brought from Djedda, in Arabia, by Schimper, which were gathered near a cistern. Yet Forskal2118 gathered the caster-oil plant in the mountains of Arabia Felix, which may signify a wild station. Boissier2119 indicates it in Beluchistan and the south of Persia, but as “subspontaneous,” as in Syria, Anatolia, and Greece.

Rheede2120 speaks of the plant as cultivated in Malabar and growing in the sand, but modern Anglo-Indian authors do not allow that it is wild. Some make no mention of the species. A few speak of the facility with which the species becomes naturalized from cultivation. Loureiro had seen it in Cochin-China and in China “cultivated and uncultivated,” which perhaps means escaped from cultivation. Lastly, for the Sunda Islands, Rumphius2121 is as usual one of the most interesting authorities. The castor-oil plant, he says, grows especially in Java, where it forms immense fields and produces a great quantity of oil. At Amboyna, it is planted here and there, near dwellings and in fields, rather for medicinal purposes. The wild species grows in deserted gardens (in desertis hortis); it is doubtless sprung from the cultivated plant (sine dubio degeneratio domestica). In Japan the castor-oil plant grows among shrubs and on the slopes of Mount Wuntzen, but Franchet and Savatier add,2122 “probably introduced.” Lastly, Dr. Bretschneider mentions the species in his work of 1870, p. 20; but what he says here, and in a letter of 1881, does not argue an ancient cultivation in China.

The species is cultivated in tropical America. It becomes easily naturalized in clearings, on rubbish-heaps, etc.; but no botanist has found it in the conditions of a really indigenous plant. Its introduction must have taken place soon after the discovery of America, for a common name, lamourou, exists in the West India Islands; and Piso gives another in Brazil, nhambuguacu, figuero inferno in Portuguese. I have received the largest number of specimens from Bahia; none are accompanied by the assertion that it is really indigenous.

In Egypt and Western Asia the culture of the species dates from so remote an epoch that it has given rise to mistakes as to its origin. The ancient Egyptians practised it extensively, according to Herodotus, Pliny, Diodorus, etc. There can be no mistake as to the species, as its seeds have been found in the tombs.2123 The Egyptian name was kiki. Theophrastus and Dioscorides mention it, and it is retained in modern Greek,2124 while the Arabs have a totally different name, kerua, kerroa, charua.2125

Roxburgh and Piddington quote a Sanskrit name, eranda, erunda, which has left descendants in the modern languages of India. Botanists do not say from what epoch of Sanskrit this name dates; as the species belongs to hot climates, the Aryans cannot have known it before their arrival in India, that is at a less ancient epoch than the Egyptian monuments.

The extreme rapidity of the growth of the castor-oil plant has suggested different names in Asiatic language, and that of Wunderbaum in German. The same circumstance, and the analogy with the Egyptian name kiki, have caused it to be supposed that the kikajon of the Old Testament,2126 the growth, it is said, of a single night, was this plant.

I pass a number of common names more or less absurd, as palma Christi, girasole, in some parts of Italy, etc., but it is worth while to note the origin of the name castor oil, as a proof of the English habit of accepting names without examination, and sometimes of distorting them. It appears that in the last century this plant was largely cultivated in Jamaica, where it was once called agno casto by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, being confounded with Vitex agnus castus, a totally different plant. From casto the English planters and London traders made castor.2127

Walnut—Juglans regia, Linnæus.

Some years ago the walnut tree was known to be wild in Armenia, in the district to the south of the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea, in the mountains of the north and north-east of India, and in Burmah.2128 C. Koch2129 denied that it was indigenous in Armenia and to the south of the Caucasus, but this has been proved by several travellers. It has since been discovered wild in Japan,2130 which renders it probable that the species exists also in the north of China, as Loureiro and Bunge said,2131 but without particularizing its wild character. Heldreich2132 has recently placed it beyond a doubt that the walnut is abundant in a wild state in the mountains of Greece, which agrees with passages in Theophrastus2133 which had been overlooked. Lastly, Heuffel saw it, also wild, in the mountains of Banat.2134 Its modern natural area extends, then, from eastern temperate Europe to Japan. It once existed in Europe further to the west, for leaves of the walnut have been found in the quaternary tufa in Provence.2135 Many species of Juglans existed in our hemisphere in the tertiary and quaternary epochs; there are now ten, at most, distributed throughout North America and temperate Asia.

The use of the walnut and the planting of the tree may have begun in several of the countries where the species was found, and cultivation extended gradually and slightly its artificial area. The walnut is not one of those trees which sows itself and is easily naturalized. The nature of its fruit is perhaps against this; and, moreover, it needs a climate where the frosts are not severe and the heat moderate. It scarcely passes the northern limit of the vine, and does not extend nearly so far south.

The Greeks, accustomed to olive oil, neglected the walnut until they received from Persia a better variety, called karuon basilikon,2136 or Persikon.2137 The Romans cultivated the walnut from the time of their kings; they considered it of Persian origin.2138 They had an old custom of throwing nuts in the celebration of weddings.

Archæology confirms these details. The only nuts which have hitherto been found under the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, or Italy are confined to a single locality near Parma, called Fontinellato, in a stratum of the iron age.2139 Now, this metal, very rare at the time of the Trojan war, cannot have come into general use among the agricultural population of Italy until the fifth or sixth century before Christ, an epoch at which even bronze was perhaps still unknown to the north of the Alps. In the station at Lagozza, walnuts have been found in a much higher stratum, and not ancient.2140 Evidently the walnuts of Italy, Switzerland, and France are not descended from the fossil plants of the quaternary tufa of which I spoke just now.

It is impossible to say at what period the walnut was first planted in India. It must have been early, for there is a Sanskrit name, akschôda, akhoda, or akhôta. Chinese authors say that the walnut was introduced among them from Thibet, under the Han dynasty, by Chang-kien, about the year 140-150 B.C.2141 This was perhaps a perfected variety. Moreover, it seems probable, from the actual records of botanists, that the wild walnut is rare in the north of China, and is perhaps wanting in the east. The date of its cultivation in Japan is unknown.

The walnut tree and walnuts had an infinite number of names among ancient peoples, which have exercised the science and imagination of philologists,2142 but the origin of the species is so clear that we need not stay to consider them.

Areca—Areca Catechu, Linnæus.

The areca palm is much cultivated in the countries where it is a custom to chew betel, that is to say throughout Southern Asia. The nut, or rather the almond which forms the principal part of the seed contained in the fruit, is valued for its aromatic taste; chopped, mixed with lime, and enveloped in a leaf of the pepper-betel, it forms an agreeable stimulant, which produces a flow of saliva and blackens the teeth to the satisfaction of the natives.

The author of the principal work on the order Palmaceæ, de Martius,2143 says of the origin of this species, “Its country is uncertain (non constat); probably the Sunda Isles.” We may find it possible to affirm something positive by referring to more modern authors.

On the continent of India, in Ceylon and Cochin-China, the species is always indicated as cultivated.2144 So in the Sunda Isles, the Moluccas, etc., to the south of Asia. Blume,2145 in his work entitled Rumphia, says that the “habitat” of the species is the Malay Peninsula, Siam, and the neighbouring islands. Yet he does not appear to have seen the indigenous plants of which he speaks.] Dr. Bretschneider2146 believes that the species is a native of the Malay Archipelago, principally of Sumatra, for he says those islands and the Philippines are the only places where it is found wild. The first of these facts is not confirmed by Miquel, nor the second by Blanco,2147 who lived in the Philippines. Blume’s opinion appears the most probable, but we must still say with Martius, “The country is not proved.” The existence of a number of Malay names, pinang, jambe, etc., and of a Sanskrit name, gouvaka, as well as very numerous varieties, show the antiquity of cultivation. The Chinese received it, 111 B.C., from the south, with the Malay name, pin-lang. The Telinga name, arek, is the origin of the botanical name Areca.

Elæis—Elæis guineensis, Jacquin.

Travellers who visited the coast of Guinea in the first half of the sixteenth century2148 already noticed this palm, from which the negroes extracted oil by pressing the fleshy part of the fruit. The tree is indigenous on all that coast.2149 It is also planted, and the exportation of palm-oil is the object of an extensive trade. As it is also found wild in Brazil and perhaps in Guiana,2150 a doubt arose as to the true origin. It seems the more likely to be American that the only other species which with this one constitutes the genus Elæis belongs to New Granada.2151 Robert Brown, however, and the authors who have studied the family of palms, are unanimous in their belief that Elæis guineensis was introduced into America by the negroes and slave-traders in the traffic between the Guinea coast and the coast of America. Many facts confirm this opinion. The first botanists who visited Brazil, Piso and Marcgraf and others, do not mention the Elæis. It is only found on the littoral, from Rio di Janeiro to the mouth of the Amazon, never in the interior. It is often cultivated, or has the appearance of a species escaped from the plantations. Sloane,2152 who explored Jamaica in the seventeenth century, relates that this tree was introduced in his time into a plantation which he names, from the coast of Guinea. It has since become naturalized in some of the West India Islands.2153

Cocoa-nut Palm—Cocos nucifera, Linnæus.

The cocoa-nut palm is perhaps, of all tropical trees, the one which yields the greatest variety of products. Its wood and fibres are utilized in various ways. The sap extracted from the inner part of the inflorescence yields a much-prized alcoholic drink. The shell of the nut forms a vessel, the milk of the half-ripe fruit is a pleasant drink, and the nut itself contains a great deal of oil. It is not surprising that so valuable a tree has been a good deal planted and transported. Besides, its dispersion is aided by natural causes. The woody shell and fibrous envelope of the nut enable it to float in salt water without injury to the germ. Hence the possibility of its transportation to great distances by currents and its naturalization on coasts where the temperature is favourable. Unfortunately, this tree requires a warm, damp climate, such as exists only in the tropics, or in exceptional localities just without them. Nor does it thrive at a distance from the sea.

The cocoa-nut abounds on the littoral of the warm regions of Asia, of the islands to the south of this continent, and in analogous regions of Africa and America; but it may be asserted that it dates in Brazil, the West Indies, and the west coast of Africa from an introduction which took place about three centuries ago. Piso and Marcgraf2154 seem to admit that the species is foreign to Brazil without saying so positively. De Martius,2155 who has published a very important work on the Palmaceæ, and has travelled through the provinces of Bahia, Pernambuco, and others, where the cocoa-nut abounds, does not say that it is wild. It was introduced into Guiana by missionaries.2156 Sloane2157 says it is an exotic in the West Indies. An old author of the sixteenth century, Martyr, whom he quotes, speaks of its introduction. This probably took place a few years after the discovery of America, for Joseph Acosta2158 saw the cocoa-nut palm at Porto Rico in the sixteenth century. De Martius says that the Portuguese introduced it on the coast of Guinea. Many travellers do not even mention it in this region, where it is apparently of no great importance. More common in Madagascar and on the east coast, it is not, however, named in several works on the plants of Zanzibar, the Seychelles, Mauritius, etc., perhaps because it is considered as cultivated in these parts.

Evidently the species is not of African origin, nor of the eastern part of tropical America. Eliminating these countries, there remain western tropical America, the islands of the Pacific, the Indian Archipelago, and the south of Asia, where the tree abounds with every appearance of being more or less wild and long established.

The navigators Dampier and Vancouver2159 found it at the beginning of the seventeenth century, forming woods in the islands near Panama, not on the mainland, and in the isle of Cocos, situated at three hundred miles from the continent in the Pacific. At that time these islands were uninhabited. Later the cocoa-nut palm was found on the western coast from Mexico to Peru, but usually authors do not say that it was wild, excepting Seemann,2160 however, who saw this palm both wild and cultivated on the Isthmus of Panama. According to Hernandez,2161 in the sixteenth century the Mexicans called it coyolli, a word which does not seem to be native.

Oviedo,2162 writing in 1526, in the first years of the conquest of Mexico, says that the cocoa-nut palm was abundant on the coast of the Pacific in the province of the Cacique Chiman, and he clearly describes the species. This does not prove the tree to be wild. In southern Asia, especially in the islands, the cocoa-nut is both wild and cultivated. The smaller the islands, and the lower and the more subject to the influence of the sea air, the more the cocoa-nut predominates and attracts the attention of travellers. Some take their name from the tree, among others two islands close to the Andamans and one near Sumatra.

The cocoa-nut occurring with every appearance of an ancient wild condition at once in Asia and western America, the question of origin is obscure. Excellent authors have solved it differently. De Martius believes it to have been transported by currents from the islands situated to the west of Central America, into those of the Asiatic Archipelago. I formerly inclined to the same hypothesis,2163 since admitted without question by Grisebach;2164 but the botanists of the seventeenth century often regarded the species as Asiatic, and Seemann,2165 after a careful examination, says he cannot come to a decision. I will give the reasons for and against each hypothesis.

In favour of an American origin, it may be said —

1. The eleven other species of the genus Cocos are American, and all those which de Martius knew well are Brazilian.2166 Drude,2167 who has studied the Palmaceæ, has written a paper to show that each genus of this family is proper to the ancient or to the new world, excepting the genus Elæis, and even here he suspects a transport of the E. guineensis from America into Africa, which is not at all probable. (See above, p. 429.) The force of this argument is somewhat diminished by the circumstance that Cocos nucifera is a tree which grows on the littoral and in damp places, while the other species live under different conditions, frequently far from the sea and from rivers. Maritime plants, and those which grow in marshes or damp places, have commonly a more vast habitation than others of the same genus.

2. The trade winds of the Pacific, to the south and yet more to the north of the equator, drive floating bodies from America to Asia, a direction contrary to that of the general currents.2168 It is known, moreover, from the unexpected arrival of bottles containing papers on different coasts, that chance has much to do with these transports.

The arguments in favour of an Asiatic, or contrary to an American origin, are the following: —

1. A current between the third and fifth parallels, north latitude, flows from the islands of the Indian Archipelago to Panama.2169 To the north and south of this are currents which take the opposite direction, but they start from regions too cold for the cocoa-nut, and do not touch Central America, where it is supposed to have been long indigenous.

2. The inhabitants of the islands of Asia were far bolder navigators than the American Indians. It is very possible that canoes from the Asiatic Islands, containing a provision of cocoa-nuts, were thrown by tempests or false manœuvres on to the islands or the west coast of America. The converse is highly improbable.

3. The area for three centuries has been much vaster in Asia than in America, and the difference was yet more considerable before that epoch, for we know that the cocoa-nut has not long existed in the east of tropical America.

4. The inhabitants of the islands of Asia possess an immense number of varieties of this tree, which points to a very ancient cultivation. Blume, in his Rumphia, enumerates eighteen varieties in Java and the adjacent islands, and thirty-nine in the Philippines. Nothing similar has been observed in America.

5. The uses of the cocoa-nut are more varied and more habitual in Asia. The natives of America hardly utilize it except for the contents of the nut, from which they do not extract the oil.

6. The common names, very numerous and original in Asia, as we shall presently see, are rare, and often of European origin in America.

7. It is not probable that the ancient Mexicans and inhabitants of Central America would have neglected to spread the cocoa-nut in several directions, had it existed among them from a very remote epoch. The trifling breadth of the Isthmus of Panama would have facilitated the transport from one coast to the other, and the species would soon have been established in the West Indies, at Guiana, etc., as it has become naturalized in Jamaica, Antigua,2170 and elsewhere, since the discovery of America.

8. If the cocoa-nut in America dated from a geological epoch more ancient than the pleiocene or even eocene deposits in Europe, it would probably have been found on both coasts, and the islands to the east and west equally.

9. We cannot find any ancient date of the existence of the cocoa-nut in America, but its presence in Asia three or four thousand years ago is proved by several Sanskrit names. Piddington in his index only quotes one, narikela. It is the most certain, since it recurs in modern Indian languages. Scholars count ten of these, which, according to their meaning, seem to apply to the species or its fruit.2171 Narikela has passed with modifications into Arabic and Persian.2172 It is even found at Otahiti in the form ari or haari,2173 together with a Malay name.

10. The Malays have a name widely diffused in the archipelago —kalâpa. klâpa, klôpo. At Sumatra and Nicobar we find the name njîor, nicor; in the Philippines, niog; at Bali, niuh, njo; at Tahiti, niuh; and in other islands, nu, nidju, ni; even at Madagascar, wua-niu.2174 The Chinese have ye, or ye-tsu (the tree is ye). With the principal Sanskrit name this constitutes four different roots, which show an ancient existence in Asia. However, the uniformity of nomenclature in the archipelago as far as Tahiti and Madagascar indicates a transport by human agency since the existence of known languages.

The Chinese name means head of the king of Yuë, referring to an absurd legend of which Dr. Bretschneider speaks.2175 This savant tells us that the first mention of the cocoa-nut occurs in a poem of the second century before Christ, but the most unmistakable descriptions are in works later than the ninth century of our era. It is true that the ancient writers scarcely knew the south of China, the only part of the empire where the cocoa-nut palm can live.