Origin of Cultivated Plants

M. Naudin does not say what traveller gives the plant as wild in Senegambia; but he says the negroes call it papengaye, and as this is the name of the Mauritius planters,1342 it is probable that the plant is cultivated in Senegal, and perhaps naturalized near dwellings. Sir Joseph Hooker, in the Flora of Tropical Africa, gives the species, but without proof that it is wild in Africa, and Cogniaux is still more brief. Schweinfurth and Ascheron1343 do not mention it either as wild or cultivated in Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia. There is no trace of its ancient cultivation in Egypt.

The species has often been sent from the West Indies, New Granada, Brazil, and other parts of America, but there is no indication that it has been long in these places, nor even that it occurs at a distance from gardens in a really wild state.

The conditions or probabilities of origin, and of date of culture, are, it will be seen, identical for the two cultivated species of luffa. In support of the hypothesis that the latter is not of African origin, I may say that the four other species of the genus are Asiatic or American; and as a sign that the cultivation of the luffa is not very ancient, I will add that the form of the fruit varies much less than in the other cultivated cucurbitacea.

Snake Gourd—Trichosanthes anguina, Linnæus.

An annual creeping Cucurbitacea, remarkable for its fringed corolla. It is called petole in Mauritius, from a Java name. The fruit, which is something like a long fleshy pod of some leguminous plants, is eaten cooked like a cucumber in tropical Asia.

As the botanists of the seventeenth century received the plant from China, they imagined that the plant was indigenous there, but it was probably cultivated. Dr. Bretschneider1344 tells us that the Chinese name, mankua, means “cucumber of the southern barbarians.” Its home must be India, or the Indian Archipelago. No author, however, asserts that it has been found in a distinctly wild state. Thus Clarke, in Hooker’s Flora of British India, ii. p. 610, says only, “India, cultivated.” Naudin,1345 before him, said, “Inhabits the East Indies, where it is much cultivated for its fruits. It is rarely found wild.” Rumphius1346 is not more positive for Amboyna. Loureiro and Kurz in Cochin-China and Burmah, Blume and Miquel in the islands to the south of Asia, have only seen the plant cultivated. The thirty-nine other species of the genus are all of the old world, found between China or Japan, the west of India and Australia. They belong especially to India and the Malay Archipelago. I consider the Indian origin as the most probable one.

The species has been introduced into Mauritius, where it sows itself round cultivated places. Elsewhere it is little diffused. No Sanskrit name is known.

Chayote, or Choco—Sechium edule Swartz.

This plant, of the order Cucurbitaceæ, is cultivated in tropical America for its fruits, shaped like a pear, and tasting like a cucumber. They contain only one seed, so that the flesh is abundant.

The species alone constitutes the genus Sechium. There are specimens in every herbarium, but generally collectors do not indicate whether they are naturalized, or really wild, and apparently indigenous in the country. Without speaking of works in which this plant is said to come from the East Indies, which is entirely a mistake, several of the best give Jamaica1347 as the original home. However, P. Browne,1348 in the middle of the last century, said positively that it was cultivated there, and Sloane does not mention it. Jacquin1349 says that it “inhabits Cuba, and is cultivated there,” and Richard copies this phrase in the flora of R. de La Sagra without adding any proof. Naudin says,1350 “a Mexican plant,” but he does not give his reasons for asserting this. Cogniaux,1351 in his recent monograph, mentions a great number of specimens gathered from Brazil to the West Indies without saying if he had seen any one of these given as wild. Seemann1352 saw the plant cultivated at Panama, and he adds a remark, important if correct, namely, that the name chayote, common in the isthmus, is the corruption of an Aztec word, chayotl. This is an indication of an ancient existence in Mexico, but I do not find the word in Hernandez, the classic author on the Mexican plants anterior to the Spanish conquest. The chayote was not cultivated in Cayenne ten years ago.1353 Nothing indicates an ancient cultivation in Brazil. The species is not mentioned by early writers, such as Piso and Marcgraf, and the name chuchu, given as Brazilian,1354 seems to me to come from chocho, the Jamaica name, which is perhaps a corruption of the Mexican word.

The plant is probably a native of the south of Mexico and of Central America, and was transported into the West India Islands and to Brazil in the eighteenth century. The species was afterwards introduced into Mauritius and Algeria, where it is very successful.1355

Indian Fig, or Prickly Pear—Opuntia ficus indica, Miller.

This fleshy plant of the Cactus family, which produces the fruit known in the south of Europe as the Indian fig, has no connection with the fig tree, nor has the fruit with the fig. Its origin is not Indian but American. Everything is erroneous and absurd in this common name. However, since Linnæus took his botanical name from it, Cactus ficus indica, afterwards connected with the genus Opuntia, it was necessary to retain the specific name to avoid changes which are a source of confusion, and to recall the popular denomination. The prickly forms, and those more or less free from spines, have been considered by some authors as distinct species, but an attentive examination leads us to regard them as one.1356

The species existed both wild and cultivated in Mexico before the arrival of the Spaniards. Hernandez1357 describes nine varieties of it, which shows the antiquity of its cultivation. The cochineal insect appears to feed on one of these, almost without thorns, more than on the others, and it has been transported with the plant to the Canary Isles and elsewhere. It is not known how far its habitat extended in America before man transported pieces of the plant, shaped like a racket, and the fruits, which are two easy ways of propagating it. Perhaps the wild plants in Jamaica, and the other West India Islands mentioned by Sloane,1358 in 1725, were the result of its introduction by the Spaniards. Certainly the species has become naturalized in this direction as far as the climate permits; for instance, as far as Southern Florida.1359

It was one of the first plants which the Spaniards introduced to the old world, both in Europe and Asia. Its singular appearance was the more striking that no other species belonging to the family had before been seen.1360 All sixteenth-century botanists mention it, and the plant became naturalized in the south of Europe and in Africa as its cultivation was introduced. It was in Spain that the prickly pear was first known under the American name tuna, and it was probably the Moors who took it into Barbary when they were expelled from the peninsula. They called it fig of the Christians.1361 The custom of using the plant for fences, and the nourishing property of the fruits, which contain a large proportion of sugar, have determined its extension round the Mediterranean, and in general in all countries near the tropics.

The cultivation of the cochineal, which was unfavourable to the production of the fruit,1362 is dying out since the manufacture of colouring matters by chemical processes.

Gooseberry—Ribes grossularia and R. Vacrispa, Linnæus.

The fruit of the cultivated varieties is generally smooth, or provided with a few stiff hairs, while that of the wild varieties has soft and shorter hairs; but intermediate forms exist, and it has been shown by experiment that by sowing the seeds of the cultivated fruit, plants with either smooth or hairy fruit are obtained.1363 There is, therefore, but one species, which has produced under cultivation one principal variety and several sub-varieties as to the size, colour, or taste of the fruit.

The gooseberry grows wild throughout temperate Europe, from Southern Sweden to the mountainous regions of Central Spain, of Italy, and of Greece.1364 It is also mentioned in Northern Africa, but the last published catalogue of Algerian plants1365 indicates it only in the mountains of Aures, and Ball has found a variety in the Atlas of Marocco.1366 It grows in the Caucasus,1367 and under more or less different forms in the western Himalayas.1368

The Greeks and Romans do not mention the species, which is rare in the South, and which is hardly worth planting where grapes will ripen. It is especially in Germany, Holland, and England that it has been cultivated from the sixteenth century,1369 principally as a seasoning, whence the English name, and the French groseille à maquereaux (mackerel currant). A wine is also made from it.

The frequency of its cultivation in the British Isles and in other places where it is found wild, which are often near gardens, has suggested to some English botanists the idea of an accidental naturalization. This is likely enough in Ireland;1370 but as it is an essentially European species, I do not see why it should not have existed in England, where the wild plant is more common, since the establishment of most of the species of the British flora; that is to say, since the end of the glacial period, before the separation of the island from the continent. Phillips quotes an old English name, feaberry or feabes, which supports the theory of an ancient existence, and two Welsh names,1371 of which I cannot, however, certify the originality.

Red Currant—Ribes rubrum, Linnæus.

The common red currant is wild throughout Northern and Temperate Europe, and in Siberia1372 as far as Kamtschatka, and in America, from Canada and Vermont to the mouth of the river Mackenzie.1373

Like the preceding species, it was unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and its cultivation was only introduced in the Middle Ages. The cultivated plant hardly differs from the wild one. That the plant was foreign to the south of Europe is shown by the name of groseillier d’outremer (currant from beyond the sea), given in France1374 in the sixteenth century. In Geneva the currant is still commonly called raisin de mare, and in the canton of Soleure meertrübli. I do not know why the species was supposed, three centuries ago, to have come from beyond seas. Perhaps this should be understood to mean that it was brought by the Danes and the Northmen, and that these peoples from beyond the northern seas introduced its cultivation. I doubt it, however, for the Ribes rubrum is wild in almost the whole of Great Britain1375 and in Normandy;1376 the English, who were in constant communication with the Danes, did not cultivate it as late as 1557, from a list of the fruits of that epoch drawn up by Th. Tusser, and published by Phillips;1377 and even in the time of Gerard, in 1597,1378 its cultivation was rare, and the plant had no particular name.1379 Lastly, there are French and Breton names which indicate a cultivation anterior to the Normans in the west of France.

The old names in France are given in the dictionary by Ménage. According to him, red currants are called at Rouen gardes, at Caen grades, in Lower Normandy gradilles, and in Anjou castilles. Ménage derives all these names from rubius, rubicus, etc., by a series of imaginary transformations, from the word ruber, red. Legonidec1380 tells us that red currants are also called Kastilez (l. liquid) in Brittany, and he derives this name from Castille, as if a fruit scarcely known in Spain and abundant in the north could come from Spain. These words, found both in Brittany and beyond its limits, appear to me to be of Celtic origin; and I may mention, in support of this theory, that in Legonidec’s dictionary gardis means rough, harsh, pungent, sour, etc., which gives a hint as to the etymology. The generic name Ribes has caused other errors. It was thought the plant might be one which was so called by the Arabs; but the word comes rather from a name for the currant very common in the north, ribs in Danish,1381 risp and resp in Swedish.1382 The Slav names are quite different and in considerable number.

Black Currant—Cassis; Ribes nigrum, Linnæus.

The black currant grows wild in the north of Europe, from Scotland and Lapland as far as the north of France and Italy; in Bosnia,1383 Armenia,1384 throughout Siberia, in the basin of the river Amur, and in the western Himalayas;1385 it often becomes naturalized, as for instance, in the centre of France.1386

This shrub was unknown in Greece and Italy, for it is proper to colder countries. From the variety of the names in all the languages, even in those anterior to the Aryans, of the north of Europe, it is clear that this fruit was very early sought after, and its cultivation was probably begun before the Middle Ages. J. Bauhin1387 says it was planted in gardens in France and Italy, but most sixteenth-century authors do not mention it. In the Histoire de la Vie Privée des Français, by Le Grand d’Aussy, published in 1872, vol. i. p. 232, the following curious passage occurs: “The black currant has been cultivated hardly forty years, and it owes its reputation to a pamphlet entitled Culture du Cassis, in which the author attributed to this shrub all the virtues it is possible to imagine.” Further on (vol. iii. p. 80), the author mentions the frequent use, since the publication of the pamphlet in question, of a liqueur made from the black currant. Bosc, who is always accurate in his articles in the Dictionnaire d’Agriculture, mentions this fashion under the head Currant, but he is careful to add, “It has been very long in cultivation for its fruit, which has a peculiar odour agreeable to some, disagreeable to others, and which is held to be stomachic and diuretic.” It is also used in the manufacture of the liqueurs known as ratafia de Cassis.1388

Olive—Olea Europea, Linnæus.

The wild olive, called in botanical books the variety sylvestris or oleaster, is distinguished from the cultivated olive tree by a smaller fruit, of which the flesh is not so abundant. The best fruits are obtained by selecting the seeds, buds, or grafts from good varieties.

The oleaster now exists over a wide area east and west of Syria, from the Punjab and Beluchistan1389 as far as Portugal and even Madeira, the Canaries and even Marocco,1390 and from the Atlas northwards as far as the south of France, the ancient Macedonia, the Crimea, and the Caucasus.1391 If we compare the accounts of travellers and of the authors of floras, it will be seen that towards the limits of this area there is often a doubt as to the wild and indigenous (that is to say ancient in the country) nature of the species. Sometimes it offers itself as a shrub which fruits little or not at all; and sometimes, as in the Crimea, the plants are rare as though they had escaped, as an exception, the destructive effects of winters too severe to allow of a definite establishment. As regards Algeria and the south of France, these doubts have been the subject of a discussion among competent men in the Botanical Society.1392 They repose upon the uncontestable fact that birds often transport the seed of the olive into uncultivated and sterile places, where the wild form, the oleaster, is produced and naturalized.

The question is not clearly stated when we ask if such and such olive trees of a given locality are really wild. In a woody species which lives so long and shoots again from the same stock when cut off by accident, it is impossible to know the origin of the individuals observed. They may have been sown by man or birds at a very early epoch, for olive trees of more than a thousand years old are known. The effect of such sowing is a naturalization, which is equivalent to an extension of area. The point in question is, therefore, to discover what was the home of the species in very early prehistoric times, and how this area has grown larger by different modes of transport.

It is not by the study of living olive trees that this question can be answered. We must seek in what countries the cultivation began, and how it was propagated. The more ancient it is in any region, the more probable it is that the species has existed wild there from the time of those geological events which took place before the coming of prehistoric man.

The earliest Hebrew books mention the olive sait, or zeit,1393 both wild and cultivated. It was one of the trees promised in the land of Canaan. It is first mentioned in Genesis, where it is said that the dove sent out by Noah should bring back a branch of olive. If we take into account this tradition, which is accompanied by miraculous details, it may be added that the discoveries of modern erudition show that the Mount Ararat of the Bible must be to the east of the mountain in Armenia which now bears that name, and which was anciently called Masis. From a study of the text of the Book of Genesis, François Lenormand1394 places the mountain in question in the Hindu Kush, and even near the sources of the Indus. This theory supposes it near to the land of the Aryans, yet the olive has no Sanskrit name, not even in that Sanskrit from which the Indian languages1395 are derived. If the olive had then, as now, existed in the Punjab, the eastern Aryans in their migrations towards the south would probably have given it a name, and if it had existed in the Mazanderan, to the south of the Caspian Sea, as at the present day, the western Aryans would perhaps have known it. To these negative indications, it can only be objected that the wild olive attracts no considerable attention, and that the idea of extracting oil from it perhaps arose late in this part of Asia.

Herodotus1396 tells us that Babylonia grew no olive trees, and that its inhabitants made use of oil of sesame. It is certain that a country so subject to inundation was not at all favourable to the olive. The cold excludes the higher plateaux and the mountains of the north of Persia.

I do not know if there is a name in Zend, but the Semitic word sait must date from a remote antiquity, for it is found in modern Persian, seitun,1397 and in Arabic, zeitun, sjetun.1398 It even exists in Turkish and among the Tartars of the Crimea, seitun,1399 which may signify that it is of Turanian origin, or from the remote epoch when the Turanian and Semitic peoples intermixed.

The ancient Egyptians cultivated the olive tree, which they called tat.1400 Several botanists have ascertained the presence of branches or leaves of the olive in the sarcophagi.1401 Nothing is more certain, though Hehn1402 has recently asserted the contrary, without giving any proof in support of his opinion. It would be interesting to know to what dynasty belong the most ancient mummy-cases in which olive branches have been found. The Egyptian name, quite different to the Semitic, shows an existence more ancient than the earliest dynasties. I shall mention presently another fact in support of this great antiquity.

Theophrastus says1403 that the olive was much grown, and the harvest of oil considerable in Cyrenaica, but he does not say that the species was wild there, and the quantity of oil mentioned seems to point to a cultivated variety. The low-lying, very hot country between Egypt and the Atlas is little favourable to a naturalization of the olive outside the plantations. Kralik, a very accurate botanist, did not anywhere see on his journey to Tunis and into Egypt the olive growing wild,1404 although it is cultivated in the oases. In Egypt it is only cultivated, according to Schweinfurth and Ascherson,1405 in their resumé of the Flora of the Nile Valley.

Its prehistoric area probably extended from Syria towards Greece, for the wild olive is very common along the southern coast of Asia Minor, where it forms regular woods.1406 It is doubtless here and in the archipelago that the Greeks early knew the tree. If they had not known it on their own territory, had received it from the Semites, they would not have given it a special name, elaia, whence the Latin olea. The Iliad and the Odyssey mention the hardness of the olive wood and the practice of anointing the body with olive oil. The latter was in constant use for food and lighting. Mythology attributed to Minerva the planting of the olive in Attica, which probably signifies the introduction of cultivated varieties and suitable processes for extracting the oil. Aristæus introduced or perfected the manner of pressing the fruit.

The same mythical personage carried, it was said, the olive tree from the north of Greece into Sicily and Sardinia. It seems that this may have been early done by the Phœnicians, but in support of the idea that the species, or a perfected variety of it, was introduced by the Greeks, I may mention that the Semitic name seit has left no trace in the islands of the Mediterranean. We find the Græco-Latin name here as in Italy,1407 while upon the neighbouring coast of Africa, and in Spain, the names are Egyptian or Arabic, as I shall explain directly.

The Romans knew the olive later than the Greeks. According to Pliny,1408 it was only at the time of Tarquin the Ancient, 627 B.C., but the species probably existed already in Great Greece, as in Greece and Sicily. Besides, Pliny was speaking of the cultivated olive.

A remarkable fact, and one which has not been noted or discussed by philologists, is that the Berber name for the olive, both tree and fruit, has the root taz or tas, similar to the tat of the ancient Egyptians. The Kabyles of the district of Algiers, according to the French-Berber dictionary, published by the French Government, calls the wild olive tazebboujt, tesettha, ou’ zebbouj, and the grafted olive tazemmourt, tasettha, ou’ zemmour. The Touaregs, another Berber nation, call it tamahinet.1409 These are strong indications of the antiquity of the olive in Africa. The Arabs having conquered this country and driven back the Berbers into the mountains and the desert, having likewise subjected Spain excepting the Basque country, the names derived from the Semitic zeit have prevailed even in Spanish. The Arabs of Algiers say zenboudje for the wild, zitoun for the cultivated olive,1410 zit for olive oil. The Andalusians call the wild olive azebuche, and the cultivated aceytuno.1411 In other provinces we find the name of Latin origin, olivio, side by side with the Arabic words.1412 The oil is in Spanish aceyte, which is almost the Hebrew name; but the holy oils are called oleos santos, because they belong to Rome. The Basques use the Latin name for the olive tree.

Early voyagers to the Canaries, Bontier for instance, in 1403, mention the olive tree in these islands, where modern botanists regard it as indigenous.1413 It may have been introduced by the Phœnicians, if it did not previously exist there. We do not know if the Guanchos had names for the olive and its oil. Webb and Berthelot do not give any in their learned chapter on the language of the aborigines,1414 so the question is open to conjecture. It seems to me that the oil would have played an important part among the Guanchos if they had possessed the olive, and that some traces of it would have remained in the actual speech of the people. From this point of view the naturalization in the Canaries is perhaps not more ancient than the Phœnician voyages.

No leaf of the olive has hitherto been found in the tufa of the south of France, of Tuscany, and Sicily, where the laurel, the myrtle, and other shrubs now existing have been discovered. This is an indication, until the contrary is proved, of a subsequent naturalization.

The olive thrives in dry climates like that of Syria and Assyria. It succeeds at the Cape, in parts of America, in Australia, and doubtless it will become wild in these places when it has been more generally planted. Its slow growth, the necessity of grafting or of choosing the shoots of good varieties, and especially the concurrence of other oil-producing species, have hitherto impeded its extension; but a tree which produces in an ungrateful soil should not be indefinitely neglected. Even in the old world, where it has existed for so many thousands of years, its productiveness might be doubled by taking the trouble to graft on wild trees, as the French have done in Algeria.