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Article I.—Vegetables

Common Cabbage—Brassica oleracea, Linnæus.

The cabbage in its wild state, as it is represented in Eng. Bot., t. 637, the Flora Danica, t. 2056, and elsewhere, is found on the rocks by the sea-shore: (1) in the Isle of Laland, in Denmark, the island of Heligoland, the south of England and Ireland, the Channel Isles, and the islands off the coast of Charente Inférieure;323 (2) on the north coast of the Mediterranean, near Nice, Genoa, and Lucca.324 A traveller of the last century, Sibthorp, said that he found it at Mount Athos, but this has not been confirmed by any modern botanist, and the species appears to be foreign in Greece, on the shores of the Caspian, as also in Siberia, where Pallas formerly said he had seen it, and in Persia.325 Not only the numerous travellers who have explored these countries have not found the cabbage, but the winters of the east of Europe and of Siberia appear to be too severe for it. Its distribution into somewhat isolated places, and in two different regions of Europe, suggests the suspicion either that plants apparently indigenous may in several cases be the result of self-sowing from cultivation,326 or that the species was formerly common, and is tending to disappear. Its presence in the western islands of Europe favours the latter hypothesis, but its absence in the islands of the Mediterranean is opposed to it.327

Let us see whether historical and philological data add anything to the facts of geographical botany.

In the first place, it is in Europe that the countless varieties of cabbage have been formed,328 principally since the days of the ancient Greeks. Theophrastus distinguished three, Pliny double that number, Tournefort twenty, De Candolle more than thirty. These modifications did not come from the East – another sign of an ancient cultivation in Europe and of a European origin.

The common names are also numerous in European languages, and rare or modern in those of Asia. Without repeating a number of names I have given elsewhere,329 I shall mention the five or six distinct and ancient roots from which the European names are derived.

Kap or kab in several Keltic and Slav names. The French name cabus comes from it. Its origin is clearly the same as that of caput, because of the head-shaped form of the cabbage.

Caul, kohl, in several Latin (caulis, stem or cabbage), German (Chôli in Old German, Kohl in modern German, kaal in Danish), and Keltic languages (kaol and kol in Breton, cal in Irish).330

Bresic, bresych, brassic, of the Keltic and Latin (brassica) languages, whence, probably, berza and verza of the Spaniards and Portuguese, varza of the Roumanians.331

Aza of the Basques (Iberians), considered by de Charencey332 as proper to the Euskarian tongue, but which differs little from the preceding.

Krambai, crambe, of the Greeks and Latins.

The variety of names in Keltic languages tends to show the existence of the species on the west coast of Europe. If the Aryan Kelts had brought the plant from Asia, they would probably not have invented names taken from three different sources. It is easy to admit, on the contrary, that the Aryan nations, seeing the cabbage wild, and perhaps already used in Europe by the Iberians or the Ligurians, either invented names or adopted those of the earlier inhabitants.

Philologists have connected the krambai of the Greeks with the Persian name karamb, karam, kalam, the Kurdish kalam, the Armenian gaghamb;333 others with a root of the supposed mother-tongue of the Aryans; but they do not agree in matters of detail. According to Fick,334 karambha, in the primitive Indo-Germanic tongue, signifies “Gemüsepflanze (vegetable), Kohl (cabbage), karambha meaning stalk, like caulis.” He adds that karambha, in Sanskrit, is the name of two vegetables. Anglo-Indian writers do not mention this supposed Sanskrit name, but only a name from a modern Hindu dialect, kopee.335 Pictet, on his side, speaks of the Sanskrit word kalamba, “vegetable stalk, applied to the cabbage.”

I have considerable difficulty, I must own, in admitting these Eastern etymologies for the Greco-Latin word crambe. The meaning of the Sanskrit word (if it exists) is very doubtful, and as to the Persian word, we ought to know if it is ancient. I doubt it, for if the cabbage had existed in ancient Persia, the Hebrews would have known it.336

For all these reasons, the species appears to me of European origin. The date of its cultivation is probably very ancient, earlier than the Aryan invasions, but no doubt the wild plant was gathered before it was cultivated.

Garden-Cress—Lepidium sativum, Linnæus.

This little Crucifer, now used as a salad, was valued in ancient times for certain properties of the seeds. Some authors believe that it answers to a certain cardamon of Dioscorides; while others apply that name to Erucaria aleppica.337 In the absence of sufficient description, as the modern common name is cardamon,338 the first of these two suppositions is probably correct.

The cultivation of the species must date from ancient times and be widely diffused, for very different names exist: reschad in Arab, turehtezuk339 in Persian, diéges340 in Albanian, a language derived from the Pelasgic; without mentioning names drawn from the similarity of taste with that of the water-cress (Nasturtium officinale). There are very distinct names in Hindustani and Bengali, but none are known in Sanskrit.341

At the present day the plant is cultivated in Europe, in the north of Africa, in Eastern Asia, India, and elsewhere, but its origin is somewhat obscure. I possess several specimens gathered in India, where Sir Joseph Hooker342 does not consider the species indigenous. Kotschy brought it back from Karrak, or Karek Island, in the Persian Gulf. The label does not say that it was a cultivated plant. Boissier343 mentions it without comment, and he afterwards speaks of specimens from Ispahan and Egypt gathered in cultivated ground. Olivier is quoted as having found the cress in Persia, but it is not said whether it was growing wild.344 It has been asserted that Sibthorp found it in Cyprus, but reference to his work shows it was in the fields.345 Poech does not mention it in Cyprus.346 Unger and Kotschy347 do not consider it to be wild in that island. According to Ledebour,348 Koch found it round the convent on Mount Ararat; Pallas near Sarepta; Falk on the banks of the Oka, a tributary of the Volga; lastly, H. Martius mentions it in his flora of Moscow; but there is no proof that it was wild in these various localities. Lindemann,349 in 1860, did not reckon the species among those of Russia, and he only indicates it as cultivated in the Crimea.350 According to Nyman,351 the botanist Schur found it wild in Transylvania, while the Austro-Hungarian floras either do not mention the species, or give it as cultivated, or growing in cultivated ground.

I am led to believe, by this assemblage of more or less doubtful facts, that the plant is of Persian origin, whence it may have spread, after the Sanskrit epoch, into the gardens of India, Syria, Greece, and Egypt, and even as far as Abyssinia.352

Purslane—Portulaca oleracea, Linnæus.

Purslane is one of the kitchen garden plants most widely diffused throughout the old world from the earliest times. It has been transported into America,353 where it spreads itself, as in Europe, in gardens, among rubbish, by the wayside, etc. It is more or less used as a vegetable, a medicinal plant, and is excellent food for pigs.

A Sanskrit name for it is known, lonica or lounia, which recurs in the modern languages of India.354 The Greek name andrachne and the Latin portulaca are very different, as also the group of names, cholza in Persian, khursa or koursa in Hindustani, kourfa kara-or in Arab and Tartar, which seem to be the origin of kurza noka in Polish, kurj-noha in Bohemian, Kreusel in German, without speaking of the Russian name schrucha, and some others of Eastern Asia.355 One need not be a philologist to see certain derivations in these names showing that the Asiatic peoples in their migrations transported with them their names for the plant, but this does not prove that they transported the plant itself. They may have found it in the countries to which they came. On the other hand, the existence of three or four different roots shows that European peoples anterior to the Asiatic migrations had already names for the species, which is consequently very ancient in Europe as well as in Asia.

It is very difficult to discover in the case of a plant so widely diffused, and which propagates itself so easily by means of its enormous number of little seeds, whether a specimen is cultivated, naturalized by spreading from cultivation, or really wild.

It does not appear to be so ancient in the east as in the west of the Asiatic continent, and authors never say that it is a wild plant.356 In India the case is very different. Sir Joseph Hooker says357 that it grows in India to the height of five thousand feet in the Himalayas. He also mentions having found in the north-west of India the variety with upright stem, which is cultivated together with the common species in Europe. I find nothing positive about the localities in Persia, but so many are mentioned, and in countries so little cultivated, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus, and even in the south of Russia,358 that it is difficult not to admit that the plant is indigenous in that central region whence the Asiatic peoples overran Europe. In Greece the plant is wild as well as cultivated.359 Further to the west, in Italy, etc., we begin to find it indicated in floras, but only growing in fields, gardens, rubbish-heaps, and other suspicious localities.360

Thus the evidence of philology and botany alike show that the species is indigenous in the whole of the region which extends from the western Himalayas to the south of Russia and Greece.

New Zealand Spinach—Tetragonia expansa, Murray.

This plant was brought from New Zealand at the time of Cook’s famous voyage, and cultivated by Sir Joseph Banks, and hence its name. It is a singular plant from a double point of view. In the first place, it is the only cultivated species which comes from New Zealand; and secondly, it belongs to an order of usually fleshy plants, the Ficoideæ, of which no other species is used. Horticulturists361 recommend it as an annual vegetable, of which the taste resembles that of spinach, but which bears drought better, and is therefore a resource in seasons when spinach fails.

Since Cook’s voyage it has been found wild chiefly on the sea coast, not only in New Zealand but also in Tasmania, in the south and west of Australia, in Japan, and in South America.362 It remains to be discovered whether in the latter places it is not naturalized, for it is found in the neighbourhood of towns in Japan and Chili.363

Garden Celery—Apium graveolens, Linnæus.

Like many Umbellifers which grow in damp places, wild celery has a wide range. It extends from Sweden to Algeria, Egypt, Abyssinia, and in Asia from the Caucasus to Beluchistan, and the mountains of British India.364

It is spoken of in the Odyssey under the name of selinon, and in Theophrastus; but later, Dioscorides and Pliny365 distinguish between the wild and cultivated celery. In the latter the leaves are blanched, which greatly diminishes their bitterness. The long course of cultivation explains the numerous garden varieties. The one which differs more widely from the wild plant is that of which the fleshy root is eaten cooked.

Chervil—Scandix cerefolium, Linnæus; Anthriscus cerefolium, Hoffmann.

Not long ago the origin of this little Umbellifer, so common in our gardens, was unknown. Like many annuals, it sprang up on rubbish-heaps, in hedges, in waste places, and it was doubted whether it should be considered wild. In the west and south of Europe it seems to have been introduced, and more or less naturalized; but in the south-east of Russia and in western temperate Asia it appears to be indigenous. Steven366 tells us that it is found “here and there in the woods of the Crimea.” Boissier367 received several specimens from the provinces to the south of the Caucasus, from Turcomania and the mountains of the north of Persia, localities of which the species is probably a native. It is wanting in the floras of India and the east of Asia.

Greek authors do not mention it. The first mention of the plant by ancient writers occurs in Columella and Pliny,368 that is, at the beginning of the Christian era. It was then cultivated. Pliny calls it cerefolium. The species was probably introduced into the Greco-Roman world after the time of Theophrastus, that is in the course of the three centuries which preceded our era.

Parsley—Petroselinum sativum, Mœnch.

This biennial Umbellifer is wild in the south of Europe, from Spain to Turkey. It has also been found at Tlemcen in Algeria, and in Lebanon.369

Dioscorides and Pliny speak of it under the names of Petroselinon and Petroselinum,370 but only as a wild medicinal plant. Nothing proves that it was cultivated in their time. In the Middle Ages Charlemagne counted it among the plants which he ordered to be cultivated in his gardens.371 Olivier de Serres in the sixteenth century cultivated parsley. English gardeners received it in 1548.372 Although this cultivation is neither ancient nor important, it has already developed two varieties, which would be called species if they were found wild; the parsley with crinkled leaves, and that of which the fleshy root is edible.

Smyrnium, or Alexanders—Smyrnium olus-atrum, Linnæus.

Of all the Umbellifers used as vegetables, this was one of the commonest in gardens for nearly fifteen centuries, and it is now abandoned. “We can trace its beginning and end. Theophrastus spoke of it as a medicinal plant under the name of Ipposelinon, but three centuries later Dioscorides373 says that either the root or the leaves might be eaten, which implies cultivation. The Latins called it olus-atrum, Charlemagne olisatum, and commanded it to be sown in his farms.374 The Italians made great use of it under the name macerone.375 At the end of the eighteenth century the tradition existed in England that this plant had been formerly cultivated; later English and French horticulturists do not mention it.376

The Smyrnium olus-atrum is wild throughout Southern Europe, in Algeria, Syria, and Asia Minor.377

Corn Salad, or Lamb’s Lettuce—Valerianella olitoria, Linnæus.

Frequently cultivated as a salad, this annual, of the Valerian family, is found wild throughout temperate Europe to about the sixtieth degree of latitude, in Southern Europe, in the Canary Isles, Madeira, and the Azores, in the north of Africa, Asia Minor, and the Caucasus.378 It often grows in cultivated ground, near villages, etc., which renders it somewhat difficult to know where it grew before cultivation. It is mentioned, however, in Sardinia and Sicily, in the meadows and mountain pastures.379 I suspect that it is indigenous only in these islands, and that everywhere else it is introduced or naturalized. The grounds for this opinion are the fact that no name which it seems possible to assign to this plant has been found in Greek or Latin authors. We cannot even name any botanist of the Middle Ages or of the sixteenth century who has spoken of it. Neither is it mentioned among the vegetables used in France in the seventeenth century, either by the Jardinier Français of 1651, or by Laurenberg’s work, Horticultura (Frankfurt, 1632). The cultivation and even the use of this salad appear to be modern, a fact which has not been noticed.

Cardoon—Cynara cardunculus, Linnæus.

Artichoke—Cynara scolymus, Linnæus; C. cardunculus, var. sativa, Moris.

For a long time botanists have held the opinion that the artichoke is probably a form obtained by cultivation from the wild cardoon.380 Careful observations have lately proved this hypothesis. Moris,381 for instance, having cultivated, in the garden at Turin, the wild Sardinian plant side by side with the artichoke, affirmed that true characteristic distinctions no longer existed.

Willkomm and Lange,382 who have carefully observed the plant in Spain, both wild and cultivated, share the same opinion. Moreover, the artichoke has not been found out of gardens; and since the Mediterranean region, the home of all the Cynaræ, has been thoroughly explored, it may safely be asserted that it exists nowhere wild.

The cardoon, in which we must also include C. horrida of Sibthorp, is indigenous in Madeira and in the Canary Isles, in the mountains of Marocco near Mogador, in the south and east of the Iberian peninsula, the south of France, of Italy, of Greece, and in the islands of the Mediterranean Sea as far as Cyprus.383 Munby384 does not allow C. cardunculus to be wild in Algeria, but he does admit Cynara humilis of Linnæus, which is considered by a few authors as a variety.

The cultivated cardoon varies a good deal with regard to the division of the leaves, the number of spines, and the size – diversities which indicate long cultivation. The Romans eat the receptacle which bears the flowers, and the Italians also eat it, under the name of girello. Modern nations cultivate the cardoon for the fleshy part of the leaves, a custom which is not yet introduced into Greece.385

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.

Alexandrine or Egyptian Clover—Trifolium Alexandrinum, Linnæus.

This species is extensively cultivated in Egypt as fodder. Its Arab name is bersym or berzun.487 There is nothing to show that it has been long in use; the name does not occur in Hebrew and Armenian botanical works. The species is not wild in Egypt, but it is certainly wild in Syria and Asia Minor.488

Ervilia—Ervum Ervilia, Linnæus; Vicia Ervilia, Willdenow.

Bertoloni489 gives no less than ten common Italian names —ervo, lero, zirlo, etc. This is an indication of an ancient and general culture. Heldreich490 says that the modern Greeks cultivate the plant in abundance as fodder. They call it robai, from the ancient Greek orobos, as ervos comes from the Latin ervum. The cultivation of the species is mentioned by ancient Greek and Latin authors.491 The Greeks made use of the seed; for some has been discovered in the excavations on the site of Troy.492 There are a number of common names in Spain, some of them Arabic,493 but the species has not been so widely cultivated there for several centuries.494 In France it is so little grown that many modern works on agriculture do not mention it. It is unknown in British India.495

General botanical works indicate Ervum Ervilia as growing in Southern Europe, but if we take severally the best floras, it will be seen that it is in such localities as fields, vineyards, or cultivated ground. It is the same in Western Asia, where Boissier496 speaks of specimens from Syria, Persia, and Afghanistan. Sometimes, in abridged catalogues,497 the locality is not given, but nowhere do I find it asserted that the plant has been seen wild in places far from cultivation. The specimens in my own herbarium furnish no further proof on this head.

In all likelihood the species was formerly wild in Greece, Italy, and perhaps Spain and Algeria, but the frequency of its cultivation in the very regions where it existed prevent us from now finding the wild stocks.

Tare, or Common Vetch—Vicia sativa, Linnæus.

Vicia sativa is an annual leguminous plant wild throughout Europe, except in Lapland. It is also common in Algeria,498 and to the south of the Caucasus as far as the province of Talysch.499 Roxburgh pronounces it to be wild in the north-west provinces and in Bengal, but Sir Joseph Hooker admits this only as far as the variety called angustifolia500 is concerned. No Sanskrit name is known, and in the modern languages of India only Hindu names.501 Targioni believes it to be the ketsach of the Hebrews.502 I have received specimens from the Cape and from California. The species is certainly not indigenous in the two last-named regions, but has escaped from cultivation.

The Romans sowed this plant both for the sake of the seed and as fodder as early as the time of Cato.503 I have discovered no proof of a more ancient cultivation. The name vik, whence vicia, dates from a very remote epoch in Europe, for it exists in Albanian,504 which is believed to be the language of the Pelasgians, and among the Slav, Swedish, and Germanic nations, with slight modifications. This does not prove that the species was cultivated. It is distinct enough and useful enough to herbivorous animals to have received common names from the earliest times.

Flat-podded Pea—Lathyrus Cicera, Linnæus.

An annual leguminous plant, esteemed as fodder, but whose seed, if used as food in any quantity, becomes dangerous.505

It is grown in Italy under the name of mochi.506 Some authors suspect that it is the cicera of Columella and the ervilia of Varro,507 but the common Italian name is very different to these. The species is not cultivated in Greece.508 It is more or less grown in France and Spain, without anything to show that its use dates from ancient times. However, Wittmack509 attributes to it, but doubtfully, some seeds brought by Virchow from the Trojan excavations.

According to the floras, it is evidently wild in dry places, beyond the limits of cultivation in Spain and Italy.510 It is also wild in Lower Egypt, according to Schweinfurth and Ascherson;511 but there is no trace of ancient cultivation in this country or among the Hebrews. Towards the East its wild character becomes less certain. Boissier indicates the plant “in cultivated ground from Turkey in Europe, and Egypt as far as the south of the Caucasus and Babylon.”512 It is not mentioned in India either as wild or cultivated, and has no Sanskrit name.513

The species is probably a native of the region comprised between Spain and Greece, perhaps also of Algeria,514 and diffused by a cultivation, not of very ancient date, over Western Asia.

Chickling Vetch—Lathyrus sativus, Linnæus.

An annual leguminous plant, cultivated in the South of Europe, from a very early age, as fodder, and also for the seeds. The Greeks called it lathyros515 and the Latins cicercula.516 It is also cultivated in the temperate regions of Western Asia, and even in the north of India;517 but it has no Hebrew518 nor Sanskrit name,519 which argues a not very ancient cultivation in these regions.

Nearly all the floras of the south of Europe and of Algeria give the plant as cultivated and half-wild, rarely and only in a few localities as truly wild. It is easy to understand the difficulty of recognizing the wild character of a species often mixed with cereals, and which persists and spreads itself after cultivation. Heldreich does not allow that it is indigenous in Greece.520 This is a strong presumption that in the rest of Europe and in Algeria the plant has escaped from cultivation.

It is probable that this was not the case in Western Asia; for authors cite sufficiently wild localities, where agriculture plays a less considerable part than in Europe. Ledebour,521 for instance, mentions specimens gathered in the desert, near the Caspian Sea, and in the province of Lenkoran. Meyer522 confirms the assertion with respect to Lenkoran. Baker, in his flora of British India, after indicating the species as scattered here and there in the northern provinces, adds, “often cultivated,” whence it may be inferred that he considers it as indigenous, at least in the north. Boissier asserts nothing with regard to the localities in Persia which he mentions in his Oriental flora.523

To sum up, I think it probable that the species was indigenous before cultivation in the region extending from the south of the Caucasus, or of the Caspian Sea, to the north of India, and that it spread towards Europe in the track of ancient cultivation, mixed perhaps with cereals.

Ochrus—Pisum ochrus, Linnæus; Lathyrus ochrus, de Candolle.

Cultivated as an annual fodder in Catalonia, under the name of tapisots,524 and in Greece, particularly in the island of Crete, under that of ochros,525 mentioned by Theophrastus,526 but without a word of description. Latin authors do not speak of it, which argues a rare and local cultivation in ancient times.

The species is certainly wild in Tuscany.527 It appears to be wild also in Greece and Sardinia, where it is found in hedges,528 and in Spain, where it grows in uncultivated ground;529 but as for the south of France, Algeria, and Sicily, authors are either silent as to the locality, or mention only fields and cultivated ground. The plant is unknown further east than Syria,530 where probably it is not wild.

The fine plate published by Sibthorp, Flora Græca, 589, suggests that the species is worthy of more general cultivation.

Trigonel, or Fenugreek– Trigonella fænum-græcum, Linnæus.

The cultivation of this annual leguminous plant was common in ancient Greece and Italy,531 either for spring forage, or for the medicinal properties of its seeds. Abandoned almost everywhere in Europe, and notably in Greece,532 it is maintained in the East and in India,533 where it is probably of very ancient date, and throughout the Nile Valley.534 The species is wild in the Punjab and in Kashmir,535 in the deserts of Mesopotamia and of Persia,536 and in Asia Minor,537 where, however, the localities cited do not appear sufficiently distinct from the cultivated ground. It is also indicated538 in several places in Southern Europe, such as Mount Hymettus and other localities in Greece, the hills above Bologna and Genoa, and a few waste places in Spain; but the further west we go the more we find mentioned such localities as fields, cultivated ground, etc.; and careful authors do not fail to note that the species has probably escaped from cultivation.539 I do not hesitate to say that if a plant of this nature were indigenous in Southern Europe, it would be far more common, and would not be wanting to the insular floras, such as those of Sicily, Ischia, and the Balearic Isles.540

The antiquity of the species and of its use in India is confirmed by the existence of several different names in different dialects, and above all of a Sanskrit and modern Hindu name, methi.541 There is a Persian name, schemlit, and an Arab name, helbeh;542 but none is known in Hebrew.543 One of the names of the plant in ancient Greek, tailis τηλις, may, perhaps, be considered by philologists as akin to the Sanskrit name,544 but of this I am no judge. The species may have been introduced by the Aryans, and the primitive name have left no trace in northern languages, since it can only live in the south of Europe.

Bird’s Foot—Ornithopus sativus, Brotero; O. isthmocarpus, Cosson.

The true bird’s foot, wild and cultivated in Portugal, was described for the first time in 1804 by Brotero,545 and Cosson has distinguished it more clearly from allied species.546 Some authors had confounded it with Ornithopus roseus of Dufour, and agriculturists have sometimes given it the name of a very different species, O. perpusillus, which by reason of its small size is unsuited for cultivation. It is only necessary to see the pod of Ornithopus sativus to make certain of the species, for it is when ripe contracted at intervals and considerably bent. If there are in the fields plants of a similar appearance, but whose pods are straight and not contracted, they are the result of a cross with O. roseus, or, if the pod is curved but not contracted, with O. compressus. From the appearance of these plants, it seems that they might be grown in the same manner, and would present, I suppose, the same advantages.

The bird’s foot is only suited to a dry and sandy soil. It is an annual which furnishes in Portugal a very early spring fodder. Its cultivation has been successfully introduced into Campine.547

O. sativus appears to be wild in several districts of Portugal and the south of Spain. I have a specimen from Tangier; and Cosson found it in Algeria. It is often found in abandoned fields, and even elsewhere. It is difficult to say whether the specimens are not from plants escaped from cultivation, but localities are cited where this seems improbable; for instance, a pine wood near Chiclana, in the south of Spain (Willkomm).

Spergula, or Corn Spurry—Spergula arvensis, Linnæus.

This annual, belonging to the family of the Caryophylaceæ, grows in sandy fields and similar places in Europe, in North Africa and Abyssinia,548 in Western Asia as far as Hindustan,549 and even in Java.550 It is difficult to know over what extent of the old world it was originally indigenous. In many localities we do not know if it is really wild or naturalized from cultivation. Sometimes a recent introduction may be suspected. In India, for instance, numerous specimens have been gathered in the last few years; but Roxburgh, who was so diligent a collector at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century, does not mention the species. No Sanskrit or modern Hindu name is known,551 and it has not been found in the countries between India and Turkey.

The common names may tell us something with regard to the origin of the species and to its cultivation.

No Greek or Latin name is known. Spergula, in Italian spergola, seems to be a common name long in use in Italy. Another Italian name, erba renaiola, indicates only its growth in the sand (rena). The French (spargoule), Spanish (esparcillas), Portuguese (espargata), and German (Spark), have all the same root. It seems that throughout the south of Europe the species was taken from country to country by the Romans, before the division of the Latin languages. In the north the case is very different. There is a Russian name, toritsa;552 several Danish names, humb or hum, girr or kirr;553 and Swedish, knutt, fryle, nägde, skorff.554 This great diversity shows that attention had long been drawn to this plant in this part of Europe, and argues an ancient cultivation. It was cultivated in the neighbourhood of Montbelliard in the sixteenth century,555 and it is not stated that it was then of recent introduction. Probably it arose in the south of Europe during the Roman occupation, and perhaps earlier in the north. In any case, its original home must have been Europe.

Agriculturists distinguish a taller variety of spergula,556 but botanists are not agreed with them in finding in it sufficient characteristics of a distinct species, and some do not even make it a variety.

Guinea Grass—Panicum maximum, Jacquin.557

This perennial grass has a great reputation in countries lying between the tropics as a nutritious fodder, easy of cultivation. With a little care a meadow of guinea grass will last for twenty years.558

Its cultivation appears to have begun in the West Indies. P. Browne speaks of it in his work on Jamaica, published in the middle of the last century, and it is subsequently mentioned by Swartz.

The former mentions the name guinea grass, without any remarks on the original home of the species. The latter says, “formerly brought from the coast of Africa to the Antilles.” He probably trusted to the indication given by the common name; but we know how fallacious such indications of origin sometimes are. Witness the so-called Turkey wheat, which comes from America.

Swartz, who is an excellent botanist, says that the plant grows in the dry cultivated pastures of the West Indies, where it is also wild, which may imply that it has become naturalized in places where it was formerly cultivated. I cannot find it anywhere asserted that it is really wild in the West Indies. It is otherwise in Brazil. From data collected by de Martius and studied by Nees,559 data afterwards increased and more carefully studied by Dœll,560 Panicum maximum grows in the clearings of the forests of the Amazon valley, near Santarem, in the provinces of Balria, Ceara, Rio de Janeiro, and Saint Paul. Although the plant is often cultivated in these countries, the localities given, by their number and nature, prove that it is indigenous. Dœll has also seen specimens from French Guiana and New Granada.

With respect to Africa, Sir William Hooker561 mentioned specimens brought from Sierra Leone, from Aguapim, from the banks of the Quorra, and from the Island of St. Thomas, in Western Africa. Nees562 indicates the species in several districts of Cape Colony, even in the bush and in mountainous country. Richard563 mentions places in Abyssinia, which also seem to be beyond the limits of cultivation, but he owns to being not very sure of the species. Anderson, on the contrary, positively asserts that Panicum maximum was brought from the banks of the Mozambique and of the Zambesi rivers by the traveller Peters.564

The species is known to have been introduced into Mauritius by the Governour Labourdonnais,565 and to have become naturalized from cultivation as in Rodriguez and the Seychelles Isles. Its introduction into Asia must be recent, for Roxburgh and Miquel do not mention the species. In Ceylon it is only cultivated.566

On the whole, it seems to me that the probabilities are in favour of an African origin, as its name indicates, and this is confirmed by the general, but insufficiently grounded opinion of authors.567 However, as the plant spreads so rapidly, it is strange that it has not reached Egypt from the Mozambique or Abyssinia, and that it was introduced so late into the islands to the east of Africa. If the co-existence of phanerogamous species in Africa and America previous to cultivation were not extremely rare, it might be inferred in this case; but this is unlikely in the case of a cultivated plant of which the diffusion is evidently very easy.

Article III.—Various Uses of the Stem and Leaves

Tea—Thea sinensis, Linnæus.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, when the shrub which produces tea was still very little known, Linnæus gave it the name of Thea sinensis. Soon afterwards, in the second edition of the Species Plantarum, he judged it better to distinguish two species, Thea bohea and Thea viridis, which he believed to correspond to the commercial distinction between black and green teas. It has since been proved that there is but one species, comprehending several varieties, from all of which either black or green tea may be obtained according to the process of manufacture. This question was settled, when another was raised, as to whether Thea really forms a genus by itself distinct from the genus Camellia. Some authors make Thea a section of the old genus Camellia; but from the characters indicated with great precision by Seemann,568 it seems to me that we are justified in retaining the genus Thea, together with the old nomenclature of the principal species.

A Japanese legend, related by Kæmpfer,569 is often quoted. A priest who came from India into China in A.D. 519, having succumbed to sleep when he had wished to watch and pray, in a movement of anger cut off his two eyelids, which were changed into a shrub, the tea tree, whose leaves are eminently calculated to prevent sleep. Unfortunately for those people who readily admit legends in whole or in part, the Chinese have never heard of this story, although the event is said to have taken place in their country. Tea was known to them long before 519, and probably it was not brought from India. This is what Bretschneider tells us in his little work, rich in botanical and philological facts.570 The Pentsao, he says, mentions tea 2700 B.C., the Rye 300 or 600 B.C.; and the commentator of the latter work, in the fourth century of our era, gave details about the plant and about the infusion of the leaves. Its use is, therefore, of very ancient date in China. It is perhaps more recent in Japan, and if it has been long known in Cochin-China, it is possible, but not proved, that it formerly spread thither from India; authors cite no Sanskrit name, nor even any name in modern Indian languages. This fact will appear strange when contrasted with what we have to say on the natural habitat of the species.

The seeds of the tea-plant often sow themselves beyond the limits of cultivation, thereby inspiring doubt among botanists as to the wild nature of plants encountered here and there. Thunberg believed the species to be wild in Japan, but Franchet and Savatier571 absolutely deny this. Fortune,572 who has so carefully examined the cultivation of tea in China, does not speak of the wild plant. Fontanier573 says that the tea-plant grows wild abundantly in Mantschuria. It is probable that it exists in the mountainous districts of South-eastern China, where naturalists have not yet penetrated. Loureiro says that it is found both “cultivated and uncultivated” in Cochin-China.574 What is more certain is, that English travellers gathered specimens in Upper Assam575 and in the province of Cachar.576 So that the tea-plant must be wild in the mountainous region which separates the plains of India from those of China, but the use of the leaves was not formerly known in India.

The cultivation of tea, now introduced into several colonies, has produced admirable results in Assam. Not only is the product of a superior quality to that of average Chinese teas, but the quantity obtained increases rapidly. In 1870, three million pounds of tea were produced in British India; in 1878, thirty-seven million pounds; and in 1880, a harvest of seventy million pounds was looked for.577 Tea will not bear frost, and suffers from drought. As I have elsewhere stated,578 the conditions which favour it are the opposite to those which suit the vine. On the other hand, it has been observed that tea flourishes in Azores, where good wine is made;579 but it is possible to cultivate in gardens, or on a small scale, many plants which will not be profitable on a large scale. The vine grows in China, yet the manufacture of wine is unimportant. Conversely, no wine-growing country grows tea for exportation. After China, Japan, and Assam, it is in Java, Ceylon, and Brazil that tea is most largely grown, where, certainly, the vine is little cultivated, or not at all; while the wines of dry regions, such as Australia and the Cape, are already known in the market.

Flax—Linum usitatissimum, Linnæus.

The question as to the origin of flax, or rather of the cultivated flax, is one of those which give rise to most interesting researches.

In order to understand the difficulties which it presents, we must first ascertain what nearly allied forms authors designate – sometimes as distinct species of the genus Linum, and sometimes as varieties of a single species.

The first important work on this subject was by Planchon, in 1848.580 He clearly showed the differences between Linum usitatissimum, L. humile, and L. angustifolium, which were little known. Afterwards Heer,581 when making profound researches into ancient cultivation, went again into the characters indicated, and by adding the study of two intermediate forms, as well as the comparison of a great number of specimens, he arrived at the conclusion that there was a single species, composed of several slightly different forms. I give a translation of his Latin summary of the characters, only adding a name for each distinct form, in accordance with the custom of botanical works.

Linum usitatissimum.

1. Annuum (annual). Root annual; stem single, upright; capsules 7 to 8 mm. long; seeds 4 to 6 mm., terminating in a point. α. Vulgare (common). Capsules 7 mm., not opening when ripe, and displaying glabrous partitions. German names, Schliesslein, Dreschlein. β. Humile (low). Capsules 8 mm., opening suddenly when ripe; the partitions hairy. Linum humile, Miller; L. crepitans, Böninghausen. German names, Klanglein, Springlein.

2. Hyemale (winter). Root annual or biennial; stems numerous, spreading at the base, and bent; capsules 7 mm., terminating in a point. Linum hyemale romanum. In German, Winterlein.

3. Ambiguum (doubtful). Root annual or perennial; stems numerous, leaves acuminate; capsules 7 mm., with partitions nearly free from hairs; seeds 4 mm., ending in a short point. Linum ambiguum, Jordan.

4. Angustifolium (narrow-leaved). Root annual or perennial; stems numerous, spreading at the base, and bent; capsules 6 mm., with hairy partitions; seeds 3 mm., slightly hooked at the top. Linum angustifolium.

It may be seen how easily one form passes into another. The quality of annual, biennial, or perennial, which Heer suspected to be uncertain, is vague, especially for the angustifolium; for Loret, who has observed this flax in the neighbourhood of Montpellier, says,582 “In very hot countries it is nearly always an annual, and this is the case in Sicily according to Gussone; with us it is annual, biennial, or perennial, according to the nature of the soil in which it grows; and this may be ascertained by observing it on the shore, notably at Maguelone. There it may be seen that along the borders of trodden paths it lasts longer than on the sand, where the sun soon dries up the roots and the acidity of the soil prevents the plant from enduring more than a year.”

When forms and physiological conditions pass from one into another, and are distinguished by characters which vary according to circumstances, we are led to consider the individuals as constituting a single species, although these forms and conditions possess a certain degree of heredity, and date perhaps from very early times. We are, however, forced to consider them separately in our researches into their origin. I shall first indicate in what country each variety has been discovered in a wild or half-wild state. I shall then speak of cultivation, and we shall see how far geographical and historical facts confirm the opinion of the unity of species.

The common annual flax has not yet been discovered, with absolute certainty, in a wild state. I possess several specimens of it from India, and Planchon saw others in the herbarium at Kew; but Anglo-Indian botanists do not admit that the plant is indigenous in British India. The recent flora of Sir Joseph Hooker speaks of it as a species cultivated principally for the oil extracted from the seeds; and Mr. C. B. Clarke, formerly director of the botanical gardens in Calcutta, writes to me that the specimens must have been cultivated, its cultivation being very common in winter in the north of India. Boissier583 mentions L. humile, with narrow leaves, which Kotschy gathered “near Schiraz in Persia, at the foot of the mountain called Sabst Buchom.” This is, perhaps, a spot far removed from cultivation; but I cannot give satisfactory information on this head. Hohenacker found L. usitatissimum “half wild” in the province of Talysch, to the south of the Caucasus, towards the Caspian Sea.584 Steven is more positive with regard to Southern Russia.585 According to him, it “is found pretty often on the barren hills to the south of the Crimea, between Jalta and Nikita; and Nordmann found it on the eastern coast of the Black Sea.” Advancing westward in Southern Russia, or in the region of the Mediterranean, the species is but rarely mentioned, and only as escaped from cultivation, or half wild. In spite of doubts and of the scanty data which we possess, I think it very possible that the annual flax, in one or other of these two forms, may be wild in the district between the south of Persia and the Crimea, at least in a few localities.

The winter flax is only known under cultivation in a few provinces of Italy.586

The Linum ambiguum of Jordan grows on the coast of Provence and of Languedoc in dry places.587

Lastly, Linum angustifolium, which hardly differs from the preceding, has a well-defined and rather large area. It grows wild, especially on hills throughout the region of which the Mediterranean forms the centre; that is, in the Canaries and Madeira, in Marocco,588 Algeria,589 and as far as the Cyrenaic;590 from the south of Europe, as far as England,591 the Alps, and the Balkan Mountains; and lastly, in Asia from the south of the Caucasus592 to Lebanon and Palestine.593 I do not find it mentioned in the Crimea, nor beyond the Caspian Sea.

Let us now turn to the cultivation of flax, destined in most instances to furnish a textile substance, often also to yield oil, and cultivated among certain peoples for the nutritious properties of the seed. I first studied the question of its origin in 1855,594 and with the following result: —

It was abundantly shown that the ancient Egyptians and the Hebrews made use of linen stuffs. Herodotus affirms this. Moreover, the plant may be seen figured in the ancient Egyptian drawings, and the microscope indubitably shows that the bandages which bind the mummies are of linen.595 The culture of flax is of ancient date in Europe; it was known to the Kelts, and in India according to history. Lastly, the widely different common names indicate likewise an ancient cultivation or long use in different countries. The Keltic name lin, and Greco-Latin linon or linum, has no analogy with the Hebrew pischta,596 nor with the Sanskrit names ooma, atasi, utasi.597 A few botanists mention the flax as “nearly wild” in the south-east of Russia, to the south of the Caucasus and to the east of Siberia, but it was not known to be truly wild. I then summed up the probabilities, saying, “The varying etymology of the names, the antiquity of cultivation in Egypt, in Europe, and in the north of India, the circumstance that in the latter district flax is cultivated for the yield of oil alone, lead me to believe that two or three species of different origin, confounded by most authors under the name of Linum usitatissimum, were formerly cultivated in different countries, without imitation or communication the one with the other… I am very doubtful whether the species cultivated by the ancient Egyptians was the species indigenous in Russia and in Siberia.”

My conjectures were confirmed ten years later by a very curious discovery made by Oswald Heer. The lake-dwellers of Eastern Switzerland, at a time when they only used stone implements, and did not know the use of hemp, cultivated and wove a flax which is not our common annual flax, but the perennial flax called Linum angustifolium, which is wild south of the Alps. This is shown by the examination of the capsules, seeds, and especially of the lower part of a plant carefully extracted from the sediment at Robenhausen.598 The illustration published by Heer shows distinctly a root surmounted by from two to four stems after the manner of perennial plants. The stems had been cut, whereas our common flax is plucked up by the roots, another proof of the persistent nature of the plant. With the remains of the Robenhausen flax some grains of Silene cretica were found, a species which is also foreign to Switzerland, and abundant in Italy in the fields of flax.599 Hence Heer concluded that the Swiss lake-dwellers imported the seeds of the Italian flax. This was apparently the case, unless we suppose that the climate of Switzerland at that time differed from that of our own epoch, for the perennial flax would not at the present day survive the winters of Eastern Switzerland.600 Heer’s opinion is supported by the surprising fact that flax has not been found among the remains of the lake-dwellings of Laybach and Mondsee of the Austrian States, where bronze has been discovered.601 The late epoch of the introduction of flax into this region excludes the hypothesis that the inhabitants of Switzerland received it from Eastern Europe, from which, moreover, they were separated by immense forests.

Since the ingenious observations of the Zurich savant, a flax has been discovered which was employed by the prehistoric inhabitants of the peat-mosses of Lagozza, in Lombardy; and Sordelli has shown that it was the same as that of Robenhausen, L. angustifolium.602 This ancient people was ignorant of the use of hemp and of metals, but they possessed the same cereals as the Swiss lake-dwellers of the stone age, and ate like them the acorns of Quercus robur, var. sessiliflora. There was, therefore, a civilization which had reached a certain development on both sides of the Alps, before metals, even bronze, were in common use, and before hemp and the domestic fowl were known.603 It was probably before the arrival of the Aryans in Europe, or soon after that event.604

The common names of the flax in ancient European languages may throw some light on this question.

The name lin, llin, linu, linon, linum, lein, lan, exists in all the European languages of Aryan origin of the centre and south of Europe, Keltic, Slavonic, Greek, or Latin. This name is, however, not common to the Aryan languages of India; consequently, as Pictet605 justly says, the cultivation must have been begun by the western Aryans, and before their arrival in Europe. Another idea occurred to me which led me into further researches, but they were unproductive. I thought that, since this flax was cultivated by the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy before the arrival of the Aryan peoples, it was probably also grown by the Iberians, who then occupied Spain and Gaul; and perhaps some special name for it has remained among the Basques, the supposed descendants of the Iberians. Now, according to several dictionaries of their language,606 liho, lino, or li, according to the dialects, signifies flax, which agrees with the name diffused throughout Southern Europe. The Basques seem, therefore, to have received flax from peoples of Aryan origin, or perhaps they have lost the ancient name and substituted that of the Kelts and Romans. The name flachs or flax of the Teutonic languages comes from the Old German flahs. There are also special names in the north-west of Europe —pellawa, aiwina, in Finnish;607 hor, härr, hor, in Danish;608 hor and tone in ancient Gothic.609 Haar exists in the German of Salzburg.610 This word may be in the ordinary sense of the German for thread or hair, as the name li may be connected with the same root as ligare, to bind, and as hör, in the plural hörvar, is connected by philologists611 with harva, the German root for Flachs; but it is, nevertheless, a fact that in Scandinavian countries and in Finland terms have been used which differ from those employed throughout the south of Europe. This variety shows the antiquity of the cultivation, and agrees with the fact that the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy cultivated a species of flax before the first invasion of the Aryans. It is possible, I might even say probable, that the latter imported the name li rather than the plant or its cultivation; but as there is no wild flax in the north of Europe, an ancient people, the Finns, of Turanian origin, introduced the flax into the north before the Aryans. In this case they must have cultivated the annual flax, for the perennial variety will not bear the severity of the northern winters; while we know how favourable the climate of Riga is in summer to the cultivation of the annual flax. Its first introduction into Gaul, Switzerland, and Italy may have been from the south, by the Iberians, and in Finland by the Finns; and the Aryans may have afterwards diffused those names which were commonest among themselves – that of linum in the south, and of flahs in the north. Perhaps the Aryans and Finns had brought the annual flax from Asia, which would soon have been substituted for the perennial variety, which is less productive and less adapted to cold countries. It is not known precisely at what epoch the cultivation of the annual flax in Italy took the place of that of the perennial linum angustifolium, but it must have been before the Christian era; for Latin authors speak of a well-established cultivation, and Pliny says that the flax was sown in spring and rooted up in the summer.612 Metal implements were not then wanting, and therefore the flax would have been cut if it had been perennial. Moreover, the latter, if sown in spring, would not have ripened till autumn.

For the same reasons the flax cultivated by the ancient Egyptians must have been an annual. Hitherto neither entire plants nor a great number of capsules have been found in the catacombs of a nature to furnish direct and incontestable proof. Unger613 alone was able to examine a capsule taken from the bricks of a monument, which Leipsius attributes to the thirteenth or fourteenth century before Christ, and he found it more like those of L. usitatissimum than of L. angustifolium. Out of three seeds which Braun614 saw in the Berlin Museum, mixed with those of other cultivated plants, one appeared to him to belong to L. angustifolium, and the other to L. humile; but it must be owned that a single seed without plant or capsule is not sufficient proof. Ancient Egyptian paintings show that flax was not reaped with a sickle like cereals, but uprooted.615 In Egypt flax is cultivated in the winter, for the summer drought would no more allow of a perennial variety, than the cold of northern countries, where it is sown in spring, to be gathered in in summer. It may be added that the annual flax of the variety called humile is the only one now grown in Abyssinia, and also the only one that modern collectors have seen in Egypt.616

Heer suggests that the ancient Egyptians may have cultivated L. angustifolium of the Mediterranean region, sowing it as an annual plant.617 I am more inclined to believe that they had previously imported or received their flax from Egypt, already in the form of the species L. humile. Their modes of cultivation, and the figures on the monuments, show that their knowledge of the plant dated from a remote antiquity. Now it is known that the Egyptians of the first dynasties before Cheops belonged to a proto-semitic race, which came into Egypt by the isthmus of Suez.618 Flax has been found in a tomb of ancient Chaldea prior to the existence of Babylon,619 and its use in this region is lost in the remotest antiquity. Thus the first Egyptians of white race may have imported the cultivated flax, or their immediate successors may have received it from Asia before the epoch of the Phœnician colonies in Greece, and before direct communication was established between Greece and Egypt under the fourteenth dynasty.620

A very early introduction of the plant into Egypt from Asia does not prevent us from admitting that it was at different times taken from the East to the West at a later epoch than that of the first Egyptian dynasties. Thus the western Aryans and the Phœnicians may have introduced into Europe a flax more advantageous than L. angustifolium during the period from 2500 to 1200 years before our era.

The cultivation of the plant by the Aryans must have extended further north than that by the Phœnicians. In Greece, at the time of the Trojan war, fine linen stuffs were still imported from Colchis; that is to say, from that region at the foot of the Caucasus where the common annual flax has been found wild in modern times. It does not appear that the Greeks cultivated the plant at that epoch.621 The Aryans had perhaps already introduced its cultivation into the valley of the Danube. However, I noticed just now that the lacustrine remains of Mondsee and Laybach show no trace of any flax. In the last centuries before the Christian era the Romans procured very fine linen from Spain, although the names of the plant in that country do not tend to show that the Phœnicians introduced it. There is not any Oriental name existing in Europe belonging either to antiquity or to the Middle Ages. The Arabic name kattan, kettane, or kittane, of Persian origin,622 has spread westward only among the Kabyles of Algeria.623

The sum of facts and probabilities appear to me to lead to the following statements, which may be accepted until they are modified by further discoveries.

1. Linum angustifolium, usually perennial, rarely biennial or annual, which is found wild from the Canary Isles to Palestine and the Caucasus, was cultivated in Switzerland and the north of Italy by peoples more ancient than the conquerors of Aryan race. Its cultivation was replaced by that of the annual flax.

2. The annual flax (L. usitatissimum), cultivated for at least four thousand or five thousand years in Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Egypt, was and still is wild in the districts included between the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, and the Black Sea.

3. This annual flax appears to have been introduced into the north of Europe by the Finns (of Turanian race), afterwards into the rest of Europe by the western Aryans, and perhaps here and there by the Phœnicians; lastly into Hindustan by the eastern Aryans, after their separation from the European Aryans.

4. These two principal forms or conditions of flax exist in cultivation, and have probably been wild in their modern areas for the last five thousand years at least. It is not possible to guess at their previous condition. Their transitions and varieties are so numerous that they may be considered as one species comprising two or three hereditary varieties, which are each again divided into subvarieties.

Jute—Corchorus capsularis and Corchorus olitorius, Linnæus.

The fibres of the jute, imported in great quantities in the last few years, especially into England, are taken from the stem of these two species of Corchorus, annuals of the family of the Tiliaceæ. The leaves are also used as a vegetable.

C. capsularis has a nearly spherical fruit, flattened at the top, and surrounded by longitudinal ridges. There is a good coloured illustration of it in the work of the younger Jacquin, Eclogæ, pl. 119. C. olitorius, on the contrary, has a long fruit, like the pod of a Crucifer. It is figured in the Botanical Magazine, fig. 2810, and in Lamarck, fig. 478.

The species of the genus are distributed nearly equally in the warm regions of Asia, Africa, and America; consequently the origin of each cannot be guessed. It must be sought in floras and herbaria, with the help of historical and other data.

Corchorus capsularis is commonly cultivated in the Sunda Islands, in Ceylon, in the peninsula of Hindustan, in Bengal, in Southern China, in the Philippine Islands,624 generally in Southern Asia. Forster does not mention it in his work on the plants in use among the inhabitants of the Pacific, whence it may be inferred that at the time of Cook’s voyages, a century ago, its cultivation had not spread in that direction. It may even be suspected from this fact that it does not date from a very remote epoch in the isles of the Indian Archipelago.

Blume says that Corchorus capsularis grows in the marshes of Java near Parang,625 and I have two specimens from Java which are not given as cultivated.626 Thwaites mentions it as “very common” in Ceylon.627

On the continent of Asia, authors speak more of it as a plant cultivated in Bengal and China. Wight, who gives a good illustration of the plant, does not mention its native place. Edgeworth,628 who has studied on the spot the flora of the district of Banda, says that it is found in “the fields.” In the Flora of British India, Masters, who drew up the article on the Tiliaceæ from the herbarium at Kew, says “in the hottest regions of India, cultivated in most tropical countries.”629 I have a specimen from Bengal which is not given as cultivated. Loureiro says “wild, and cultivated in the province of Canton in China,”630 which probably means wild in Cochin-China, and cultivated in Canton. In Japan the plant grows in cultivated soil.631 In conclusion, I am not convinced that the species exists in a truly wild state north of Calcutta, although it may perhaps have spread from cultivation and have sown itself here and there.

C. capsularis has been introduced into various parts of tropical Africa and even of America, but it is only cultivated on a large scale for the production of jute thread in Southern Asia, and especially in Bengal.

C. olitorius is more used as a vegetable than for its fibres. Out of Asia it is employed exclusively for the leaves. It is one of the commonest of culinary plants among the modern Egyptians and Syrians, who call it in Arabic melokych, but it is not likely that they had any knowledge of it in ancient times, as we know of no Hebrew name.632 The present inhabitants of Crete cultivate it under the name of mouchlia,633 evidently derived from the Arabic, and the ancient Greeks were not acquainted with it.

According to several authors634 this species of Corchorus is wild in several provinces of British India. Thwaites says it is common in the hot districts of Ceylon; but in Java, Blume only mentions it as growing among rubbish (in ruderatis). I cannot find it mentioned in Cochin-China or Japan. Boissier saw specimens from Mesopotamia, Afghanistan, Syria, and Anatolia, but gives as a general indication, “culta, et in ruderatis subspontanea.” No Sanskrit name for the two cultivated species of Corchorus is known.635