Kitabı oku: «Origin of Cultivated Plants», sayfa 6

Maranta arundinacea is certainly American. According to Sloane,³¹⁷ it was brought from Dominica to Barbados, and thence to Jamaica, which leads us to suppose that it was not indigenous in the West Indies. Körnicke, the last author who studied the genus Maranta,³¹⁸ saw several specimens which were gathered in Guadaloupe, in St. Thomas, in Mexico, in Central America, in Guiana, and in Brazil; but he did not concern himself to discover whether they were taken from wild, cultivated, or naturalized plants. Collectors hardly ever indicate this; and for the study of the American continent (excepting the United States) we are unprovided with local floras, and especially with floras made by botanists residing in the country. In published works I find the species mentioned as cultivated³¹⁹ or growing in plantations,³²⁰ or without any explanation. A locality in Brazil, in the thinly peopled province of Matto Grosso, mentioned by Körnicke, supposes an absence of cultivation. Seemann³²¹ mentions that the species is found in sunny spots near Panama.

A species is also cultivated in the West Indies, Marantaindica, which, Tussac says, was brought from the East Indies. Körnicke believes that M. ramosissima of Wallich found at Sillet, in India, is the same species, and thinks it is a variety of M. arundinacea. Out of thirty-six more or less known species of the genus Maranta, thirty at least are of American origin. It is therefore unlikely that two or three others should be Asiatic. Until Sir Joseph Hooker’s Flora of British India is completed, these questions on the species of the Scitamineæ and their origin will be very obscure.

Anglo-Indians obtain arrowroot from another plant of the same family, Curcuma angustifolia, Roxburgh, which grows in the forests of the Deccan and in Malabar.³²² I do not know whether it is cultivated.

CHAPTER II.
PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES

Article I.—Vegetables

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

The artichoke offers fewer varieties, which bears out the opinion that it is a form derived from the cardoon. Targioni,³⁸⁶ in an excellent article upon this plant, relates that the artichoke was brought from Naples to Florence in 1466, and he proves that ancient writers, even Athenæus, were not acquainted with the artichoke, but only with the wild and cultivated cardoons. I must mention, however, as a sign of its antiquity in the north of Africa, that the Berbers have two entirely distinct names for the two plants: addad for the cardoon, taga for the artichoke.³⁸⁷

It is believed that the kactos, kinara, and scolimos of the Greeks, and the carduus of Roman horticulturists, were Cynara cardunculus,³⁸⁸ although the most detailed description, that of Theophrastus, is sufficiently confused. “The plant,” he said, “grows in Sicily” – as it does to this day – “and,” he added, “not in Greece.” It is, therefore, possible that the plants observed in our day in that country may have been naturalized from cultivation. According to Athenæus,³⁸⁹ the Egyptian king Ptolemy Energetes, of the second century before Christ, had found in Libya a great quantity of wild kinara, by which his soldiers had profited.

Although the indigenous species was to be found at such a little distance, I am very doubtful whether the ancient Egyptians cultivated the cardoon or the artichoke. Pickering and Unger³⁹⁰ believed they recognized it in some of the drawings on the monuments; but the two figures which Unger considers the most admissible seem to me extremely doubtful. Moreover, no Hebrew name is known, and the Jews would probably have spoken of this vegetable had they seen it in Egypt. The diffusion of the species in Asia must have taken place somewhat late. There is an Arab name, hirschuff or kerschouff, and a Persian name, kunghir,³⁹¹ but no Sanskrit name, and the Hindus have taken the Persian word kunjir,³⁹² which shows that it was introduced at a late epoch. Chinese authors do not mention any Cynara.³⁹³ The cultivation of the artichoke was only introduced into England in 1548.³⁹⁴ One of the most curious facts in the history of Cynara cardanculus is its naturalization in the present century over a vast extent of the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, where its abundance is a hindrance to travellers.³⁹⁵ It is becoming equally troublesome in Chili.³⁹⁶ It is not asserted that the artichoke has anywhere been naturalized in this manner, and this is another sign of its artificial origin.

Lettuce—Latuca Scariola, var. sativa.

Botanists are agreed in considering the cultivated lettuce as a modification of the wild species called Latuca Scariola.³⁹⁷ The latter grows in temperate and southern Europe, in the Canary Isles, Madeira,³⁹⁸ Algeria,³⁹⁹ Abyssinia,⁴⁰⁰ and in the temperate regions of Eastern Asia. Boissier speaks of specimens from Arabia Petrea to Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.⁴⁰¹ He mentions a variety with crinkled leaves, similar therefore to some of our garden lettuces, which the traveller Hausknecht brought with him from the mountains of Kurdistan. I have a specimen from Siberia, found near the river Irtysch, and it is now known with certainty that the species grows in the north of India, in Kashmir, and in Nepal.⁴⁰² In all these countries it is often near cultivated ground or among rubbish, but often also in rocky ground, clearings, or meadows, as a really wild plant.

The cultivated lettuce often spreads from gardens, and sows itself in the open country. No one, as far as I know, has observed it in such a case for several generations, or has tried to cultivate the wild L. Scariola, to see whether the transition is easy from the one form to the other. It is possible that the original habitat of the species has been enlarged by the diffusion of cultivated lettuces reverting to the wild form. It is known that there has been a great increase in the number of cultivated varieties in the course of the last two thousand years. Theophrastus indicated three;⁴⁰³ le Bon Jardinier of 1880 gives forty varieties existing in France.

The ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated the lettuce, especially as a salad. In the East its cultivation possibly dates from an earlier epoch. Nevertheless it does not appear, from the original common names both in Asia and Europe, that this plant was generally or very anciently cultivated. There is no Sanskrit nor Hebrew name known, nor any in the reconstructed Aryan tongue. A Greek name exists, tridax; Latin, latuca; Persian and Hindu, kahn; and the analogous Arabic form chuss or chass. The Latin form exists also, slightly modified, in the Slav and Germanic languages,⁴⁰⁴ which may indicate either that the Western Aryans diffused the plant, or that its cultivation spread with its name at a later date from the south to the north of Europe.

Dr. Bretschneider has confirmed my supposition⁴⁰⁵ that the lettuce is not very ancient in China, and that it was introduced there from the West. He says that the first work in which it is mentioned dates from A.D. 600 to A.D. 900.⁴⁰⁶

Wild Chicory—Cichorium Intybus, Linnæus.

The wild perennial chicory, which is cultivated as a salad, as a vegetable, as fodder, and for its roots, which are used to mix with coffee, grows throughout Europe, except in Lapland, in Marocco, and Algeria,⁴⁰⁷ from Eastern Europe to Afghanistan and Beluchistan,⁴⁰⁸ in the Punjab and Kashmir,⁴⁰⁹ and from Russia to Lake Baikal in Siberia.⁴¹⁰ The plant is certainly wild in most of these countries; but as it often grows by the side of roads and fields, it is probable that it has been transported by man from its original home. This must be the case in India, for there is no known Sanskrit name.

The Greeks and Romans employed this species wild and cultivated,⁴¹¹ but their notices of it are too brief to be clear. According to Heldreich, the modern Greeks apply the general name of lachana, a vegetable or salad, to seventeen different chicories, of which he gives a list.⁴¹² He says that the species commonly cultivated is Cichorium divaricatum, Schousboe (C. pumilum, Jacquin); but it is an annual, and the chicory of which Theophrastus speaks was perennial.

Endive—Cichorium Endivia, Linnæus.

The white chicories or endives of our gardens are distinguished from Cichorium Intybus, in that they are annuals, and less bitter to the taste. Moreover, the hairs of the pappus which crowns the seed are four times longer, and unequal instead of being equal. As long as this plant was compared with C. Intybus, it was difficult not to admit two species. The origin of C. Endivia is uncertain. When we received, forty years ago, specimens of an Indian Cichorium, which Hamilton named C. cosmia, they seemed to us so like the endive that we supposed the latter to have an Indian origin, as has been sometimes suggested;⁴¹³ but Anglo-Indian botanists said, and continue to assert, that in India the plant only grows under cultivation.⁴¹⁴ The uncertainty persisted as to the geographical origin. After this, several botanists⁴¹⁵ conceived the idea of comparing the endive with an annual species, wild in the region of the Mediterranean, Cichorium pumilum, Jacquin (C. divaricatum, Schousboe), and the differences were found to be so slight that some have suspected, and others have affirmed, their specific identity. For my part, after having seen wild specimens from Sicily, and compared the good illustrations published by Reichenbach (Icones, vol. xix., pls. 1357, 1358), I am disposed to take the cultivated endives for varieties of the same species as C. pumilum. In this case the oldest name being C. Endivia, it is the one which ought to be retained, as has been done by Schultz. It resembles, moreover, a popular name common to several languages.

The wild plant exists in the whole region, of which the Mediterranean is the centre, from Madeira,⁴¹⁶ Marocco,⁴¹⁷ and Algeria,⁴¹⁸ as far as Palestine,⁴¹⁹ the Caucasus, and Turkestan.⁴²⁰ It is very common in the islands of the Mediterranean and in Greece. Towards the west, in Spain and Madeira, for instance, it is probable that it has become naturalized from cultivation, judging from the positions it occupies in the fields and by the wayside.

No positive proof is found in ancient authors of the use of this plant by the Greeks and Romans;⁴²¹ but it is probable that they made use of it and several other Cichoria. The common names tell us nothing, since they may have been applied to two different species. These names vary little,⁴²² and suggest a cultivation of Græco-Roman origin. A Hindu name, kasni, and a Tamul one, koschi,⁴²³ are mentioned, but no Sanskrit name, and this indicates that the cultivation of this plant was of late origin in the east.

Spinach—Spinacia oleracea, Linnæus.

This vegetable was unknown to the Greeks and Romans.⁴²⁴ It was new to Europe in the sixteenth century,⁴²⁵ and it has been a matter of dispute whether it should be called spanacha, as coming from Spain, or spinacia, from its prickly fruit.⁴²⁶ It was afterwards shown that the name comes from the Arabic isfânâdsch, esbanach, or sepanach, according to different authors.⁴²⁷ The Persian name is ispany, or ispanaj,⁴²⁸ and the Hindu isfany, or palak, according to Piddington, and also pinnis, according to the same and to Roxburgh. The absence of any Sanskrit name shows a cultivation of no great antiquity in these regions. Loureiro saw the spinach cultivated at Canton, and Maximowicz in Mantschuria;⁴²⁹ but Bretschneider tells us that the Chinese name signifies herb of Persia, and that Western vegetables were commonly introduced into China a century before the Christian era.⁴³⁰ It is therefore probable that the cultivation of this plant began in Persia from the time of the Græco-Roman civilization, or that it did not quickly spread either to the east or to the west of its Persian origin. No Hebrew name is known, so that the Arabs must have received both plant and name from the Persians. Nothing leads us to suppose that they carried this vegetable into Spain. Ebn Baithar, who was living in 1235, was of Malaga; but the Arabic works he quotes do not say where the plant was cultivated, except one of them, which says that its cultivation was common at Nineveh and Babylon. Herrera’s work on Spanish agriculture does not mention the species, although it is inserted in a supplement of recent date, whence it is probable that the edition of 1513 did not speak of it; so that the European cultivation must have come from the East about the fifteenth century.

Some popular works repeat that spinach is a native of Northern Asia, but there is nothing to confirm this supposition. It evidently comes from the empire of the ancient Medes and Persians. According to Bosc,⁴³¹ the traveller, Olivier brought back some seeds of it, found in the East in the open country. This would be a positive proof, if the produce of these seeds had been examined by a botanist in order to ascertain the species and the variety. In the present state of our knowledge it must be owned that spinach has not yet been found in a wild state, unless it be a cultivated modification of Spinacia tetandra, Steven, which is wild to the south of the Caucasus, in Turkestan, in Persia, and in Afghanistan, and which is used as a vegetable under the name of schamum.⁴³²