Origin of Cultivated Plants

The species has also been found wild in Abyssinia, in the valley of Hieha by Dillon, and in the bush and stony ground of another district by Schimper.1229

From these two regions of the old world it has been introduced into the gardens of all tropical countries and of those temperate ones where there is a sufficiently high temperature in summer. It has occasionally become naturalized from cultivation, as is seen in America.1230

The earliest Chinese work which mentioned the gourd is that of Tchong-tchi-chou, of the first century before Christ, quoted in a work of the fifth or sixth century according to Bretschneider.1231 He is speaking here of cultivated plants. The modern varieties of the gardens at Pekin are the trumpet gourd, which is eatable, and the bottle gourd.

Greek authors do not mention the plant, but Romans speak of it from the beginning of the empire. It is clearly alluded to in the often-quoted lines1232 of the tenth book of Columella. After describing the different forms of the fruit, he says —

“Dabit illa capacem,Nariciæ picis, aut Actæi mellis Hymetti,Aut habilem lymphis hamulam, Bacchove lagenam,Tum pueros eadem fluviis innare docebit.”

Pliny1233 speaks of a Cucurbitacea, of which vessels and flasks for wine were made, which can only apply to this species.

It does not appear that the Arabs were early acquainted with it, for Ibn Alawâm and Ibn Baithar say nothing of it.1234 Commentators of Hebrew works attribute no name to this species with certainty, and yet the climate of Palestine is such as to popularize the use of gourds had they been known. From this it seems to me doubtful that the ancient Egyptians possessed this plant, in spite of a single figure of leaves observed on a tomb which has been sometimes identified with it.1235 Alexander Braun, Ascherson, and Magnus, in their learned paper on the Egyptian remains of plants in the Berlin Museum,1236 indicate several Cucurbitaceæ without mentioning this one. The earliest modern travellers, such as Rauwolf,1237 in 1574, saw it in the gardens of Syria, and the so-called pilgrim’s gourd, figured in 1539 by Brunfels, was probably known in the Holy Land from the Middle Ages.

All the botanists of the sixteenth century give illustrations of this species, which was more generally cultivated in Europe at that time than it is now. The common name in these older writings is Cameraria, and three kinds of fruit are distinguished. From the white colour of the flower, which is always mentioned, there can be no doubt of the species. I also note an illustration, certainly a very indifferent one, in which the flower is wanting, but with an exact representation of the fruit of the pilgrim’s gourd, which has the great interest of having appeared before the discovery of America. It is pl. 216 of Herbarius Pataviæ Impressus, in 4to, 1485 – a rare work.

In spite of the use of similar names by some authors, I do not believe that the gourd existed in America before the arrival of the Europeans. The Taquera of Piso1238 and Cucurbita lagenæforma of Marcgraf1239 are perhaps Lagenaria vulgaris as monographs say,1240 and the specimens from Brazil which they mention should be certain, but that does not prove that the species was in the country before the voyage of Amerigo Vespucci in 1504. From that time until the voyages of these two botanists in 1637 and 1638, a much longer time elapsed than is needed to account for the introduction and diffusion of an annual species of a curious form, easy of cultivation, and of which the seeds long retain the faculty of germination. It may have become naturalized from cultivation, as has taken place elsewhere. It is still more likely that Cucurbita siceratia, Molina, attributed sometimes to the species under consideration, sometimes to Cucurbita maxima,1241 may have been introduced into Chili between 1538, the date of the discovery of that country, and 1787, the date of the Italian edition of Molina. Acosta1242 also speaks of calabashes which the Peruvians used as cups and vases, but the Spanish edition of his book appeared in 1591, more than a hundred years after the Conquest. Among the first naturalists to mention the species after the discovery of America (1492) is Oviedo,1243 who had visited the mainland, and, after dwelling at Vera Paz, came back to Europe in 1515, but returned to Nicaragua in 1539.1244 According to Ramusio’s compilation1245 he spoke of zueche, freely cultivated in the West India Islands and Nicaragua at the time of the discovery of America, and used as bottles. The authors of the floras of Jamaica in the seventeenth century say that the species was cultivated in that island. P. Brown,1246 however, mentions a large cultivated gourd, and a smaller one with a bitter and purgative pulp, which was found wild.

Lastly, Elliott1247 writes as follows, in 1824, in a work on the Southern States of America: “L. vulgaris is rarely found in the woods, and is certainly not indigenous. It seems to have been brought by the early inhabitants of our country from a warmer climate. The species has now become wild near dwellings, especially in islands.” The expression, “inhabitants of our country,” seems to refer rather to the colonists than to the natives. Between the discovery of Virginia by Cabot in 1497, or the travels of Raleigh in 1584, and the floras of modern botanists, more than two centuries elapsed, and the natives would have had time to extend the cultivation of the species if they had received it from Europeans. But the fact of its cultivation by Indians at the time of the earliest dealings with them is doubtful. Torrey and Gray1248 mentioned it as certain in their flora published in 1830-40, and later the second of these able botanists,1249 in an article on the Cucurbitaceæ known to the natives, does not mention the calabash, or Lagenaria. I remark the same omission in another special article on the same subject, published more recently.1250

[In the learned articles by Messrs. Asa Gray and Trumbull on the present volume (American Journal of Science, 1883, p. 370), they give reasons for supposing the species known and indigenous in America previous to the arrival of the Europeans. Early travellers are quoted more in detail than I had done. From their testimony it appears that the inhabitants of Peru, Brazil, and of Paria possessed gourds, in Spanish calabazas, but I do not see that this proves that this was the species called by botanists Cucurbita lagmaria. The only character independent of the exceedingly variable form of the fruit is the white colour of the flowers, and this character is not mentioned. – Author’s Note, 1884.]

Gourd—Cucurbita maxima, Duchesne.

In enumerating the species of the genus Cucurbita, I should explain that their distinction, formerly exceedingly difficult, has been established by M. Naudin1251 in a very scientific manner, by means of an assiduous cultivation of varieties and of experiments upon their crossed fertilization. Those groups of forms which cannot fertilize each other, or of which the product is not fertile and stable, are regarded by him as species, and the forms which can be crossed and yield a fertile and varied product, as races, breeds, or varieties. Later experiments1252 showed him that the establishment of species on this basis is not without exceptions, but in the genus Cucurbita physiological facts agree with exterior differences. M. Naudin has established the true distinctive characters of C. maxima and C. Pepo. The leaves of the first have rounded lobes, the peduncles are smooth and the lobes of the corolla are curved outwards; the second has leaves with pointed lobes, the peduncles marked with ridges and furrows, the corolla narrowed towards the base and with lobes nearly always upright.

The principal varieties of Cucurbita maxima are the great yellow gourd, which sometimes attains to an enormous size,1253 the Spanish gourd, the turban gourd, etc.

Since common names and those in ancient authors do not agree with botanical definitions, we must mistrust the assertions formerly put forth on the origin and early cultivation of such and such a gourd at a given epoch in a given country. For this reason, when I considered the subject in 1855, the home of these plants seemed to me either unknown or very doubtful. At the present day it is more easy to investigate the question.

According to Sir Joseph Hooker,1254 Cucurbita maxima was found by Barter on the banks of the Niger in Guinea, apparently indigenous, and by Welwitsch in Angola without any assertion of its wild character. In works on Abyssinia, Egypt, or other African countries in which the species is commonly cultivated, I find no indication that it is found wild. The Abyssinians used the word dubba, which is applied in Arabic to gourds in general.

The plant was long supposed to be of Indian origin, because of such names as Indian gourd, given by sixteenth-century botanists, and in particular the Pepo maximus indicus, figured by Lobel,1255 which answers to the modern species; but this is a very insufficient proof, since popular indications of origin are very often erroneous. The fact is that though pumpkins are cultivated in Southern Asia, as in other parts of the tropics, the plant has not been found wild.1256 No similar species is indicated by ancient Chinese authors, and the modern names of gourds and pumpkins now grown in China are of foreign and southern origin.1257 It is impossible to know to what species the Sanskrit name kurkarou belonged, although Roxburgh attributes it to Cucurbita Pepo; and there is no less uncertainty with respect to the gourds, pumpkins, and melons cultivated by the Greeks and Romans. It is not certain if the species was known to the ancient Egyptians, but perhaps it was cultivated in that country and in the Græco-Roman world. The Pepones, of which Charlemagne commanded the cultivation in his farms,1258 were perhaps some kind of pumpkin or marrow, but no figure or description of these plants which may be clearly recognized exists earlier than the sixteenth century.

This tends to show its American origin. Its existence in Africa in a wild state is certainly an argument to the contrary, for the species of the family of Cucurbitaceæ are very local; but there are arguments in favour of America, and I must examine them with the more care since I have been reproached in the United States for not having given them sufficient weight.

In the first place, out of the ten known species of the genus Cucurbita, six are certainly wild in America (Mexico and California); but these are perennial species, while the cultivated pumpkins are annuals.

The plant called jurumu by the Brazilians, figured by Piso and Marcgraf1259 is attributed by modern writers to Cucurbita maxima. The drawing and the short account by the two authors agree pretty well with this theory, but it seems to have been a cultivated plant. It may have been brought from Europe or from Africa by Europeans, between the discovery of Brazil in 1504, and the travels of the above-named authors in 1637 and 1638. No one has found the species wild in North or South America. I cannot find in works on Brazil, Guiana, or the West Indies any sign of an ancient cultivation or of wild growth, either from names, or from traditions or more or less distinct belief. In the United States those men of science who best know the languages and customs of the natives, Dr. Harris for instance, and more recently Trumbull,1260 maintain that the Cucurbitaceæ called squash by the Anglo-Americans, and macock, or cashaw, cushaw, by early travellers in Virginia, are pumpkins. Trumbull says that squash is an Indian word. I have no reason to doubt the assertion, but neither the ablest linguists, nor the travellers of the seventeenth century, who saw the natives provided with fruits which they called gourds and pumpkins, have been able to prove that they were such and such species recognized as distinct by modern botanists. All that we learn from this is that the natives a century after the discovery of Virginia, and twenty to forty years after its colonization by Sir Walter Raleigh, made use of some fruits of the Cucurbitaceæ. The common names are still so confused in the United States, that Dr. Asa Gray, in 1868, gives pumpkin and squash as answering to different species of Cucurbita,1261 while Darlington1262 attributes the name pumpkin to the common Cucurbita Pepo, and that of squash to the varieties of the latter which correspond to the forms of Melopepo of early botanists. They attribute no distinct common name to Cucurbita maxima.

Finally, without placing implicit faith in the indigenous character of the plant on the banks of the Niger, based upon the assertion of a single traveller, I still believe that the species is a native of the old world, and introduced into America by Europeans.

[The testimony of early travellers touching the existence of Cucurbita maxima in America before the arrival of Europeans has been collected and supplemented by Messrs. Asa Gray and Trumbull (American Journal of Science, 1883, p. 372). They confirm the fact already known, that the natives cultivated species of Cucurbita under American names, of which some remain in the modern idiom of the United States. None of these early travellers has noted the botanical characters by which Naudin established the distinction between C. maxima and C. Pepo, and consequently it is still doubtful to which species they referred. For various reasons I had already admitted that C. Pepo was of American origin, but I retain my doubts about C. maxima. After a more attentive perusal of Tragus and Matthiolo than I had bestowed upon them, Asa Gray and Trumbull notice that they call Indian whatever came from America. But if these two botanists did not confound the East and West Indies, several others, and the public in general, did make this confusion, which occasioned errors touching the origin of species which botanists were liable to repeat. A further indication in favour of the American origin of C. maxima is communicated by M. Wittmack, who informs me that seeds, certified by M. Naudin to belong to this species, have been found in the tombs of Ancon. This would be conclusive if the date of the latest burials at Ancon were certain. See on this head the article on Phaseolus vulgaris. – Author’s Note, 1884.]

Pumpkin—Cucurbita Pepo and C. Melopepo, Linnæus. Modern authors include under the head of Cucurbita Pepo most of the varieties which Linnæus designated by this name, and also those which he called C. Melopepo. These varieties are very different as to the shape of the fruit, which shows a very ancient cultivation. There is the Patagonian pumpkin, with enormous cylindrical fruit; the sugared pumpkin, called Brazilian; the vegetable marrow, with smaller long-shaped fruit; the Barberine, with knobby fruit; the Elector’s hat, with a curiously shaped conical fruit, etc. No value should be attached to the local names in this designation of varieties, for we have often seen that they express as many errors as varieties. The botanical names attributed to the species by Naudin and Cogniaux are numerous, on account of the bad habit which existed not long ago of describing as species purely garden varieties, without taking into account the wonderful effects of cultivation and selection upon the organ for the sake of which the plant is cultivated.

Most of these varieties exist in the gardens of the warm and temperate regions of both hemispheres. The origin of the species is considered to be doubtful. I hesitated in 18551263 between Southern Asia and the Mediterranean basin. Naudin and Cogniaux1264 admit Southern Asia as probable, and the botanists of the United States on their side have given reasons for their belief in an American origin. The question requires careful investigation.

I shall first seek for those forms now attributed to the species which have been found growing anywhere in a wild state.

The variety Cucurbita ovifera, Linnæus, was formerly gathered by Lerche, near Astrakhan, but no modern botanist has confirmed this fact, and it is probable it was a cultivated plant. Moreover, Linnæus does not assert it was wild. I have consulted all the Asiatic and African floras without finding the slightest mention of a wild variety. From Arabia, or even from the coast of Guinea to Japan, the species, or the varieties attributed to it, are always said to be cultivated. In India, Roxburgh remarked this, and certainly Clarke, in his recent flora of British India, has good reasons for indicating no locality for it outside cultivation.

It is otherwise in America. A variety, C. texana,1265 very near to the variety ovata, according to Asa Gray, and which is now unhesitatingly attributed to C. Pepo, was found by Lindheimer “on the edges of thickets, in damp woods, on the banks of the upper Guadaloupe, apparently an indigenous plant.” Asa Gray adds, however, that it is perhaps the result of naturalization. However, as several species of the genus Cucurbita grow wild in Mexico and in the south-west of the United States, we are naturally led to consider the collector’s opinion sound. It does not appear that other botanists found this plant in Mexico, or in the United States. It is not mentioned in Hemsley’s Biologia Centrali-Americana, nor in Asa Gray’s recent flora of California.

Some synonyms or specimens from South America, attributed to C. Pepo, appear to me very doubtful. It is impossible to say what Molina1266 meant by the names C. Siceratia and C. mammeata, which appear, moreover, to have been cultivated plants. Two species briefly described in the account of the journey of Spix and Martius (ii. p. 536), and also attributed to C. Pepo,1267 are mentioned among cultivated plants on the banks of the Rio Francisco. Lastly, the specimen of Spruce, 2716, from the river Uaupes, a tributary of the Rio Negro, which Cogniaux1268 does not mention having seen, and which he first attributed to the C. Pepo, and afterwards to the C. moschata, was perhaps cultivated or naturalized from cultivation, or by transport, in spite of the paucity of inhabitants in this country.

Botanical indications are, therefore, in favour of a Mexican or Texan origin. It remains to be seen if historical records are in agreement with or contrary to this idea.

It is impossible to discover whether a given Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin name for the pumpkin belongs to one species rather than to another. The form of the fruit is often the same, and the distinctive characters are never mentioned by authors.

There is no figure of the pumpkin in the Herbarius Pataviæ Impressus of 1485, before the discovery of America, but sixteenth-century authors have published plates which may be attributed to it. There are three forms of Pepones figured on page 406 of Dodoens, edition 1557. A fourth, Pepo rotundus major, added in the edition of 1616, appears to me to be C. maxima. In the drawing of Pepo oblongus of Lobel, Icones, 641, the character of the peduncle is clearly defined. The names given to these plants imply a foreign origin; but the authors could make no assertions on this head, all the more that the name of “the Indies” applied both to Southern Asia and America.

Thus historical data do not gainsay the opinion of an American origin, but neither do they adduce anything in support of it.

If the belief that it grows wild in America is confirmed, it may be confidently asserted that the pumpkins cultivated by the Romans and in the Middle Ages were Cucurbita maxima, and those of the natives of North America, seen by different travellers in the seventeenth century, were Cucurbita Pepo.

Musk, or Melon Pumpkin—Cucurbita moschata, Duchesne.

The Bon Jardinier quotes as the principal varieties of this species pumpkin muscade de Provence, pleine de Naples, and de Barbarie. It is needless to say that these names show nothing as to origin. The species is easily recognized by its fine soft down, the pentagonal peduncle which supports the fruit broadening at the summit; the fruit is more or less covered with a glaucous efflorescence, and the flesh is somewhat musk-scented. The lobes of the calyx are often terminated by a leafy border.1269 Cultivated in all tropical countries, it is less successful than other pumpkins in temperate regions.

Cogniaux1270 suspects that it comes from the south of Asia, but he gives no proof of this. I have searched through the floras of the old and new worlds, and I have nowhere been able to discover the mention of the species in a truly wild state. The indications which approach most nearly to it are: (1) In Asia, in the island of Bangka, a specimen verified by Cogniaux, and which Miquel1271 says is not cultivated; (2) in Africa, in Angola, specimens which Welwitsch says are quite wild, but “probably due to an introduction;” (3) in America, five specimens from Brazil, Guiana, or Nicaragua, mentioned by Cogniaux, without knowing whether they were cultivated, naturalized, or indigenous. These indications are very slight. Rumphius, Blume, Clarke (Flora of British India) in Asia, Schweinfurth (Oliver’s Flora of Trop. Africa) in Africa, only know it as a cultivated plant. Its cultivation is recent in China,1272 and American floras rarely mention the species.

No Sanskrit name is known, and the Indian, Malay, and Chinese names are neither very numerous nor very original, although the cultivation of the plant seems to be more diffused in Southern Asia than in other parts of the tropics. It was already grown in the seventeenth century according to the Hortus Malabaricus, in which there is a good plate (vol. viii. pl. 2). It does not appear that this species was known in the sixteenth century, for Dalechamp’s illustration (Hist., i. p. 616) which Seringe attributed to it has not its true characters, and I can find no other figure which resembles it.

Fig-leaved Pumpkin—Cucurbita ficifolia, Bouché; Cucurbita melanosperma, Braun.

About thirty years ago this pumpkin with black or brown seeds was introduced into gardens. It differs from other cultivated species in being perennial. It is sometimes called the Siamese melon. The Bon Jardinier says that it comes from China. Dr. Bretschneider does not mention it in his letter of 1881, in which he enumerates the pumpkins grown by the Chinese.

Hitherto no botanist has found it wild. I very much doubt its Asiatic origin as all the known perennial species of Cucurbita are from Mexico or California.

Melon—Cucumis Melo, Linnæus.

The aspect of the question as to the origin of the melon has completely changed since the experiments of Naudin. The paper which he published in 1859, in the Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 4th series, vol. ii., on the genus Cucumis, is as remarkable as that on the genus Cucurbita. He gives an account of the observations and experiments of several years on the variability of forms and the crossed fecundation of a multitude of species, breeds, or varieties coming from all parts of the world. I have already spoken (p. 250) of the physiological principle on which he believes it possible to distinguish those groups of forms which he terms species, although certain exceptions have occurred which render the criterion of fertilization less absolute. In spite of these exceptional cases, it is evident that if nearly allied forms can be easily crossed and produce fertile individuals, as we see, for example, in the human species, they must be considered as constituting a single species.

In this sense Cucumis Melo, according to the experiments and observations made by Naudin upon about two thousand living plants, constitutes a species which comprehends an extraordinary number of varieties and even of breeds; that is to say, forms which are preserved by heredity. These varieties or races can be fertilized by each other, and yield varied and variable products. They are classed by the author into ten groups, which he calls canteloups, melons brodés, sucrins, melons d’hiver, serpents, forme de concombre, Chito, Dudaim, rouges de Perse, and sauvages, each containing varieties or nearly allied races. These have been named in twenty-five or thirty different ways by botanists, who, without noticing transitions of form, the faculty of crossing or of change under cultivation, have distinguished as species all the varieties which occur in a given time or place.