PART II.
On the Study of Species, considered as to their Origin, their early Cultivation, and the Principal Facts of their Diffusion.25
CHAPTER I.
PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS, SUCH AS ROOTS, TUBERCLES, OR BULBS.26
Radish.—Raphanus sativus, Linnæus.
The radish is cultivated for what is called the root, which is, properly speaking, the lower part of the stem with the tap root.27 Every one knows how the size, shape, and colour of those organs which become fleshy vary according to the soil or the variety.
There is no doubt that the species is indigenous in the temperate regions of the old world; but, as it has been cultivated in gardens from the earliest historic times, from China and Japan to Europe, and as it sows itself frequently round cultivated plots, it is difficult to fix upon its starting-point.
Formerly Raphanus sativus was confounded with kindred species of the Mediterranean region, to which certain Greek names were attributed; but Gay, the botanist, who has done a good deal towards eliminating these analogous forms,28 considered R. sativus as a native of the East, perhaps of China. Linnæus also supposed this plant to be of Chinese origin, or at least that variety which is cultivated in China for the sake of extracting oil from the seeds.29 Several floras of the south of Europe mention the species as subspontaneous or escaped from cultivation, never as spontaneous. Ledebour had seen a specimen found near Mount Ararat, had sown the seeds of it and verified the species.30 However, Boissier,31 in 1867, in his Eastern Flora, says that it is only subspontaneous in the cultivated parts of Anatolia, near Mersivan (according to Wied), in Palestine (on his own authority), in Armenia (according to Ledebour), and probably elsewhere, which agrees with the assertions found in European floras.32 Buhse names a locality, the Ssahend mountains, to the south of the Caucasus, which appears to be far enough from cultivation. The recent Flora of British India33 and the earlier Flora of Cochin-China by Loureiro, mention the radish only as a cultivated species. Maximowicz saw it in a garden in the north-east of China.34 Thunberg speaks of it as a plant of general cultivation in Japan, and growing also by the side of the roads,35 but the latter fact is not repeated by modern authors, who are probably better informed.36
Herodotus (Hist., 1. 2, c. 125) speaks of a radish which he calls surmaia, used by the builders of the pyramid of Cheops, according to an inscription upon the monument. Unger37 copied from Lepsius’ work two drawings from the temple of Karnak, of which the first, at any rate, appears to represent the radish.
From all this we gather, first, that the species spreads easily from cultivation in the west of Asia and the south of Europe, while it does not appear with certainty in the flora of Eastern Asia; and secondly, that in the regions south of the Caucasus it is found without any sign of culture, so that we are led to suppose that the plant is wild there. From these two reasons it appears to have come originally from Western Asia between Palestine, Anatolia, and the Caucasus, perhaps also from Greece; its cultivation spreading east and west from a very early period.
The common names support these hypotheses. In Europe they offer little interest when they refer to the quality of the root (radis), or to some comparison with the turnip (ravanello in Italian, rabica in Spanish, etc.), but the ancient Greeks coined the special name raphanos (easily reared). The Italian word ramoraccio is derived from the Greek armoracia, which was used for R. sativus or some allied species. Modern interpreters have erroneously referred this name to Cochlearia Armoracia or horse-radish, which I shall come to presently. Semitic38 languages have quite different names (fugla in Hebrew, fuil, fidgel, figl, etc., in Arab.). In India, according to Roxburgh,39 the common name of a variety with an enormous root, as large sometimes as a man’s leg, is moola or moolee, in Sanskrit mooluka. Lastly, for Cochin-China, China, and Japan, authors give various names which differ very much one from the other. From this diversity a cultivation which ranged from Greece to Japan must be very ancient, but nothing can thence be concluded as to its original home as a spontaneous plant.
A totally different opinion exists on the latter point, which we must also examine. Several botanists40 suspect that Raphanus sativus is simply a particular condition, with enlarged root and non-articulated fruit, of Raphanus raphanistrum, a very common plant in the temperate cultivated districts of Europe and Asia, and which is also found in a wild state in sand and light soil near the sea—for instance, at St. Sebastian, in Dalmatia, and at Trebizond.41 Its usual haunts are in deserted fields; and many common names which signify wild radish, show the affinity of the two plants. I should not insist upon this point if their supposed identity were a mere presumption, but it rests upon experiments and observations which it is important to know.
In R. raphanistrum the siliqua is articulated, that is to say, contracted at intervals, and the seeds placed each in a division. In R. sativus the siliqua is continuous, and forms a single cavity. Some botanists had made this difference the basis of two distinct genera, Raphanistrum and Raphanus. But three accurate observers, Webb, Gay, and Spach, have noticed among plants of Raphanus sativus, raised from the same seed, both unilocular and articulated pods, some of them bilocular, others plurilocular. Webb42 arrived at the same results when he afterwards repeated these experiments, and he observed yet another fact of some importance: the radish which sows itself by chance, and is not cultivated, produced the siliquæ of Raphanistrum.43 Another difference between the two plants is in the root, fleshy in R. sativus, slender in R. raphanistrum; but this changes with cultivation, as appears from the experiments of Carrière, the head gardener of the nurseries of the Natural History Museum in Paris.44 It occurred to him to sow the seeds of the slender-rooted Raphanistrum in both stiff and light soil, and in the fourth generation he obtained fleshy radishes, of varied colour and form like those of our gardens. He even gives the figures, which are really curious and conclusive. The pungent taste of the radish was not wanting. To obtain these changes, Carrière sowed in September, so as to make the plant almost biennial instead of annual. The thickening of the root was the natural result, since many biennial plants have fleshy roots.
The inverse experiment remains to be tried—to sow cultivated radishes in a poor soil. Probably the roots would become poorer and poorer, while the siliquæ would become more and more articulated.
From all the experiments I have mentioned, Raphanus sativus might well be a variety of R. raphanistrum, an unstable variety determined by the existence of several generations in a fertile soil. We cannot suppose that ancient uncivilized peoples made essays like those of Carrière, but they may have noticed plants of Raphanistrum grown in richly manured soil, with more or less fleshy roots; and this soon suggested the idea of cultivating them.
I have, however, one objection to make, founded on geographical botany. Raphanus raphanistrum is a European plant which does not exist in Asia.45 It cannot, therefore, be this species that has furnished the inhabitants of India, China, and Japan with the radishes which they have cultivated for centuries. On the other hand, how could R. raphanistrum, which is supposed to have been modified in Europe, have been transmitted in ancient times across the whole of Asia? The transport of cultivated plants has commonly proceeded from Asia into Europe. Chang-Kien certainly brought vegetables from Bactriana into China in the second century B.C., but the radish is not named among the number.
Horse-radish—Cochlearia Armoracia, Linnæus.
This Crucifer, whose rather hard root has the taste of mustard, was sometimes called in French cran, or cranson de Bretagne. This was an error caused by the old botanical name Armoracia, which was taken for a corruption of Armorica (Brittany). Armoracia occurs in Pliny, and was applied to a crucifer of the Pontine province, which was perhaps Raphanus sativus. After I had formerly46 pointed out this confusion, I expressed myself as follows on the mistaken origin of the species:—Cochlearia Armoracia is not wild in Brittany, a fact now established by the researches of botanists in the west of France. The Abbé Delalande mentions it in his little work, entitled Hœdic et Houat,47 in which he gives so interesting an account of the customs and productions of these two little islands of Brittany. He quotes the opinion of M. le Gall, who, in an unpublished flora of Morbihan, declares the plant foreign to Brittany. This proof, however, is less strong than others, since the south coast of the peninsula of Brittany is not yet sufficiently known to botanists, and the ancient Armorica extended over a portion of Normandy where the wild horse-radish is now found.48 This leads me to speak of the original home of the species. English botanists mention it as wild in Great Britain, but are doubtful about its origin. Watson49 considers it as introduced by cultivation. The difficulty of extirpating it, he says, from places where it is cultivated, is well known to gardeners. It is therefore not surprising that this plant should take possession of waste ground, and persist there so as to appear indigenous. Babington50 mentions only one spot where the species appears to be really wild, namely, Swansea. We will try to solve the problem by further arguments.
Cochlearia Armoracia is a plant belonging to the temperate, and especially to the eastern regions of Europe. It is diffused from Finland to Astrakhan, and to the desert of Cuman.51 Grisebach mentions also several localities in Turkey in Europe, near Enos, for instance, where it abounds on the sea-shore.52
The further we advance towards the west of Europe, the less the authors of floras appear sure that the plant is indigenous, and the localities assigned to it are more scattered and doubtful. The species is rarer in Norway than in Sweden,53 in the British Isles than in Holland, where a foreign origin is not attributed to it.54
The specific names confirm the impression of its origin in the east rather than in the west of Europe; thus the name chren55 in Russia recurs in all the Sclavonic languages, krenai in Lithuanian, chren in Illyrian,56 etc. It has introduced itself into a few German dialects, round Vienna,57 for instance, where it persists, in spite of the spread of the German tongue. We owe to it also the French names cran or cranson. The word used in Germany, Meerretig, and in Holland, meer-radys, whence the Italian Swiss dialect has taken the name méridi, or mérédi, means sea-radish, and is not primitive like the word chren. It comes probably from the fact that the plant grows well near the sea, a circumstance common to many of the Cruciferæ, and which should be the case with this species, for it is wild in the east of Russia where there is a good deal of salt soil. The Swedish name peppar-rot58 suggests the idea that the species came into Sweden later than the introduction of pepper by commerce into the north of Europe. However, the name may have taken the place of an older one, which has remained unknown to us. The English name of horse-radish is not of such an original nature as to lead to a belief in the existence of the species in the country before the Saxon conquest. It means a very strong radish. The Welsh name rhuddygl maurth59 is only the translation of the English word, whence we may infer that the Kelts of Great Britain had no special name, and were not acquainted with the species. In the west of France, the name raifort, which is the commonest, merely means strong root. Formerly it bore in France the names of German, or Capuchin mustard, which shows a foreign and recent origin. On the contrary, the word chren is in all the Sclavonic languages, a word which has penetrated into some German and French dialects under the forms of kreen, cran, and cranson, and which is certainly of a primitive nature, and shows the antiquity of the species in temperate Eastern Europe. It is therefore most probable that cultivation has propagated and naturalized the plant westward from the east for about a thousand years.
Turnips—Brassica species et varietates radice in crassata.
The innumerable varieties and subvarieties of the turnip known as swedes, Kohl-rabi, etc., may be all attributed to one of the four species of Linnæus—Brassica napus, Br. oleracea, Br. rapa, Br. campestris—of which the two last should, according to modern authors, be fused into one. Other varieties of the species are cultivated for the leaves (cabbages), for the inflorescence (cauliflowers), or for the oil which is extracted from the seed (colza, rape, etc.). When the root or the lower part of the stem60 is fleshy, the seed is not abundant, nor worth the trouble of extracting the oil; when those organs are slender, the production of the seed, on the contrary, becomes more important, and decides the economic use of the plant. In other words, the store of nutritious matter is placed sometimes in the lower, sometimes in the upper part of the plant, although the organization of the flower and fruit is similar, or nearly so.
Touching the question of origin, we need not occupy ourselves with the botanical limits of the species, and with the classification of the races, varieties, and sub-varieties,61 since all the Brassicæ are of European and Siberian origin, and are still to be seen in these regions wild, or half wild, in some form or other.
Plants so commonly cultivated and whose germination is so easy often spread round cultivated places; hence some uncertainty regarding the really wild nature of the plants found in the open country. Nevertheless, Linnæus mentions that Brassica napus grows in the sand on the sea-coast in Sweden (Gothland), Holland, and England, which is confirmed, as far as Sweden is concerned, by Fries,62 who, with his usual attention to questions of this nature, mentions Br. Campestris, L. (type of the Rapa with slender roots), as really wild in the whole Scandinavian peninsula, in Finland and Denmark. Ledebour63 indicates it in the whole of Russia, Siberia, and the Caspian Sea.
The floras of temperate and southern Asia mention rapes and turnips as cultivated plants, never as escaped from cultivation.64 This is already an indication of foreign origin. The evidence of philology is no less significant.
There is no Sanskrit name for these plants, but only modern Hindu and Bengalee names, and those only for Brassica rapa and B. oleracea.65 Kæmpfer66 gives Japanese names for the turnip—busei, or more commonly aona—but there is nothing to show that these names are ancient. Bretschneider, who has made a careful study of Chinese authors, mentions no Brassica. Apparently they do not occur in any of the ancient works on botany and agriculture, although several varieties are now cultivated in China.
It is just the reverse in Europe. The old languages have a number of names which seem to be original. Brassica rapa is called meipen or erfinen67 in Wales; repa and rippa in several Slav tongues,68 which answers to the Latin rapa, and is allied to the neipa of the Anglo-Saxons. The Brassica napus is in Welsh bresych yr yd; in Erse braisscagh buigh, according to Threlkeld,69 who sees in braisscagh the root of the Latin Brassica. A Polish name, karpiele, a Lithuanian, jellazoji,70 are also given, without speaking of a host of other names, transferred sometimes in popular speech from one species to another. I shall speak of the names of Brassica oleracea when I come to vegetables.
The Hebrews had no names for cabbages, rapes, and turnips,71 but there are Arab names: selgam for the Br. napus, and subjum or subjumi for Br. rapa; words which recur in Persian and even in Bengali, transferred perhaps from one species to another. The cultivation of these plants has therefore been diffused in the south-west of Asia since Hebrew antiquity.
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.
The climate of the coast of Chili is continued upon the heights as we follow the chain of the Andes, and the cultivation of the potato is of ancient date in the temperate regions of Peru, but the wild character of the species there is not so entirely proved as in the case of Chili.127 Pavon declared he found it on the coast at Chancay, and near Lima. The heat of these districts seems very great for a species which requires a temperate or even a rather cold climate. Moreover, the specimen in Boissier’s herbarium, gathered by Pavon, belongs, according to Dunal,128 to another species, to which he has given the name of S. immite. I have seen the authentic specimen, and have no doubt that it belongs to a species distinct from the S. tuberosum. Sir W. Hooker129 speaks of McLean’s specimen, gathered in the hills round Lima, without any information as to whether it was found wild. The specimens (more or less wild) which Matthews sent from Peru to Sir W. Hooker belong, according to Sir Joseph,130 to varieties which differ a little from the true potato. Mr. Hemsley,131 who has seen them recently in the herbarium at Kew, believes them to be “distinct forms, not more distinct, however, than certain varieties of the species.”
Weddell,132 whose caution in this matter we already know, expresses himself as follows:—“I have never found Solanum tuberosum in Peru under such circumstances as left no doubt that it was indigenous; and I even declare that I do not attach more belief to the wild nature of other plants found scattered on the Andes outside Chili, hitherto considered as indigenous.”
On the other hand. M. Ed. André133 collected with great care, in two elevated and wild districts of Columbia, and in another near Lima, specimens which he believed he might attribute to S. tuberosum. M. André has been kind enough to lend them to me. I have compared them attentively with the types of Dunal’s species in my herbarium and in that of M. Boissier. None of these Solanaceæ belong, in my opinion, to S. tuberosum, although that of La Union, near the river Cauca, comes nearer than the rest. None—and this is yet more certain—answers to S. immite of Dunal. They are nearer to S. columbianum of the same author than to S. tuberosum or S. immite. The specimen from Mount Quindio presents a singular characteristic—it has pointed ovoid berries.134
In Mexico the tuberous Solanums attributed to S. tuberosum, or, according to Hemsley,135 to allied forms, do not appear to be identical with the cultivated plant. They belong to S. Fendleri, which Dr. Asa Gray considered at first as a separate species, and afterwards136 as a variety of S. tuberosum or of S. verrucosum.
We may sum up as follows:—
1. The potato is wild in Chili, in a form which is still seen in our cultivated plants.
2. It is very doubtful whether its natural home extends to Peru and New Granada.
3. Its cultivation was diffused before the discovery of America from Chili to New Granada.
4. It was introduced, probably in the latter half of the sixteenth century, into that part of the United States now known as Virginia and North Carolina.
5. It was imported into Europe between 1580 and 1585, first by the Spaniards, and afterwards by the English, at the time of Raleigh’s voyages to Virginia.137
Batata, or Sweet Potato—Convolvulus batatas, Linnæus; Batatas edulis, Choisy.
The roots of this plant, swelled into tubers, resemble potatoes, whence it arose that sixteenth-century navigators applied the same name to these two very different species. The sweet potato belongs to the Convolvulus family, the potato to the Solanum family; the fleshy parts of the former are roots, those of the latter subterranean branches.138 The sweet potato is sugary as well as farinaceous. It is cultivated in all countries within or near the tropics, and perhaps more in the new than in the old world.139
Its origin is, according to a great number of authors, doubtful. Humboldt,140 Meyen,141 and Boissier142 hold to its American, Boyer,143 Choisy,144 etc., to its Asiatic origin. The same diversity is observed in earlier works. The question is the more difficult since the Convolvulaceæ is one of the most widely diffused families, either from a very early epoch or in consequence of modern transportation.
There are powerful arguments in favour of an American origin. The fifteen known species of the genus Batatas are all found in America; eleven in that continent alone, four both in America and the old world, with possibility or probability of transportation. The cultivation of the common sweet potato is widely diffused in America. It dates from a very early epoch. Marcgraff145 mentions it in Brazil under the name of jetica. Humboldt says that the name camote comes from a Mexican word. The word Batatas (whence comes by a mistaken transfer the word potato) is given as American. Sloane and Hughes146 speak of the sweet potato as of a plant much cultivated, and having several varieties in the West Indies. They do not appear to suspect that it had a foreign origin. Clusius, who was one of the first to mention the sweet potato, says he had eaten some in the south of Spain, where it was supposed to have come from the new world.147 He quotes the names Batatas, camotes, amotes, ajes,148 which were foreign to the languages of the old world. The date of his book is 1601. Humboldt149 says that, according to Gomara, Christopher Columbus, when he appeared for the first time before Queen Isabella, offered her various productions from the new world, sweet potatoes among others. Thus, he adds, the cultivation of this plant was already common in Spain from the beginning of the sixteenth century. Oviedo,150 writing in 1526, had seen the sweet potato freely cultivated by the natives of St. Domingo, and had introduced it himself at Avila, in Spain. Rumphius151 says positively that, according to the general opinion, sweet potatoes were brought by the Spanish Americans to Manilla and the Moluccas, whence the Portuguese diffused it throughout the Malay Archipelago. He quotes the popular names, which are not Malay, and which indicate an introduction by the Castillians. Lastly, it is certain that the sweet potato was unknown to the Greeks, Romans, and Arabs; that it was not cultivated in Egypt even eighty years ago,152 a fact which it would be hard to explain if we supposed its origin to be in the old world.
On the other hand, there are arguments in favour of an Asiatic origin. The Chinese Encyclopædia of Agriculture speaks of the sweet potato, and mentions different varieties;153 but Bretschneider154 has proved that the species is described for the first time in a book of the second or third century of our era. According to Thunberg,155 the sweet potato was brought to Japan by the Portuguese. Lastly, the plant cultivated at Tahiti, in the neighbouring islands, and in New Zealand, under the names umara, gumarra, and gumalla, described by Forster156 under the name of Convolvulus chrysorhizus, is, according to Sir Joseph Hooker, the sweet potato.157 Seemann158 remarks that these names resemble the Quichuen name of the sweet potato in America, which is, he says, cumar. The cultivation of the sweet potato became general in Hindustan in the eighteenth century.159 Several popular names are attributed to it, and even, according to Piddington,160 a Sanskrit name, ruktalu, which has no analogy with any name known to me, and is not in Wilson’s Sanskrit Dictionary. According to a note given me by Adolphe Pictet, ruktalu seems a Bengalee name composed from the Sanskrit alu (Rukta plus âlu, the name of Arum campanulatum). This name in modern dialects designates the yam and the potato. However, Wallich161 gives several names omitted by Piddington. Roxburgh162 mentions no Sanskrit name. Rheede163 says the plant was cultivated in Malabar, and mentions common Indian names.
The arguments in favour of an American origin seem to me much stronger. If the sweet potato had been known in Hindustan at the epoch of the Sanskrit language it would have become diffused in the old world, since its propagation is easy and its utility evident. It seems, on the contrary, that this cultivation remained long unknown in the Sunda Isles, Egypt, etc. Perhaps an attentive examination might lead us to share the opinion of Meyer,164 who distinguished the Asiatic plant from the American species. However, this author has not been generally followed, and I suspect that if there is a different Asiatic species it is not, as Meyer believed, the sweet potato described by Rumphius, which the latter says was brought from America, but the Indian plant of Roxburgh.
Sweet potatoes are grown in Africa; but either the cultivation is rare, or the species are different. Robert Brown165 says that the traveller Lockhardt had not seen the sweet potato of whose cultivation the Portuguese missionaries make mention. Thonning166 does not name it. Vogel brought back a species cultivated on the western coast, which is certainly, according to the authors of the Flora Nigritiana, Batatas paniculata of Choisy. It was, therefore, a plant cultivated for ornament or for medicinal purposes, for its root is purgative.167 It might be supposed that in certain countries in the old or new world Ipomœa tuberosa. L., had been confounded with the sweet potato; but Sloane168 tells us that its enormous roots are not eatable.169
Ipomœa mammosa, Choisy (Convolvulus mammosus, Loureiro; Batata mammosa, Rumphius), is a Convolvulaceous plant with an edible root, which may well be confounded with the sweet potato, but whose botanical character is nevertheless distinct. This species grows wild near Amboyna (Rumphius), where it is also cultivated. It is prized in Cochin-China.
As for the sweet potato (Batatas edulis), no botanist, as far as I know, has asserted that he found it wild himself, either in India or America.170 Clusius171 affirms upon hearsay that it grows wild in the new world and in the neighbouring islands.
In spite of the probability of an American origin, there remains, as we have seen, much that is unknown or uncertain touching the original home and the transport of this species, which is a valuable one in hot countries. Whether it was a native of the new or of the old world, it is difficult to explain its transportation from America to China at the beginning of our era, and to the South Sea Islands at an early epoch, or from Asia and from Australia to America at a time sufficiently remote for its cultivation to have been early diffused from the Southern States to Brazil and Chili. We must assume a prehistoric communication between Asia and America, or adopt another hypothesis, which is not inapplicable to the present case. The order Convolvulaceæ is one of those rare families of dicotyledons in which certain species have a widely extended area, extending even to distant continents.172 A species which can at the present day endure the different climates of Virginia and Japan may well have existed further north before the epoch of the great extension of glaciers in our hemisphere, and prehistoric men may have transported it southward when the climatic conditions altered. According to this hypothesis, cultivation alone preserved the species, unless it is at last discovered in some spot in its ancient habitation—in Mexico or Columbia, for instance.173