Origin of Cultivated Plants

I believed, à priori, that a great number of the species cultivated for more than four thousand years would have altered from their original condition to such a degree that they could no longer be recognized among wild plants. It appears, on the contrary, that the forms anterior to cultivation have commonly remained side by side with those which cultivators employed and propagated from century to century. This may be explained in two ways: 1. The period of four thousand years is short compared to the duration of most of the specific forms in phanerogamous plants. 2. The cultivated species receive, outside of cultivated ground, continual reinforcements from the seeds which man, birds, and different natural agents disperse and transport in a thousand ways. Naturalizations produced in this manner often confound the wild plants with the cultivated ones, and the more easily that they fertilize each other since they belong to the same species. This fact is clearly demonstrated in the case of a plant of the old world cultivated in America, in gardens, and which, later, becomes naturalized on a large scale in the open country or the woods, like the cardoon at Buenos Ayres, and the oranges in several American countries. Cultivation widens areas, and supplements the deficits which the natural reproduction of the species may present. There are, however, a few exceptions, which are worth mentioning in a separate article.

Article IV.—Cultivated Plants which are Extinct, or becoming Extinct in a Wild State

These species to which I allude present three remarkable characters: —

1. They have not been found wild, or only once or twice, and often doubtfully, although the regions whence they come have been visited by several botanists.

2. They have not the faculty of sowing themselves, and propagating indefinitely outside cultivated ground. In other terms, in such cases they do not pass out of the condition of adventitious plants.

3. It cannot be supposed that they are derived within historic times from certain allied species.

These three characters are found united in the following species: – Bean (Faba vulgaris), chick-pea (Cicer arietinum), ervilla (Ervum Ervilia), lentil (Ervum lens), tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum), wheat (Triticum vulgare), maize (Zea mays). The sweet potato (Convolvulus batatas) should be added if the kindred species were better known to be distinct, and the carthamine (Carthamus tinctorius) if the interior of Arabia had been explored, and we had not found a mention of the plant in an Arabian author.

All these species, and probably others of little-known countries or genera, appear to be extinct or on their way to become so. Supposing they ceased to be cultivated, they would disappear, whereas the majority of cultivated plants have become somewhere naturalized, and would persist in a wild state.

The seven species mentioned just now, excepting tobacco, have seeds full of fecula, which are the food of birds, rodents, and different insects, and have not the power of passing entire through their alimentary canal. This is probably the sole or principal cause of their inferiority in the struggle for existence.

Thus my researches into cultivated plants show that certain species are extinct or becoming extinct since the historical epoch, and that not in small islands but on vast continents without any great modifications of climate. This is an important result for the history of all organic beings in all epochs.

Article V.—Concluding Remarks

1. Cultivated plants do not belong to any particular category, for they belong to fifty-one different families. They are, however, all phanerogamous except the mushroom (Agaricus campestris).

2. The characters which have most varied in cultivation are, beginning with the most variable: a. The size, form, and colour of the fleshy parts, whatever organ they belong to (root, bulb, tubercle, fruit, or seed), and the abundance of fecula, sugar, and other substances which are contained in these parts; b. The number of seeds, which is often in inverse ratio to the development of the fleshy parts of the plant; c. The form, size, or pubescence of the floral organs which persist round the fruits or seeds; d. The rapidity of the phenomena of vegetation – whence often results the quality of ligneous or herbaceous plants, and of perennial, biennial, or annual.

The stems, leaves, and flowers vary little in plants cultivated for those organs. The last formations of each yearly or biennial growth vary most; in other terms, the results of vegetation vary more than the organs which cause vegetation.

3. I have not observed the slightest indication of an adaptation to cold. When the cultivation of a species advances towards the north (maize, flax, tobacco, etc.), it is explained by the production of early varieties, which can ripen before the cold season, or by the custom of cultivating in the north, in summer, the species which in the south are sown in winter. The study of the northern limits of wild species had formerly led me to the same conclusion, for they have not changed within historic times although the seeds are carried frequently and continually to the north of each limit. Periods of more than four or five thousand years, or changements of form and duration, are needed apparently to produce a modification in a plant which will allow it to support a greater degree of cold.

4. The classification of varieties made by agriculturists and gardeners are generally based on those characters which vary most (form, size, colour, taste of the fleshy parts, beard in the ears of corn, etc.). Botanists are mistaken when they follow this example; they should consult those more fixed characters of the organs for the sake of which the species are not cultivated.

5. A non-cultivated species being a group of more or less similar forms, among which subordinate groups may often be distinguished (races, varieties, sub-varieties), it may have happened that two or more of these slightly differing forms may have been introduced into cultivation. This must have been the case especially when the habitation of a species is extensive, and yet more when it is disjunctive. The first case is probably that of the cabbage (Brassica), of flax, bird-cherry (Prunus avium), the common pear, etc. The second is probably that of the gourd, the melon, and trefoil haricot, which existed previous to cultivation both in India and Africa.

6. No distinctive character is known between a naturalized plant which arose several generations back from a cultivated plant, and a wild plant sprung from plants which have always been wild. In any case, in the transition from cultivated plant to wild plant, the particular features which are propagated by grafting are not preserved by seedlings. For instance, the olive tree which has become wild is the oleaster, the pear bears smaller fruits, the Spanish chestnut yields a common fruit. For the rest, the forms naturalized from cultivated species have not yet been sufficiently observed from generation to generation. M. Sagot has done this for the vine. It would be interesting to compare in the same manner with their cultivated forms Citrus, Persica, and the cardoon, naturalized in America, far from their original home, as also the Agave and the prickly pear, wild in America, with their naturalized varieties in the old world. We should know exactly what persists after a temporary state of cultivation.

7. A species may have had, previous to cultivation, a restricted habitation, and subsequently occupy an immense area as a cultivated and sometimes a naturalized plant.

8. In the history of cultivated plants, I have noticed no trace of communication between the peoples of the old and new worlds before the discovery of America by Columbus. The Scandinavians, who had pushed their excursions as far as the north of the United States, and the Basques of the Middle Ages, who followed whales perhaps as far as America, do not seem to have transported a single cultivated species. Neither has the Gulf Stream produced any effect. Between America and Asia two transports of useful plants perhaps took place, the one by man (the Batata, or sweet potato) the other by the agency of man or of the sea (the cocoa-nut palm).

1

Hooker, Flora Tasmaniæ, i. p. cx.

2

Bretschneider, On the Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Works, p. 7.

3

De Naidaillac, Les Premiers Hommes et les Temps Préhistoriques, i. pp. 266, 268. The absence of traces of agriculture among these remains is, moreover, corroborated by Heer and Cartailhac, both well versed in the discoveries of archæology.

4

M. Montelius, from Cartailhac, Revue, 1875, p. 237.

5

Heer, Die Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten, in 4to, Zurich, 1865. See the article on “Flax.”

6

Perrin, Étude Préhistorique de la Savoie, in 4to, 1870; Castelfranco, Notizie intorno alla Stazione lacustre di Lagozza; and Sordelli, Sulle piante della torbiera della Lagozza, in the Actes de la Soc. Ital. des Scien. Nat., 1880.

7

Much, Mittheil d. Anthropol. Ges. in Wien, vol. vi.; Sacken, Sitzber. Akad. Wien., vol. vi. Letter of Heer on these works and analysis of them in Naidaillac, i. p. 247.

8

Alph. de Candolle, Géographie Botanique Raisonnée, chap. x. p. 1055; chap. xi., xix., xxvii.

9

Unger, Versuch einer Geschichte der Pflanzenwelt, 1852.

10

Forbes, On the Connection between the Distribution of the Existing Fauna and Flora of the British Isles, with the Geological Changes which have affected their Area, in 8vo, Memoirs of the Geological Survey, vol. i. 1846.

11

A. de Candolle, Géographie Botanique Raisonnée, chap. vii. and x.

12

Ibid., chap. viii. p. 804.

13

Bretscheider, On the Study and Value, etc., p. 15.

14

Ibid.

15

Ibid., p. 23.

16

Atsuma-gusa. Recueil pour servir à la connaissance de l’extrême Orient, Turretini, vol. vi., pp. 200, 293.

17

There are in the French language two excellent works, which give the sum of modern knowledge with regard to the East and Egypt. The one is the Manuel de l’Histoire Ancienne de l’Orient, by François Lenormand, 3 vols. in 12mo, Paris, 1869; the other, L’Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient, by Maspero, 1 vol. in 8vo, Paris, 1878.

18

Nemnich, Allgemeines polyglotten-Lexicon der Naturgeschichte, 2 vols. in 4to.

19

Hehn, Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere in ihren Uebergang aus Asien, in 8vo, 3rd edit. 1877.

20

Bretschneider, On the Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Works, with Notes on the History of Plants and Geographical Botany from Chinese Sources, in 8vo, 51 pp., with illustrations, Foochoo, without date, but the preface bears the date Dec. 1870. Notes on Some Botanical Questions, in 8vo, 14 pp., 1880.

21

Wilson’s dictionary contains names of plants, but botanists have more confidence in the names indicated by Roxburgh in his Flora Indica (edit. of 1832, 3 vols. in 8vo), and in Piddington’s English Index to the Plants of India, Calcutta, 1832. Scholars find a greater number of words in the texts, but they do not give sufficient proof of the sense of these words. As a rule, we have not in Sanskrit what we have in Hebrew, Greek, and Chinese – a quotation of phrases concerning each word translated into a modern language.

22

The best work on the plant-names in the Old Testament is that of Rosenmüller, Handbuch der biblischen Alterkunde, in 8vo, vol. iv., Leipzig, 1830. A good short work, in French, is La Botanique de la Bible, by Fred. Hamilton, in 8vo, Nice, 1871.

23

Reynier, a Swiss botanist, who had been in Egypt, has given the sense of many plant-names in the Talmud. See his volumes entitled Economie Publique et Rurale des Arabes et des Juifs, in 8vo, 1820; and Economie Publique et Rurale des Egyptiens et des Carthaginois, in 8vo, Lausanne, 1823. The more recent works of Duschak and Löw are not based upon a knowledge of Eastern plants, and are unintelligible to botanists because of names in Syriac and Hebrew characters.

24

Adolphe Pictet, Les Origines des Peuples Indo-Européens, 3 vols, in 8vo, Paris, 1878.

25

A certain number of species whose origin is well known, such as the carrot, sorrel, etc., are mentioned only in the summary at the beginning of the last part, with an indication of the principal facts concerning them.

26

Some species are cultivated sometimes for their roots and sometimes for their leaves or seeds. In other chapters will be found species cultivated sometimes for their leaves (as fodder) or for their seeds, etc. I have classed them according to their commonest use. The alphabetical index refers to the place assigned to each species.

27

See the young state of the plant when the part of the stem below the cotyledons is not yet swelled. Turpin gives a drawing of it in the Annales des Sciences Naturelles, series 1, vol xxi. pl. 5.

28

In A. de Candolle, Géogr. Bot. Raisonnée, p. 826.

29

Linnæus, Spec. Plant, p. 935.

30

Ledebour, Fl. Ross., i. p. 225.

31

Boissier, Fl. Orient, i. p. 400.

32

Buhse, Aufzählung Transcaucasien, p. 30.

33

Hooker, Flora of British India, i. p. 166.

34

Maximowicz, Primitiæ Floræ Amurensis, p. 47.

35

Thunberg, Fl. Jap., p. 263.

36

Franchet and Savatier, Enum. Plant Jap., i. p. 39.

37

Unger, Pflanzen des Alten Ægyptens, p. 51, figs. 24 and 29.

38

In my manuscript dictionary of common names, drawn from the floras of thirty years ago.

39

Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., iii. p. 126.

40

Webb, Phytogr. Canar., p. 83; Iter. Hisp., p. 71; Bentham, Fl. Hong Kong, p. 17; Hooker, Fl. Brit. Ind., i. p. 166.

41

Willkomm and Lange, Prod. Fl. Hisp., iii. p. 748; Viviani, Flor. Dalmat., iii. p. 104; Boissier, Fl. Orient., i. p. 401.

42

Webb, Phytographia Canariensis, i. p. 83.

43

Webb, Iter. Hispaniense, 1838, p. 72.

44

Carrière, Origine des Plantes Domestiques démontrée par la Culture du Radis Sauvage, in 8vo, 24 pp., 1869.

45

Ledebour, Fl. Ross.; Boissier, Fl. Orient. Works on the flora of the valley of the Amur.

46

A. de Candolle, Géographie Botanique Raisonnée, p. 654.

47

Delalande, Hœdic et Houat, 8vo pamphlet, Nantes, 1850, p. 109.

48

Hardouin, Renou, and Leclerc, Catalogue du Calvados, p. 85; De Brebisson, Fl. de Normandie, p. 25.

49

Watson, Cybele, i. p. 159.

50

Babington, Manual of Brit. Bot., 2nd edit., p. 28.

51

Ledebour, Fl. Ross., i. p. 159.

52

Grisebach, Spicilegium Fl. Rumel., i. p. 265.

53

Fries, Summa, p. 30.

54

Miquel, Disquisitio pl. regn. Batav.

55

Moritzi, Dict. Inéd. des Noms Vulgaires.

56

Moritzi, ibid.; Viviani, Fl. Dalmat., iii. p. 322.

57

Neilreich, Fl. Wien, p. 502.

58

Linnæus, Fl. Suecica, No. 540.

59

H. Davies, Welsh Botanology, p. 63.

60

In turnips and swedes the swelled part is, as in the radish, the lower part of the stem, below the cotyledons, with a more or less persistent part of the root. (See Turpin. Ann. Sc. Natur., ser. 1, vol. xxi.) In the Kohl-rabi (Brassica oleracea caulo-rapa) it is the stem.

61

This classification has been the subject of a paper by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, Transactions of the Horticultural Society, vol. v.

62

Fries, Summa Veget. Scand., i. p. 29.

63

Ledebour, Fl. Ross., i. p. 216.

64

Boissier, Flora Orientalis; Sir J. Hooker, Flora of British India; Thunberg, Flora Japonica; Franchet and Savatier, Enumeratio Plantarum Japonicarum.

65

Piddington, Index.

66

Kæmpfer, Amœn., p. 822.

67

Davies, Welsh Botanology, p. 65.

68

Moritzi, Dict. MS., compiled from published floras.

69

Threlkeld, Synopsis Stirpium Hibernicarum, 1 vol. in 8vo, 1727.

70

Moritzi, Dict. MS.

71

Rosenmüller, Biblische Naturgeschichte, vol. i., gives none.

72

Linnæus, Species, p. 361; Loureiro, Fl. Cochinchinensis, p. 225.

73

Maximowicz, Diagnoses Plantarum Japonicæ et Manshuriæ, in Mélanges Biologiques du Bulletin de l’Acad., St. Petersburg, decad 13, p. 18.

74

Dioscorides, Mat. Med., 1. 2, c. 139; Columella, 1. 11, c. 3, 18, 35; Lenz, Bot. der Alten, p. 560.

75

Pliny, Hist. Plant., 1. 19, c. 5.

76

Nemnich, Polygl. Lexicon, ii. p. 1313.

77

Lenz, Bot. der Alten, p. 560; Heldreich, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands; Langkavel, Bot. der Späteren Griechen.

78

Sprengel, Dioscoridis, etc., ii. p. 462.

79

Olivier de Serres, Théâtre de l’Agriculture, p. 471.

80

Bauhin, Hist. Pl., iii. p. 154.

81

The best information about the cultivation of this plant was given by Bancroft to Sir W. Hooker, and may be found in the Botanical Magazine, pl. 3092. A. P. de Candolle published, in La 5e Notice sur les Plantes Rares des Jardin Bot. de Genève, an illustration showing the principal bulb.

82

Grisebach, Flora of British West-India Islands.

83

Bertoloni, Flora Italica, ii. p. 146; Decaisne, Recherches sur la Garance, p. 68; Boissier, Flora Orientalis, iii. p. 17; Ledebour, Flora Rossica, ii. p. 405.

84

Cosson and Germain, Flore des Environs de Paris, ii. p. 365.

85

Kirschleger, Flore d’Alsace, i. p. 359.

86

Willkomm and Lange, Prodromus Floræ Hispanicæ, ii. p. 307.

87

Ball, Spicilegium Floræ Maroccanæ, p. 483; Munby, Catal. Plant. Alger., edit. 2, p. 17.

88

Piddington, Index.

89

Plinius, lib. 19, cap. 3.

90

De Gasparin, Traité d’Agriculture, iv. p. 253.

91

Columna, Ecphrasis, ii. p. 11.

92

Linnæus, Hortus Cliffortianus, p. 420.

93

A. de Candolle, Géogr. Bot. Raisonnée, p. 824.

94

Schlechtendal, Bot. Zeit. 1858, p. 113.

95

Decaisne, Recherches sur l’Origine de quelques-unes de nos Plantes Alimentaires, in Flore des Serres et Jardins, vol. 23, 1881, p. 112.

96

Lescarbot, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, edit. 3, 1618, t. vi. p. 931.

97

Pickering, Chron. Arrang., pp. 749, 972.

98

Catalogue of Indiana Plants, 1881, p. 15.

99

Boissier, Fl. Orient., iii. p. 745; Viviani, Fl. Dalmat., ii. p. 108; Bertoloni, Fl. Ital., viii. p. 348; Gussone, Synopsis Fl. Siculæ, ii. p. 384; Munby, Catal. Alger., edit. 2, p. 22.

100

A. de Candolle, Géogr. Bot. Raisonnée, p. 671.

101

Fraas, Synopsis Fl. Class., p. 196; Lenz, Bot. der Alten, p. 485.

102

Willkomm and Lange, Prodromus Floræ Hispanicæ, ii. p. 223; De Candolle, Flore Française, iv. p. 59; Koch, Synopsis Fl. Germ., edit. 2, p. 488; Ledebour, Fl. Ross., ii. p. 794; Boissier, Fl. Orientalis, iii. p. 767; Bertoloni, Fl. Ital., viii. p. 365.

103

Tournefort, Éléments de Botanique, p. 379.

104

Gussone, Synopsis Floræ Siculæ.

105

A. de Candolle, Géogr. Bot. Raisonnée, pp. 810, 816.

106

Acosta, p. 163, verso.

107

De l’Ecluse (or Clusius), Rariarum Plantarum Historiæ, 1601, lib. 4, p. lxxix., with illustration.

108

De Martius, Flora Brasil., vol. x. p. 12.

109

Von Humboldt, Nouvelle Espagne, edit. 2, vol. ii. p. 451; Essai sur la Géographie des Plantes, p. 29.

110

At that epoch Virginia was not distinguished from Carolina.

111

Banks, Trans. Hort. Soc., 1805, vol. i. p. 8.

112

Gerard, Herbal, 1597, p. 781, with illustration.

113

Banks, Trans. Hort. Soc., 1805, vol. i. p. 8.

114

Dunal, Hist. Nat. des Solanum, in 4to.

115

The plant imported by Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake was clearly the sweet potato, Sir J. Banks says; whence it results that the questions discussed by Humboldt touching the localities visited by these travellers do not apply to the potato.

116

De l’Ecluse, Rariarum Plantarum Historiæ, 1601, lib. 4. p. lxxviii.

117

Targioni-Tozzetti, Lezzioni, ii. p. 10; Cenni Storici sull’ Introduzione di Varie Piante nell’ Agricoltura di Toscana, 1 vol. in 8vo, Florence, 1853, p. 37.

118

Solanum verrucosum, whose introduction into the neighbourhood of Gex, near Geneva, I mentioned in 1855, has since been abandoned because its tubers are too small, and because it does not, as it was hoped, withstand the potato-fungus.

119

Chloris Andina, in 4to. p. 103.

120

Sabine, Trans. Hort. Soc., vol. v. p. 249.

121

No importance should be attached to this flavour, nor to the watery quality of some of the tubers, since in hot countries, even in the south of Europe, the potato is often poor. The tubers, which are subterranean ramifications of the stem, are turned green by exposure to the light, and are rendered bitter.