Origin of Cultivated Plants

Finally, every method, whether botanical, historical, or philological, leads us to the following conclusions: —

Firstly, the Brassicæ with fleshy roots were originally natives of temperate Europe.

Secondly, their cultivation was diffused in Europe before, and in Asia after, the Aryan invasion.

Thirdly, the primitive slender-rooted form of Brassica napus, called Br. campestris, had probably from the beginning a more extended range, from the Scandinavian peninsula towards Siberia and the Caucasus. Its cultivation was perhaps introduced into China and Japan, through Siberia, at an epoch which appears not to be much earlier than Greco-Roman civilization.

Fourthly, the cultivation of the various forms or species of Brassica was diffused throughout the south-west of Asia at an epoch later than that of the ancient Hebrews.

Skirret—Sium Sisarum, Linnæus.

This vivacious Umbellifer, furnished with several diverging roots in the form of a carrot, is believed to come from Eastern Asia. Linnæus indicates China, doubtfully; and Loureiro,72 China and Cochin-China, where he says it is cultivated. Others have mentioned Japan and the Corea, but in these countries there are species which it is easy to confound with the one in question, particularly Sium Ninsi and Panax Ginseng. Maximowicz,73 who has seen these plants in China and in Japan, and who has studied the herbariums of St. Petersburgh, recognizes only the Altaic region of Siberia and the North of Persia as the home of the wild Sium Sisarum. I am very doubtful whether it is to be found in the Himalayas or in China, since modern works on the region of the river Amoor and on British India make no mention of it.

It is doubtful whether the ancient Greeks and Romans knew this plant. The names Sisaron of Dioscorides, Siser of Columella and of Pliny,74 are attributed to it. Certainly the modern Italian name sisaro or sisero seems to confirm this idea; but how could these authors have failed to notice that several roots descend from the base of the stem, whereas all the other umbels cultivated in Europe have but a single tap-root? It is just possible that the siser of Columella, a cultivated plant, may have been the parsnip; but what Pliny says of the siser does not apply to it. According to him it was a medicinal plant, inter medica dicendum.75 He says that Tiberius caused a quantity to be brought every year from Germany, which proves, he adds, that it thrives in cold countries.

If the Greeks had received the plant direct from Persia, Theophrastus would probably have known it. It came perhaps from Siberia into Russia, and thence into Germany, in which case the anecdote about Tiberius might well apply to the skirret. I cannot find any Russian name, certainly, but the Germans have original names, Krizel or Grizel, Görlein or Gierlein, which indicate an ancient cultivation, more than the ordinary name Zuckerwurzel, or sugar-root.76 The Danish name has the same meaning —sokerot, whence the English skirret. The name sisaron is not known in modern Greece; nor was it known there even in the Middle Ages, and the plant is not now cultivated in that country.77 There are reasons for doubt as to the true sense of the words sisaron and siser. Some botanists of the sixteenth century thought that sisaron was perhaps the parsnip proper, and Sprengel78 supports this idea.

The French names chervis and girole79 would perhaps teach us something if we knew their origin. Littré derives chervis from the Spanish chirivia, but the latter is more likely derived from the French. Bauhin80 mentions the low Latin names servillum, chervillum, or servillam, words which are not in Ducange’s dictionary. This may well be the origin of chervis, but whence came servillum or chervillum?

Arracacha or Arracacia—Arracacha esculenta, de Candolle.

An umbel generally cultivated in Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador as a nutritious plant. In the temperate regions of those countries it bears comparison with the potato, and even yields, we are assured, a lighter and more agreeable fecula. The lower part of the stem is swelled into a bulb, on which, when the plant thrives well, tubercles, or lateral bulbs, form themselves, and persist for several months, which are more prized than the central bulb, and serve for future planting.81

The species is probably indigenous in the region where it is cultivated, but I do not find in any author a positive assertion of the fact. The existing descriptions are drawn from cultivated stocks. Grisebach indeed says that he has seen (presumably in the herbarium at Kew) specimens gathered in New Granada, in Peru, and in Trinidad,82 but he does not say whether they were wild. The other species of the same genus, to the number of a dozen, grow in the same districts of America, which renders the above-mentioned origin more probable.

The introduction of the arracacha into Europe has been attempted several times without success. The damp climate of England accounts for the failure of Sir William Hooker’s attempts; but ours, made at two different times, under very different conditions, have met with no better success. The lateral bulbs did not form, and the central bulb died in the house where it was placed for the winter. The bulbs presented to different botanical gardens in France and Italy and elsewhere shared the same fate. It is clear that if the plant is in America really equal to the potato in productiveness and taste, this will never be the case in Europe. Its cultivation does not in America spread as far as Chili and Mexico, like that of the potato and sweet potato, which confirms the difficulty of propagation observed elsewhere.

Madder—Rubia tinctorum, Linnæus.

The madder is certainly wild in Italy, Greece, the Crimea, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, Armenia, and near Lenkoran.83 As we advance westward in the south of Europe, the wild, indigenous nature of the plant becomes more and more doubtful. There is uncertainty even in France. In the north and east the plant appears to be “naturalized in hedges and on walls,”84 or “subspontaneous,” escaped from former cultivation.85 In Provence and Languedoc it is more spontaneous or wild, but here also it may have spread from a somewhat extensive cultivation. In the Iberian peninsula it is mentioned as “subspontaneous.”86 It is the same in the north of Africa.87 Evidently the natural, ancient, and undoubted habitation is western temperate Asia and the south-east of Europe. It does not appear that the plant has been found beyond the Caspian Sea in the land formerly occupied by the Indo-Europeans, but this region is still little known. The species only exists in India as a cultivated plant, and has no Sanskrit name.88

Neither is there any known Hebrew name, while the Greeks, Romans, Slavs, Germans, and Kelts had various names, which a philologist could perhaps trace to one or two roots, but which nevertheless indicate by their numerous modifications an ancient date. Probably the wild roots were gathered in the fields before the idea of cultivating the species was suggested. Pliny, however, says89 that it was cultivated in Italy in his time, and it is possible that the custom was of older date in Greece and Asia Minor.

The cultivation of madder is often mentioned in French records of the Middle Ages.90 It was afterwards neglected or abandoned, until Althen reintroduced it into the neighbourhood of Avignon in the middle of the eighteenth century. It flourished formerly in Alsace, Germany, Holland, and especially in Greece, Asia Minor, and Syria, whence the exportation was considerable; but the discovery of dyes extracted from inorganic substances has suppressed this cultivation, to the great detriment of the provinces which drew large profits from it.

Jerusalem Artichoke—Helianthus tuberosus, Linnæus.

It was in the year 1616 that European botanists first mentioned this Composite, with a large root better adapted for the food of animals than of man. Columna91 had seen it in the garden of Cardinal Farnese, and called it Aster peruanus tuberosus. Other authors of the same century gave it epithets showing that it was believed to come from Brazil, or from Canada, or from the Indies, that is to say, America. Linnæus92 adopted, on Parkinson’s authority, the opinion of a Canadian origin, of which, however, he had no proof. I pointed out formerly93 that there are no species of the genus Helianthus in Brazil, and that they are, on the contrary, numerous in North America.

Schlechtendal,94 after having proved that the Jerusalem artichoke can resist the severe winters of the centre of Europe, observes that this fact is in favour of the idea of a Canadian origin, and contrary to the belief of its coming from some southern region. Decaisne95 has eliminated from the synonymy of H. tuberosus several quotations which had occasioned the belief in a South American or Mexican origin. Like the American botanists, he recalls what ancient travellers had narrated of certain customs of the aborigines of the Northern States and of Canada. Thus Champlain, in 1603, had seen, “in their hands, roots which they cultivate, and which taste like an artichoke.” Lescarbot96 speaks of these roots with the artichoke flavour, which multiply freely, and which he had brought back to France, where they began to be sold under the name of topinambaux. The savages, he says, call them chiquebi. Decaisne also quotes two French horticulturists of the seventeenth century, Colin and Sagard, who evidently speak of the Jerusalem artichoke, and say it came from Canada. It is to be noted that the name Canada had at that time a vague meaning, and comprehended some parts of the modern United States. Gookin, an American writer on the customs of the aborigines, says that they put pieces of the Jerusalem artichoke into their soups.97

Botanical analogies and the testimony of contemporaries agree, as we have seen, in considering this plant to be a native of the north-east of America. Dr. Asa Gray, seeing that it is not found wild, had formerly supposed it to be a variety of H. doronicoides of Lamarck, but he has since abandoned this idea (American Journal of Science, 1883, p. 224). An author gives it as wild in the State of Indiana.98 The French name topinambour comes apparently from some real or supposed Indian name. The English name Jerusalem artichoke is a corruption of the Italian girasole, sunflower, combined with an allusion to the artichoke flavour of the root.

Salsify—Tragopogon porrifolium, Linnæus.

The salsify was more cultivated a century or two ago than it is now. It is a biennial composite, found wild in Greece, Dalmatia, Italy, and even in Algeria.99 It frequently escapes from gardens in the west of Europe, and becomes half-naturalized.100

Commentators101 give the name Tragopogon (goat’s beard) of Theophrastus sometimes to the modern species, sometimes to Tragopogon crocifolium, which also grows in Greece. It is difficult to know if the ancients cultivated the salsify or gathered it wild in the country. In the sixteenth century Olivier de Serres says it was a new culture in his country, the south of France. Our word Salsifis comes from the Italian Sassefrica, that which rubs stones, a senseless term.

Scorzonera—Scorzonera hispanica, Linnæus.

This plant is sometimes called the Spanish salsify, from its resemblance to Tragopogon porrifolium; but its root has a brown skin, whence its botanical name, and the popular name écorce noire in some French provinces.

It is wild in Europe, from Spain, where it abounds, the south of France, and Germany, to the region of Caucasus, and perhaps even as far as Siberia, but it is wanting in Sicily and Greece.102 In several parts of Germany the species is probably naturalized from cultivation.

It seems that this plant has only been cultivated within the last hundred or hundred and fifty years. The botanists of the sixteenth century speak of it as a wild species introduced occasionally into botanical gardens. Olivier de Serres does not mention it.

It was formerly supposed to be an antidote against the bite of adders, and was sometimes called the viper’s plant. As to the etymology of the name Scorzonera, it is so evident, that it is difficult to understand how early writers, even Tournefort,103 have declared the origin of the word to be escorso, viper in Spanish or Catalan. Viper is in Spanish more commonly vibora.

There exists in Sicily a Scorzonera deliciosa, Gussone, whose very sugary root is used in the confection of bonbons and sherbets, at Palermo.104 How is it that its cultivation has not been tried? It is true that I tasted at Naples Scorzonera ices, and found them detestable, but they were perhaps made of the common species (Scorzonera hispanica).

Potato—Solanum tuberosum, Linnæus.

In 1855 I stated and discussed what was then known about the origin of the potato, and about its introduction into Europe.105 I will now add the result of the researches of the last quarter of a century. It will be seen that the data formerly acquired have become more certain, and that several somewhat doubtful accessory questions have remained uncertain, though the probabilities in favour of what formerly seemed the truth have grown stronger.

It is proved beyond a doubt that at the time of the discovery of America the cultivation of the potato was practised, with every appearance of ancient usage, in the temperate regions extending from Chili to New Granada, at altitudes varying with the latitude. This appears from the testimony of all the early travellers, among whom I shall name Acosta for Peru,106 and Pedro Cieca, quoted by de l’Ecluse,107 for Quito.

In the eastern temperate region of South America, on the heights of Guiana and Brazil, for instance, the potato was not known to the aborigines, or if they were acquainted with a similar plant, it was Solanum Commersonii, which has also a tuberous root, and is found wild in Montevideo and in the south of Brazil. The true potato is certainly now cultivated in the latter country, but it is of such recent introduction that it has received the name of the English Batata.108 According to Humboldt it was unknown in Mexico,109 a fact confirmed by the silence of subsequent authors, but to a certain degree contradicted by another historical fact. It is said that Sir Walter Raleigh, or rather Thomas Herriott, his companion in several voyages, brought back to Ireland, in 1585 or 1586, some tubers of the Virginian potato.110 Its name in its own country was openawk. From Herriott’s description of the plant, quoted by Sir Joseph Banks,111 there is no doubt that it was the potato, and not the batata, which at that period was sometimes confounded with it. Besides, Gerard112 tells us that he received from Virginia the potato which he cultivated in his garden, and of which he gives an illustration which agrees in all points with Solanum tuberosum. He was so proud of it that he is represented, in his portrait at the beginning of the work, holding in his hand a flowering branch of this plant.

The species could scarcely have been introduced into Virginia or Carolina in Raleigh’s time (1585), unless the ancient Mexicans had possessed it, and its cultivation had been diffused among the aborigines to the north of Mexico. Dr. Roulin, who has carefully studied the works on North America, has assured me that he has found no signs of the potato in the United States before the arrival of the Europeans. Dr. Asa Gray also told me so, adding that Mr. Harris, one of the men most intimately acquainted with the language and customs of North American tribes, was of the same opinion. I have read nothing to the contrary in recent publications, and we must not forget that a plant so easy of cultivation would have spread itself even among nomadic tribes, had they possessed it. It seems to me most likely that some inhabitants of Virginia – perhaps English colonists – received tubers from Spanish or other travellers, traders or adventurers, during the ninety years which had elapsed since the discovery of America. Evidently, dating from the conquest of Peru and Chili, in 1535 to 1585, many vessels could have carried tubers of the potato as provisions, and Sir Walter Raleigh, making war on the Spaniards as a privateer, may have pillaged some vessel which contained them. This is the less improbable, since the Spaniards had introduced the plant into Europe before 1585.

Sir Joseph Banks113 and Dunal114 were right to insist upon the fact that the potato was first introduced by the Spaniard, since for a long time the credit was generally given to Sir Walter Raleigh, who was the second introducer, and even to other Englishmen, who had introduced, not the potato but the batata (sweet potato), which is more or less confounded with it.115 A celebrated botanist, de l’Ecluse,116 had nevertheless defined the facts in a remarkable manner. It is he who published the first good description and illustration of the potato, under the significant name of Papas Peruanorum. From what he says, the species has little changed under the culture of nearly three centuries, for it yielded in the beginning as many as fifty tubers of unequal size, from one to two inches long, irregularly ovoid, reddish, ripening in November (at Vienna). The flower was more or less pink externally, and reddish within, with five longitudinal stripes of green, as is often seen now. No doubt numerous varieties have been obtained, but the original form has not been lost. De l’Ecluse compares the scent of the flower with that of the lime, the only difference from our modern plant. He sowed seeds which produced a white-flowered variety, such as we sometimes see now.

The plants described by de l’Ecluse were sent to him in 1588, by Philippe de Sivry, Seigneur of Waldheim and Governor of Mons, who had received them from some one in attendance on the papal legate in Belgium. De l’Ecluse adds that the species had been introduced into Italy from Spain or America (certum est vel ex Hispania, vel ex America habuisse), and he wonders that, although the plant had become so common in Italy that it was eaten like a turnip and given to the pigs, the learned men of the University of Padua only became acquainted with it by means of the tuber which he sent them from Germany. Targioni117 has not been able to discover any proof that the potato was as widely cultivated in Italy at the end of the sixteenth century as de l’Ecluse asserts, but he quotes Father Magazzini of Vallombrosa, whose posthumous work, published in 1623, mentions the species as one previously brought, without naming the date, from Spain or Portugal by barefooted friars. It was, therefore, towards the end of the sixteenth or at the beginning of the seventeenth century that the cultivation of the potato became known in Tuscany. Independently of what de l’Ecluse and the agriculturist of Vallombrosa say of its introduction from the Iberian peninsula, it is not at all likely that the Italians had any dealings with Raleigh’s companions.

No one can doubt that the potato is of American origin; but in order to know from what part of that vast continent it was brought, it is necessary to know if the plant is found wild there, and in what localities.

To answer this question clearly, we must first remove two causes of error: the confusion of allied species of the genus Solanum with the potato; and the other, the mistakes made by travellers as to the wild character of the plant.

The allied species are Solanum Commersonii of Dunal, of which I have already spoken; S. maglia of Molina, a Chili species; S. immite of Dunal, a native of Peru; and S. verrucosum118 of Schlechtendal, which grows in Mexico. These three kinds of Solanum have smaller tubers than S. tuberosum, and differ also in other characteristics indicated in special works on botany. Theoretically, it may be believed that all these, and other forms growing in America, are derived from a single earlier species, but in our geological epoch they present themselves with differences which seem to me to justify specific distinctions, and no experiments have proved that by crossing one with another a product would be obtained of which the seed (not the tubers) would propagate the race. Leaving these more or less doubtful questions of species, let us try to ascertain whether the common form of Solanum tuberosum has been found wild, and merely remark that the abundance of tuberous solanums growing in the temperate regions of America, from Chili or Buenos Ayres as far as Mexico, confirms the fact of an American origin. If we knew nothing more, this would be a strong presumption in favour of this country being the original home of the potato.

The second cause of error is very clearly explained by the botanist Weddell,119 who has carefully explored Bolivia and the neighbouring countries. “When we reflect,” he says, “that on the arid Cordillera the Indians often establish their little plots of cultivation on points which would appear almost inaccessible to the great majority of our European farmers, we understand that when a traveller chances to visit one of these cultivated plots, long since abandoned, and finds there a plant of Solanum tuberosum which has accidentally persisted, he gathers it in the belief that it is really wild; but of this there is no proof.”

We come now to facts. These abound concerning the wild character of the plant in Chili.

In 1822, Alexander Caldcleugh,120 English consul, sent to the London Horticultural Society some tubers of the potato which he had found in the ravines round Valparaiso. He says that these tubers are small, sometimes red, sometimes yellowish, and rather bitter in taste.121 “I believe,” he adds, “that this plant exists over a great extent of the littoral, for it is found in the south of Chili, where the aborigines call it maglia.” This is probably a confusion with S. maglia of botanists; but the tubers of Valparaiso, planted in London, produced the true potato, as we see from a glance at Sabine’s coloured figure in the Transactions of the Horticultural Society. The cultivation of this plant was continued for some time, and Lindley certified anew, in 1847, its identity with the common potato.122 Here is the account of the Valparaiso plant, given by a traveller to Sir William Hooker.123 “I noticed the potato on the shore as far as fifteen leagues to the north of this town, and to the south, but I do not know how far it extends. It grows on cliffs and hills near the sea, and I do not remember to have seen it more than two or three leagues from the coast. Although it is found in mountainous places, far from cultivation, it does not exist in the immediate neighbourhood of the fields and gardens where it is planted, excepting when a stream crosses these enclosures and carries the tubers into uncultivated places.” The potato described by these two travellers had white flowers, as is seen in some cultivated European varieties, and like the plant formerly reared by de l’Ecluse. We may assume that this is the natural colour of the species, or at least one of the most common in its wild state.

Darwin, in his voyage in the Beagle, found the potato growing wild in great abundance on the sand of the sea-shore, in the archipelago of Southern Chili, and growing with a remarkable vigour, which may be attributed to the damp climate. The tallest plants attained to the height of four feet. The tubers were small as a rule, though one of them was two inches in diameter. They were watery, insipid, but with no bad taste when cooked. “The plant is undoubtedly wild,” says the author,124 “and its specific identity has been confirmed first by Henslow, and afterwards by Sir Joseph Hooker in his Flora Antarctica.125”

A specimen in the herbarium collected by Claude Gay, considered by Dunal to be Solanum tuberosum, bears this inscription: “From the centre of the Cordilleras of Talcagouay, and of Cauquenes, in places visited only by botanists and geologists.” The same author, Gay, in his Flora Chilena,126 insists upon the abundance of the wild potato in Chili, even among the Araucanians in the mountains of Malvarco, where, he says, the soldiers of Pincheira used to go and seek it for food. This evidence sufficiently proves its wild state in Chili, so that I may omit other less convincing testimony – for instance, that of Molina and Meyen, whose specimens from Chili have not been examined.