Origin of Cultivated Plants

According to Herodotus (born 484 B.C.), the Scythians used hemp, but in his time the Greeks were scarcely acquainted with it.715 Hiero II., King of Syracuse, bought the hemp used for the cordage of his vessels in Gaul, and Lucilius is the earliest Roman writer who speaks of the plant (100 B.C.). Hebrew books do not mention hemp.716 It was not used in the fabrics which enveloped the mummies of ancient Egypt. Even at the end of the eighteenth century it was only cultivated in Egypt for the sake of an intoxicating liquid extracted from the plant.717 The compilation of Jewish laws known as the Talmud, made under the Roman dominion, speaks of its textile properties as of a little-known fact.718 It seems probable that the Scythians transported this plant from Central Asia and from Russia when they migrated westward about 1500 B.C., a little before the Trojan war. It may also have been introduced by the earlier incursions of the Aryans into Thrace and Western Europe; yet in that case it would have been earlier known in Italy. Hemp has not been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland719 and Northern Italy.720

The observations on the habitat of Cannabis sativa agree perfectly with the data furnished by history and philology. I have treated specially of this subject in a monograph in Prodromus, 1869.721

The species has been found wild, beyond a doubt, to the south of the Caspian Sea,722 in Siberia, near the Irtysch, in the desert of the Kirghiz, beyond Lake Baikal, in Dahuria (government of Irkutsh). Authors mention it also throughout Southern and Central Russia, and to the south of the Caucasus,723 but its wild nature is here less certain, seeing that these are populous countries, and that the seeds of the hemp are easily diffused from gardens. The antiquity of the cultivation of hemp in China leads me to believe that its area extends further to the east, although this has not yet been proved by botanists.724 Boissier mentions the species as “almost wild in Persia.” I doubt whether it is indigenous there, since in that case the Greeks and Hebrews would have known of it at an earlier period.

White Mulberry—Morus alba, Linnæus.

The mulberry tree, which is most commonly used in Europe for rearing silkworms, is Morus alba. Its very numerous varieties have been carefully described by Seringe,725 and more recently by Bureau.726 That most widely cultivated in India, Morus indica, Linnæus (Morus alba, var. Indica, Bureau), is wild in the Punjab and in Sikkim, according to Brandis, inspector-general of forests in British India.727 Two other varieties, serrata and cuspidata, are also said to be wild in different provinces of Northern India.728 The Abbé David found a perfectly wild variety in Mongolia, described under the name of mongolica by Bureau; and Dr. Bretschneider729 quotes a name yen, from ancient Chinese authors, for the wild mulberry.

It is true he does not say whether this name applies to the white mulberry, pe-sang, of the Chinese plantations.730 The antiquity of its culture in China,731 and in Japan, and the number of different varieties grown there, lead us to believe that its original area extended eastward as far as Japan; but the indigenous flora of Southern China is little known, and the most trustworthy authors do not affirm that the plant is indigenous in Japan. Franchet and Savatier732 say that it is “cultivated from time immemorial, and become wild here and there.” It is worthy of note also that the white mulberry appears to thrive especially in mountainous and temperate countries, whence it may be argued that it was formerly introduced from the north of China into the plains of the south. It is known that birds are fond of the fruit, and bear the seeds to great distances and into uncultivated ground, and this makes it difficult to discover its really original habitat.

This facility of naturalization doubtless explains the presence in successive epochs of the white mulberry in Western Asia and the south of Europe. This must have occurred especially after the monks brought the silkworm to Constantinople under Justinian in the sixth century, and as the culture of silkworms was gradually propagated westwards. However, Targioni has proved that only the black mulberry, M. nigra, was known in Sicily and Italy when the manufacture of silk was introduced into Sicily in 1148, and two centuries later into Tuscany.733 According to the same author, the introduction of the white mulberry into Tuscany dates at the earliest from the year 1340. In like manner the manufacture of silk may have begun in China, because the silkworm is natural to that country; but it is very probable that the tree grew also in the north of India, where so many travellers have found it wild. In Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, I am inclined to believe that it was naturalized at a very early epoch, rather than to share Grisebach’s opinion that it is indigenous in the basin of the Caspian Sea. Boissier does not give it as wild in that region.734 Buhse735 found it in Persia, near Erivan and Bashnaruschin, and he adds, “naturalized in abundance in Ghilan and Masenderan.” Ledebour,736 in his Russian flora, mentions numerous localities round the Caucasus, but he does not specify whether the species is wild or naturalized. In the Crimea, Greece, and Italy, it exists only in a cultivated state.737 A variety, tatarica, often cultivated in the south of Russia, has become naturalized near the Volga.738

If the white mulberry did not originally exist in Persia and in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, it must have penetrated there a long while ago. I may quote in proof of this the name tut, tutti, tuta, which is Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Tartar. There is a Sanskrit name, tula,739 which must be connected with the same root as the Persian name; but no Hebrew name is known, which is a confirmation of the theory of a successive extension towards the west of Asia.

I refer those of my readers who may desire more detailed information about the introduction of the mulberry and of silkworms to the able works of Targioni and Ritter, to which I have already referred. Recent discoveries made by various botanists have permitted me to add more precise data than those of Ritter on the question of origin, and if there are some apparent contradictions in our opinions on other points, it is because the famous geographer has considered a number of varieties as so many different species, whereas botanists, after a careful examination, have classed them together.

Black Mulberry—Morus nigra, Linnæus.

This tree is more valued for its fruit than for its leaves, and on that account I should have included it in the list of fruit trees; but its history can hardly be separated from that of the white mulberry. Moreover, its leaves are employed in many countries for the feeding of silkworms, although the silk produced is of inferior quality.

The black mulberry is distinguished from the white by several characters independently of the black colour of the fruit, which occurs also in a few varieties of the M. alba.740 It has not a great number of varieties like the latter, which argues a less ancient and a less general cultivation and a narrower primitive area.

Greek and Latin authors, even the poets, have mentioned Morus nigra, which they compare to Ficus sycomorus, and which they even confounded originally with this Egyptian tree.

Commentators for the last two centuries have quoted a number of passages which leave no doubt on this head, but which are devoid of interest in themselves.741 They furnish no proof touching the origin of the species, which is presumably Persian, unless we are to take seriously the fable of Pyramus and Thisbe, of which the scene was in Babylonia, according to Ovid.

Botanists have not yet furnished any certain proof that this species is indigenous in Persia. Boissier, who is the most learned in the floras of the East, contents himself with quoting Hohenacker as the discoverer of M. nigra in the forests of Lenkoran, on the south coast of the Caspian Sea, and he adds, “probably wild in the north of Persia near the Caspian Sea.”742 Ledebour, in his Russian flora, had previously indicated, on the authority of different travellers, the Crimea and the provinces south of the Caucasus;743 but Steven denies the existence of the species in the Crimea except in a cultivated state.744 Tchihatcheff and Koch found the black mulberry in high wild districts of Armenia. It is very probable that in the region to the south of the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea Morus nigra is wild and indigenous rather than naturalized. What leads me to this belief is (1) that it is not known, even in a cultivated state, in India, China, or Japan; (2) that it has no Sanskrit name; (3) that it was so early introduced into Greece, a country which had intercourse with Armenia at an early period.745

Morus nigra spread so little to the south of Persia, that no certain Hebrew name is known for it, nor even a Persian name distinct from that of Morus alba. It was widely cultivated in Italy until the superiority of the white mulberry for the rearing of silkworms was recognized. In Greece the black mulberry is still the most cultivated.746 It has become naturalized here and there in these countries and in Spain.747

American Aloe—Agave Americana, Linnæus.

This ligneous plant, of the order of Amaryllidaceæ, has been cultivated from time immemorial in Mexico under the names maguey or metl, in order to extract from it, at the moment when the flower stem is developed, the wine known as pulque. Humboldt has given a full description of this culture,748 and he tells us elsewhere749 that the species grows in the whole of South America as far as five thousand feet of altitude. It is mentioned750 in Jamaica, Antigua, Dominica, and Cuba, but it must be observed that it multiplies easily by suckers, and that it is often planted far from dwellings to form fences or to extract from it the fibre known as pite, and this makes it difficult to ascertain its original habitat. Transported long since into the countries which border the Mediterranean, it occurs there with every appearance of an indigenous species, although there is no doubt as to its origin.751 Probably, to judge from the various uses made of it in Mexico before the arrival of the Europeans, it came originally from thence.

Sugar-Cane—Saccharum officinarum, Linnæus.

The origin of the sugar-cane, of its cultivation, and of the manufacture of sugar, are the subject of a very remarkable work by the geographer, Karl Ritter.752 I need not follow his purely agricultural and economical details; but for that which interests us particularly, the primitive habitat of the species, he is the best guide, and the facts observed during the last forty years for the most part support or confirm his opinions.

The sugar-cane is cultivated at the present day in all the warm regions of the globe, but a number of historical facts testify that it was first grown in Southern Asia, whence it spread into Africa, and later into America. The question is, therefore, to discover in what districts of the continent, or in which of the southern islands of Asia, the plant exists, or existed at the time it was first employed.

Ritter has followed the best methods of arriving at a solution. He notes first that all the species known in a wild state, and undoubtedly belonging to the genus Saccharum, grow in India, except one in Egypt.753 Five species have since been described, growing in Java, New Guinea, Timor, and the Philippine Isles.754 The probabilities are all in favour of an Asiatic origin, to judge from the data furnished by geographical botany.

Unfortunately no botanist had discovered at the time when Ritter wrote, or has since discovered, Saccharum officinarum wild in India, in the adjacent countries or in the archipelago to the south of Asia. All Anglo-Indian authors, Roxburgh, Wallich, Royle, etc., and more recently Aitchison,755 only mention the plant as a cultivated one. Roxburgh, who was so long a collector in India, says expressly, “where wild I do not know.” The family of the Gramineæ has not yet appeared in Sir Joseph Hooker’s flora. For the island of Ceylon, Thwaites does not even mention the cultivated plant.756 Rumphius, who has carefully described its cultivation in the Dutch colonies, says nothing about the home of the species. Miquel, Hasskarl, and Blanco mention no wild specimen in Sumatra, Java, or the Philippine Isles. Crawfurd tried to discover it, but failed to do so.757 At the time of Cook’s voyage Forster found the sugar-cane only as a cultivated plant in the small islands of the Pacific.758 The natives of New Caledonia cultivate a number of varieties of the sugar-cane, and use it constantly, sucking the syrup from the cane; but Vieillard759 takes care to say, “From the fact that isolated plants of Saccharum officinarum are often found in the middle of the bush and even on the mountains, it would be wrong to conclude that the plant is indigenous; for these specimens, poor and weak, only mark the site of old plantations, or are sprung from fragments of cane left by the natives, who seldom travel without a piece of cane in the hand.” In 1861, Bentham, who had access to the rich herbarium of Kew, says, in his Flora of Hongkong, “We have no authentic and certain proof of a locality where the common sugar-cane is wild.”

I do not know, however, why Ritter and every one else has neglected an assertion of Loureiro, in his Flora of Cochin-China,760 “Habitat, et colitur abundantissime in omnibus provinciis regni Cochin-Chinensis: simul in aliquibus imperii sinensis, sed minori copia.” The word habitat, separated by a comma from the rest, is a distinct assertion. Loureiro could not have been mistaken about the Saccharum officinarum, which he saw cultivated all about him, and of which he enumerates the principal varieties. He must have seen plants wild, at least in appearance. They may have spread from some neighbouring plantation, but I know nothing which makes it unlikely that the plant should be indigenous in this warm moist district of the continent of Asia.

Forskal761 mentions the species as wild in the mountains of Arabia, under a name which he believes to be Indian. If it came from Arabia, it would have spread into Egypt long ago, and the Hebrews would have known it.

Roxburgh had received in the botanical gardens of Calcutta in 1796, and had introduced into the plantations in Bengal, a Saccharum to which he gave the name of S. sinense, and of which he published an illustration in his great work Plantæ Coromandelianæ, vol. iii. pl. 232. It is perhaps only a form of S. officinarum, and moreover, as it is only known in a cultivated state, it tells nothing about the primitive country either of this or of any other variety.

A few botanists have asserted that the sugar-cane flowers more often in Asia than in America or Africa, and even that it produces seed762 on the banks of the Ganges, which they regard as a proof that it is indigenous. Macfadyen says so without giving any proof. It was an assertion made to him in Jamaica by some traveller; but Sir W. Hooker adds in a note, “Dr. Roxburgh, in spite of his long residence on the banks of the Ganges, has never seen the seeds of the sugar-cane.” It rarely flowers, and still more rarely bears fruit, as is commonly the case with plants propagated by buds or suckers, and if any variety of sugar-cane were disposed to seed, it would probably be less productive of sugar and would soon be abandoned. Rumphius, a better observer than many modern botanists, has given a good description of the cultivated cane in the Dutch colonies, and makes an interesting remark.763 “It never produces flowers or fruit unless it has remained several years in a stony place.” Neither he, nor any one else to my knowledge, has described or drawn the seed. The flower, on the contrary, has often been figured, and I have a fine specimen from Martinique.764 Schacht is the only person who has given a good analysis of the flower, including the pistil; he had not seen the seed ripe.765 De Tussac,766 who gives a poor analysis, speaks of the seed, but he only saw it young in the ovary.

In default of precise information as to the native country of the species, accessory means, linguistic and historical, of proving an Asiatic origin, are of some interest. Ritter gives them carefully; I will content myself with an epitome. The Sanskrit name of the sugar-cane was ikshu, ikshura, or ikshava, but the sugar was called sarkara, or sakkara, and all its names in our European languages of Aryan origin, beginning with the ancient ones – Greek, for example – are clearly derived from this. This is an indication of Asiatic origin, and that the produce of the cane was of ancient use in the southern regions of Asia with which the ancient Sanskrit-speaking nation may have had commercial dealings. The two Sanskrit words have remained in Bengali under the forms ik and akh.767 But in other languages beyond the Indus, we find a singular variety of names, at least when they are not akin to that of the Aryans; for instance: panchadara in Telinga, kyam in Burmese, mia in the dialect of Cochin-China, kan and tche, or tsche, in Chinese; and further south, among the Malays, tubu or tabu for the plant, and gula for the product. This diversity proves the great antiquity of its cultivation in those regions of Asia in which botanical indications point out the origin of the species.

The epoch of its introduction into different countries agrees with the idea that its origin was in India, Cochin-China, or the Malay Archipelago.

The Chinese were not acquainted with the sugar-cane at a very remote period, and they received it from the West. Ritter contradicts those authors who speak of a very ancient cultivation, and I find most positive confirmation of his opinion in Dr. Bretschneider’s pamphlet, drawn up at Pekin with the aid of all the resources of Chinese literature.768 “I have not been able to discover,” he says, “any allusion to the sugar-cane in the most ancient Chinese books (the five classics).” It appears to have been mentioned for the first time by the authors of the second century before Christ. The first description of it appears in the Nan-fang-tsao-mu-chuang, in the fourth century: “The chê chê, kan-chê (kan, sweet, chê, bamboo) grows,” it says, “in Cochin-China. It is several inches in circumference, and resembles the bamboo. The stem, broken into pieces, is eatable and very sweet. The sap which is drawn from it is dried in the sun. After a few days it becomes sugar (here a compound Chinese character), which melts in the mouth… In the year 286 (of our era) the kingdom of Funan (in India, beyond the Ganges) sent sugar as a tribute.” According to the Pent-Sao, an emperor who reigned from 627 to 650 A.D., sent a man into the Indian province of Behar to learn how to manufacture sugar.

There is nothing said in these works of the plant growing wild in China; on the contrary, the origin in Cochin-China, indicated by Loureiro, finds an unexpected confirmation. It seems to me most probable that its primitive range extended from Bengal to Cochin-China. It may have included the Sunda Isles and the Moluccas, whose climate is very similar; but there are quite as many reasons for believing that it was early introduced into these from Cochin-China or the Malay peninsula.

The propagation of the sugar-cane from India westward is well known. The Greco-Roman world had a vague idea of the reed (calamus) which the Indians delighted to chew, and from which they obtained sugar.769 On the other hand, the Hebrew writings do not mention sugar;770 whence we may infer that the cultivation of the sugar-cane did not exist west of the Indus at the time of the Jewish captivity at Babylon. The Arabs in the Middle Ages introduced it into Egypt, Sicily, and the south of Spain,771 where it flourished until the abundance of sugar in the colonies caused it to be abandoned. Don Henriquez transported the sugar-cane from Sicily to Madeira, whence it was taken to the Canaries in 1503.772 Hence it was introduced into Brazil in the beginning of the sixteenth century.773 It was taken to St. Domingo about 1520, and shortly afterwards to Mexico;774 to Guadeloupe in 1644, to Martinique about 1650, to Bourbon when the colony was founded.775 The variety known as Otahiti, which is not, however, wild in that island, and which is also called Bourbon, was introduced into the French and English colonies at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century.776

The processes of cultivation and preparation of the sugar are described in a number of works, among which the following may be recommended: de Tussac, Flore des Antilles, 3 vols., Paris; vol. i. pp. 151-182; and Macfadyen, in Hooker’s Botanical Miscellany, 1830, vol. i. pp. 103-116.