Origin of Cultivated Plants

The artichoke offers fewer varieties, which bears out the opinion that it is a form derived from the cardoon. Targioni,386 in an excellent article upon this plant, relates that the artichoke was brought from Naples to Florence in 1466, and he proves that ancient writers, even Athenæus, were not acquainted with the artichoke, but only with the wild and cultivated cardoons. I must mention, however, as a sign of its antiquity in the north of Africa, that the Berbers have two entirely distinct names for the two plants: addad for the cardoon, taga for the artichoke.387

It is believed that the kactos, kinara, and scolimos of the Greeks, and the carduus of Roman horticulturists, were Cynara cardunculus,388 although the most detailed description, that of Theophrastus, is sufficiently confused. “The plant,” he said, “grows in Sicily” – as it does to this day – “and,” he added, “not in Greece.” It is, therefore, possible that the plants observed in our day in that country may have been naturalized from cultivation. According to Athenæus,389 the Egyptian king Ptolemy Energetes, of the second century before Christ, had found in Libya a great quantity of wild kinara, by which his soldiers had profited.

Although the indigenous species was to be found at such a little distance, I am very doubtful whether the ancient Egyptians cultivated the cardoon or the artichoke. Pickering and Unger390 believed they recognized it in some of the drawings on the monuments; but the two figures which Unger considers the most admissible seem to me extremely doubtful. Moreover, no Hebrew name is known, and the Jews would probably have spoken of this vegetable had they seen it in Egypt. The diffusion of the species in Asia must have taken place somewhat late. There is an Arab name, hirschuff or kerschouff, and a Persian name, kunghir,391 but no Sanskrit name, and the Hindus have taken the Persian word kunjir,392 which shows that it was introduced at a late epoch. Chinese authors do not mention any Cynara.393 The cultivation of the artichoke was only introduced into England in 1548.394 One of the most curious facts in the history of Cynara cardanculus is its naturalization in the present century over a vast extent of the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, where its abundance is a hindrance to travellers.395 It is becoming equally troublesome in Chili.396 It is not asserted that the artichoke has anywhere been naturalized in this manner, and this is another sign of its artificial origin.

Lettuce—Latuca Scariola, var. sativa.

Botanists are agreed in considering the cultivated lettuce as a modification of the wild species called Latuca Scariola.397 The latter grows in temperate and southern Europe, in the Canary Isles, Madeira,398 Algeria,399 Abyssinia,400 and in the temperate regions of Eastern Asia. Boissier speaks of specimens from Arabia Petrea to Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.401 He mentions a variety with crinkled leaves, similar therefore to some of our garden lettuces, which the traveller Hausknecht brought with him from the mountains of Kurdistan. I have a specimen from Siberia, found near the river Irtysch, and it is now known with certainty that the species grows in the north of India, in Kashmir, and in Nepal.402 In all these countries it is often near cultivated ground or among rubbish, but often also in rocky ground, clearings, or meadows, as a really wild plant.

The cultivated lettuce often spreads from gardens, and sows itself in the open country. No one, as far as I know, has observed it in such a case for several generations, or has tried to cultivate the wild L. Scariola, to see whether the transition is easy from the one form to the other. It is possible that the original habitat of the species has been enlarged by the diffusion of cultivated lettuces reverting to the wild form. It is known that there has been a great increase in the number of cultivated varieties in the course of the last two thousand years. Theophrastus indicated three;403 le Bon Jardinier of 1880 gives forty varieties existing in France.

The ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated the lettuce, especially as a salad. In the East its cultivation possibly dates from an earlier epoch. Nevertheless it does not appear, from the original common names both in Asia and Europe, that this plant was generally or very anciently cultivated. There is no Sanskrit nor Hebrew name known, nor any in the reconstructed Aryan tongue. A Greek name exists, tridax; Latin, latuca; Persian and Hindu, kahn; and the analogous Arabic form chuss or chass. The Latin form exists also, slightly modified, in the Slav and Germanic languages,404 which may indicate either that the Western Aryans diffused the plant, or that its cultivation spread with its name at a later date from the south to the north of Europe.

Dr. Bretschneider has confirmed my supposition405 that the lettuce is not very ancient in China, and that it was introduced there from the West. He says that the first work in which it is mentioned dates from A.D. 600 to A.D. 900.406

Wild Chicory—Cichorium Intybus, Linnæus.

The wild perennial chicory, which is cultivated as a salad, as a vegetable, as fodder, and for its roots, which are used to mix with coffee, grows throughout Europe, except in Lapland, in Marocco, and Algeria,407 from Eastern Europe to Afghanistan and Beluchistan,408 in the Punjab and Kashmir,409 and from Russia to Lake Baikal in Siberia.410 The plant is certainly wild in most of these countries; but as it often grows by the side of roads and fields, it is probable that it has been transported by man from its original home. This must be the case in India, for there is no known Sanskrit name.

The Greeks and Romans employed this species wild and cultivated,411 but their notices of it are too brief to be clear. According to Heldreich, the modern Greeks apply the general name of lachana, a vegetable or salad, to seventeen different chicories, of which he gives a list.412 He says that the species commonly cultivated is Cichorium divaricatum, Schousboe (C. pumilum, Jacquin); but it is an annual, and the chicory of which Theophrastus speaks was perennial.

Endive—Cichorium Endivia, Linnæus.

The white chicories or endives of our gardens are distinguished from Cichorium Intybus, in that they are annuals, and less bitter to the taste. Moreover, the hairs of the pappus which crowns the seed are four times longer, and unequal instead of being equal. As long as this plant was compared with C. Intybus, it was difficult not to admit two species. The origin of C. Endivia is uncertain. When we received, forty years ago, specimens of an Indian Cichorium, which Hamilton named C. cosmia, they seemed to us so like the endive that we supposed the latter to have an Indian origin, as has been sometimes suggested;413 but Anglo-Indian botanists said, and continue to assert, that in India the plant only grows under cultivation.414 The uncertainty persisted as to the geographical origin. After this, several botanists415 conceived the idea of comparing the endive with an annual species, wild in the region of the Mediterranean, Cichorium pumilum, Jacquin (C. divaricatum, Schousboe), and the differences were found to be so slight that some have suspected, and others have affirmed, their specific identity. For my part, after having seen wild specimens from Sicily, and compared the good illustrations published by Reichenbach (Icones, vol. xix., pls. 1357, 1358), I am disposed to take the cultivated endives for varieties of the same species as C. pumilum. In this case the oldest name being C. Endivia, it is the one which ought to be retained, as has been done by Schultz. It resembles, moreover, a popular name common to several languages.

The wild plant exists in the whole region, of which the Mediterranean is the centre, from Madeira,416 Marocco,417 and Algeria,418 as far as Palestine,419 the Caucasus, and Turkestan.420 It is very common in the islands of the Mediterranean and in Greece. Towards the west, in Spain and Madeira, for instance, it is probable that it has become naturalized from cultivation, judging from the positions it occupies in the fields and by the wayside.

No positive proof is found in ancient authors of the use of this plant by the Greeks and Romans;421 but it is probable that they made use of it and several other Cichoria. The common names tell us nothing, since they may have been applied to two different species. These names vary little,422 and suggest a cultivation of Græco-Roman origin. A Hindu name, kasni, and a Tamul one, koschi,423 are mentioned, but no Sanskrit name, and this indicates that the cultivation of this plant was of late origin in the east.

Spinach—Spinacia oleracea, Linnæus.

This vegetable was unknown to the Greeks and Romans.424 It was new to Europe in the sixteenth century,425 and it has been a matter of dispute whether it should be called spanacha, as coming from Spain, or spinacia, from its prickly fruit.426 It was afterwards shown that the name comes from the Arabic isfânâdsch, esbanach, or sepanach, according to different authors.427 The Persian name is ispany, or ispanaj,428 and the Hindu isfany, or palak, according to Piddington, and also pinnis, according to the same and to Roxburgh. The absence of any Sanskrit name shows a cultivation of no great antiquity in these regions. Loureiro saw the spinach cultivated at Canton, and Maximowicz in Mantschuria;429 but Bretschneider tells us that the Chinese name signifies herb of Persia, and that Western vegetables were commonly introduced into China a century before the Christian era.430 It is therefore probable that the cultivation of this plant began in Persia from the time of the Græco-Roman civilization, or that it did not quickly spread either to the east or to the west of its Persian origin. No Hebrew name is known, so that the Arabs must have received both plant and name from the Persians. Nothing leads us to suppose that they carried this vegetable into Spain. Ebn Baithar, who was living in 1235, was of Malaga; but the Arabic works he quotes do not say where the plant was cultivated, except one of them, which says that its cultivation was common at Nineveh and Babylon. Herrera’s work on Spanish agriculture does not mention the species, although it is inserted in a supplement of recent date, whence it is probable that the edition of 1513 did not speak of it; so that the European cultivation must have come from the East about the fifteenth century.

Some popular works repeat that spinach is a native of Northern Asia, but there is nothing to confirm this supposition. It evidently comes from the empire of the ancient Medes and Persians. According to Bosc,431 the traveller, Olivier brought back some seeds of it, found in the East in the open country. This would be a positive proof, if the produce of these seeds had been examined by a botanist in order to ascertain the species and the variety. In the present state of our knowledge it must be owned that spinach has not yet been found in a wild state, unless it be a cultivated modification of Spinacia tetandra, Steven, which is wild to the south of the Caucasus, in Turkestan, in Persia, and in Afghanistan, and which is used as a vegetable under the name of schamum.432

Without entering here into a purely botanical discussion, I may say that, after reading the descriptions quoted by Boissier, and looking at Wight’s433 plate of Spinacia tetandra, Roxb., cultivated in India, and the specimens of several herbaria, I see no decided difference between this plant and the cultivated spinach with prickly fruit. The term tetandra implies that one of the plants has five and the other four stamens, but the number varies in our cultivated spinaches.434

If, as seems probable, the two plants are two varieties, the one cultivated, the other sometimes wild and sometimes cultivated, the oldest name, S. oleracea, ought to persist, especially as the two plants are found in the cultivated grounds of their original country.

The Dutch or great spinach, of which the fruit has no spines, is evidently a garden product. Tragus, or Bock was the first to mention it in the sixteenth century.435

Amaranth—Amarantus gangeticus, Linnæus.

Several annual amaranths are cultivated as a green vegetable in Mauritius, Bourbon, and the Seychelles Isles, under the name of brède de Malabar.436 This appears to be the principal species. It is much cultivated in India. Anglo-Indian botanists mistook it for a time for Amarantus oleraceus of Linnæus, and Wight gives an illustration of it under this name,437 but it is now acknowledged to be a different species, and belongs to A. gangeticus. Its numerous varieties, differing in size, colour, etc., are called in the Telinga dialect tota kura, with the occasional addition of an adjective for each. There are other names in Bengali and Hindustani. The young shoots sometimes take the place of asparagus at the table of the English.438 A. melancholicus, often grown as an ornamental plant in European gardens, is considered one of the forms of this species.

Its original home is perhaps India, but I cannot discover that the plant has ever been found there in a wild state; at least, this is not asserted by any author. All the species of the genus Amarantus spread themselves in cultivated ground, on rubbish-heaps by the wayside, and thus become half-naturalized in hot countries as well as in Europe. Hence the extreme difficulty in distinguishing the species, and above all in guessing or proving their origin. The species most nearly akin to A. gangeticus appear to be Asiatic.

A. gangeticus is said by trustworthy authorities to be wild in Egypt and Abyssinia;439 but this is perhaps only the result of such naturalization as I spoke of just now. The existence of numerous varieties and of different names in India, render its Indian origin most probable.

The Japanese cultivate as vegetables A. caudatus, A. mangostanus, and A. melancholicus (or gangeticus) of Linnæus,440 but there is no proof that any of them are indigenous. In Java A. polystachyus, Blume, is cultivated; it is very common among rubbish, by the wayside, etc.441

I shall speak presently of the species grown for the seed.

Leek—Allium ampeloprasum, var. Porrum.

According to the careful monograph by J. Gay,442 the leek, as early writers443 suspected, is only a cultivated variety of Allium ampeloprasum of Linnæus, so common in the East, and in the Mediterranean region, especially in Algeria, which in Central Europe sometimes becomes naturalized in vineyards and round ancient cultivations.444 Gay seems to have mistrusted the indications of the floras of the south of Europe, for, contrary to his method with other species of which he gives the localities out of Algeria, he only quotes in the present case the Algerian localities; admitting, however, the identity of name in the authors for other countries.

The cultivated variety of Porrum has not been found wild. It is only mentioned in doubtful localities, such as vineyards, gardens, etc. Ledebour445 indicates for A. ampeloprasum the borders of the Crimea, and the provinces to the south of the Caucasus. Wallich brought a specimen from Kamaon, in India,446 but we cannot be sure that it was wild. The works on Cochin-China (Loureiro), China (Bretschneider), and Japan (Franchet and Savatier) make no mention of it.

Article II.—Fodder

Lucern—Medicago sativa, Linnæus.

The lucern was known to the Greeks and Romans. They called it in Greek medicai, in Latin medica, or herba medica, because it had been brought from Media at the time of the Persian war, about 470 years before the Christian era.447 The Romans often cultivated it, at any rate from the beginning of the first or second century. Cato does not speak of it,448 but it is mentioned by Varro, Columella, and Virgil. De Gasparin449 notices that Crescenz, in 1478, does not mention it in Italy, and that in 1711 Tull had not seen it beyond the Alps. Targioni, however, who could not be mistaken on this head, says that the cultivation of lucern was maintained in Italy, especially in Tuscany, from ancient times.450 It is rare in modern Greece.451 French cultivators have often given to the lucern the name of sainfoin, which belongs properly to Onobrychis sativa; and this transposition still exists, for instance in the neighbourhood of Geneva. The name lucern has been supposed to come from the valley of Luzerne, in Piedmont; but there is another and more probable origin. The Spaniards had an old name, eruye, mentioned by J. Bauhin,452 and the Catalans call it userdas453 whence perhaps the patois name in the south of France, laouzerdo, nearly akin to luzerne. It was so commonly cultivated in Spain that the Italians have sometimes called it herba spagna.454 The Spaniards have, besides the names already given, mielga, or melga, which appears to come from Medica, but they principally used names derived from the Arabic —alfafa, alfasafat, alfalfa. In the thirteenth century, the famous physician Ebn Baithar, who wrote at Malaga, uses the Arab word fisfisat, which he derives from the Persian isfist.455 It will be seen that, if we are to trust to the common names, the origin of the plant would be either in Spain, Piedmont, or Persia. Fortunately botanists can furnish direct and possible proofs of the original home of the species.

It has been found wild, with every appearance of an indigenous plant, in several provinces of Anatolia, to the south of the Caucasus, in several parts of Persia, in Afghanistan, in Beluchistan,456 and in Kashmir.457 In the south of Russia, a locality mentioned by some authors, it is perhaps the result of cultivation as well as in the south of Europe. The Greeks may, therefore, have introduced the plant from Asia Minor as well as from India, which extended from the north of Persia.

This origin of the lucern, which is well established, makes me note as a singular fact that no Sanskrit name is known.458 Clover and sainfoin have none either, which leads us to suppose that the Aryans had no artificial meadows.

Sainfoin—Hedysarum Onobrychis, Linnæus; Onobrychis sativa, Lamarck.

This leguminous plant, of which the usefulness in the dry and chalky soils of temperate regions is incontestable, has not been long in cultivation. The Greeks did not grow it, and their descendants have not introduced it into their agriculture to this day.459 The plant called Onobrychis by Dioscorides and Pliny, is Onobrychis Caput-Galli of modern botanists,460 a species wild in Greece and elsewhere, which is not cultivated. The sainfoin, or lupinella of the Italians, was highly esteemed as fodder in the south of France in the time of Olivier de Serres,461 that is to say, in the sixteenth century; but in Italy it was only in the eighteenth century that this cultivation spread, particularly in Tuscany.462

Sainfoin is a herbaceous plant, which grows wild in the temperate parts of Europe, to the south of the Caucasus, round the Caspian Sea,463 and even beyond Lake Baikal.464 In the south of Europe it grows only on the hills. Gussone does not reckon it among the wild species of Sicily, nor Moris among those of Sardinia, nor Munby among those of Algeria.

No Sanskrit, Persian, or Arabic names are known. Everything tends to show that the cultivation of this plant originated in the south of France as late perhaps as the fifteenth century.

French Honeysuckle, or Spanish Sainfoin—Hedysarum coronarium, Linnæus.

The cultivation of this leguminous plant, akin to the sainfoin, and of which a good illustration may be found in the Flora des Serres et des Jardins, vol. xiii. pl. 1382, has been diffused in modern times through Italy, Sicily, Malta, and the Balearic Isles.465 Marquis Grimaldi, who first pointed it out to cultivators in 1766, had seen it at Seminara, in Lower Calabria; De Gasparin466 recommends it for Algeria, and it is probable that cultivators under similar conditions in Australia, at the Cape, in South America or Mexico, would do well to try it. In the neighbourhood of Orange, in Algeria, the plant did not survive the cold of 6° centigrade.

Hedysarum coronarium grows in Italy from Genoa to Sicily and Sardinia,467 in the south of Spain468 and in Algeria,469 where it is rare. It is, therefore, a species of limited geographical area.

Purple Clover—Trifolium pratense, Linnæus.

Clover was not cultivated in ancient times, although the plant was doubtless known to nearly all the peoples of Europe and of temperate Western Asia. Its use was first introduced into Flanders in the sixteenth century, perhaps even earlier, and, according to Schwerz, the Protestants expelled by the Spaniards carried it into Germany, where they established themselves under the protection of the Elector Palatine. It was also from Flanders that the English received it in 1633, through the influence of Weston, Earl of Portland, then Lord Chancellor.470

Trifolium pratense is wild throughout Europe, in Algeria,471 on the mountains of Anatolia, in Armenia, and in Turkestan,472 in Siberia towards the Altai Mountains,473 and in Kashmir and Garwhall.474

The species existed, therefore, in Asia, in the land of the Aryan nations; but no Sanskrit name is known, whence it may be inferred that it was not cultivated.

Crimson or Italian Clover—Trifolium incarnatum, Linnæus.

An annual plant grown for fodder, whose cultivation, says Vilmorin, long confined to a few of the southern departments, becomes every day more common in France.475 De Candolle, at the beginning of the present century, had only seen it in the department of Ariège.476 It has existed for about sixty years in the neighbourhood of Geneva. Targioni does not think that it is of ancient date in Italy,477 and the trivial name trafoglio strengthens his opinion.

The Catalan fé, fench,478 and, in the patois of the south of France,479 farradje (Roussillon), farratage (Languedoc), feroutgé (Gascony), whence the French name farouch, have, on the other hand, an original character, which indicates an ancient cultivation round the Pyrenees. The term which is sometimes used, “clover of Roussillon,” also shows this.

The wild plant exists in Galicia, in Biscaya, and Catalonia,480 but not in the Balearic Isles;481 it is found in Sardinia482 and in the province of Algiers.483 It appears in several localities in France, Italy, and Dalmatia, in the valley of the Danube and Macedonia, but in many cases it is not known whether it may not have strayed from neighbouring cultivation. A singular locality in which it appears to be indigenous, according to English authors, is on the coast of Cornwall, near the Lizard. In this place, according to Bentham, it is the pale yellow variety, which is truly wild on the Continent, while the crimson variety is only naturalized in England from cultivation.484 I do not know to what degree this remark of Bentham’s as to the wild nature of the sole variety of a yellow colour (var. Molinerii, Seringe) is confirmed in all the countries where the species grows. It is the only one indicated by Moris in Sardinia, and in Dalmatia by Viviani,485 in the localities which appear natural (in pascuis collinis, in montanis, in herbidis). The authors of the Bon Jardinier486 affirm with Bentham that Trifolium Molinerii is wild in the north of France, that with crimson flowers being introduced from the south; and while they admit the absence of a good specific distinction, they note that in cultivation the variety Molinerii is of slower growth, often biennial instead of annual.