Origin of Cultivated Plants

CHAPTER II.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES

Common Cabbage—Brassica oleracea, Linnæus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Krambai, crambe, of the Greeks and Latins.

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

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

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

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

Garden-Cress—Lepidium sativum, Linnæus.

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

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

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

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

Purslane—Portulaca oleracea, Linnæus.

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

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

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

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

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

New Zealand Spinach—Tetragonia expansa, Murray.

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

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

Garden Celery—Apium graveolens, Linnæus.

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

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

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

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

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

Parsley—Petroselinum sativum, Mœnch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cardoon—Cynara cardunculus, Linnæus.

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

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

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

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

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