Origin of Cultivated Plants. Alphonse de Candolle

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the Chinese, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin names have no apparent connection. From this last fact we may deduce the hypothesis that its cultivation was begun after the separation of the Indo-European nations, the species being found ready to hand in different countries at once. This, however, is not the present state of things, for we hardly find even vague indications of the wild state of A. Cepa. I have not discovered it in European or Caucasian floras; but Hasselquist229 says, “It grows in the plains near the sea in the environs of Jericho.” Dr. Wallich mentioned in his list of Indian plants, No. 5072, specimens which he saw in districts of Bengal, without mentioning whether they were cultivated. This indication, however insufficient, together with the antiquity of the Sanskrit and Hebrew names, and the communication which is known to have existed between the peoples of India and of Egypt, lead me to suppose that this plant occupied a vast area in Western Asia, extending perhaps from Palestine to India. Allied species, sometimes mistaken for A. Cepa, exist in Siberia.230

      The specimens collected by Anglo-Indian botanists, of which Wallich gave the first idea, are now better known. Stokes discovered Allium Cepa wild in Beluchistan. He says, “wild on the Chehil Tun.” Griffith brought it from Afghanistan and Thomson from Lahore, to say nothing of other collectors, who are not explicit as to the wild or cultivated nature of their specimens.231 Boissier possesses a wild specimen found in the mountainous regions of the Khorassan. The umbels are smaller than in the cultivated plant, but there is no other difference. Dr. Regel, jun., found it to the south of Kuldscha, in Western Siberia.232 Thus my former conjectures are completely justified; and it is not unlikely that its habitation extends even as far as Palestine, as Hasselquist said.

      The onion is designated in China by a single sign (pronounced tsung), which may suggest a long existence there as an indigenous plant.233 I very much doubt, however, that the area extends so far to the east.

      Humboldt234 says that the Americans have always been acquainted with onions, in Mexican xonacatl. “Cortes,” he says, “speaking of the comestibles sold at the market of the ancient Tenochtillan, mentions onions, leeks, and garlic.” I cannot believe, however, that these names applied to the species cultivated in Europe. Sloane, in the seventeenth century, had only seen one Allium cultivated in Jamaica (A. Cepa), and that was in a garden with other European vegetables.235 The word xonacatl is not in Hernandez, and Acosta236 says distinctly that the onions and garlics of Peru are of European origin. The species of the genus Allium are rare in America.

      Spring, or Welsh Onion—Allium fistulosum, Linnæus.

      This species was for a long time mentioned in floras and works on horticulture as of unknown origin; but Russian botanists have found it wild in Siberia towards the Altaï mountains, on the Lake Baïkal in the land of the Kirghis.237 The ancients did not know the plant.238 It must have come into Europe through Russia in the Middle Ages, or a little later. Dodoens,239 an author of the sixteenth century, has given a figure of it, hardly recognizable, under the name of Cepa oblonga.

      Shallot—Allium ascalonicum, Linnæus.

      It was believed, according to Pliny,240 that this plant took its name from Ascalon, in Judæa; but Dr. Fournier241 thinks that the Latin author mistook the meaning of the word Askalônion of Theophrastus. However this may be, the word has been retained in modern languages under the form of échalote in French, chalote in Spanish, scalogno in Italian, Aschaluch or Eschlauch in German.

      In 1855 I had spoken of the species as follows:242—

      “According to Roxburgh,243 Allium ascalonicum is much cultivated in India. The Sanskrit name pulandu is attributed to it, a word nearly identical with palandu, attributed to A. Cepa.244 Evidently the distinction between the two species is not clear in Indian or Anglo-Indian works.

      “Loureiro says he saw Allium ascalonicum cultivated in Cochin-China,245 but he does not mention China, and Thunberg does not indicate this species in Japan. Its cultivation, therefore, is not universal in the east of Asia. This fact, and the doubt about the Sanskrit name, lead me to think that it is not ancient in Southern Asia. Neither, in spite of the name of the species, am I convinced that it existed in Western Asia. Rauwolf, Forskal, and Delile do not mention it in Siberia, in Arabia, or in Egypt. Linnæus246 mentions Hasselquist as having found the species in Palestine. Unfortunately, he gives no details about the locality, nor about its wild condition. In the Travels of Hasselquist247 I find a Cepa montana mentioned as growing on Mount Tabor and on a neighbouring mountain, but there is nothing to prove that it was this species. In his article on the onions and garlics of the Hebrews he mentions only Allium Cepa, then A. porrum and A. sativum. Sibthorp did not find it in Greece,248 and Fraas249 does not mention it as now cultivated in that country. According to Koch,250 it is naturalized among the vines near Fiume. However, Viviani251 only speaks of it as a cultivated plant in Dalmatia.

      “From all these facts I am led to believe that Allium ascalonicum is not a species. It is enough to render its primitive existence doubtful, to remark: (1) that Theophrastus and ancient writers in general have spoken of it as a form of the Allium Cepa, having the same importance as the varieties cultivated in Greece, Thrace, and elsewhere; (2) that its existence in a wild state cannot be proved; (3) that it is little cultivated, or not all, in the countries where it is supposed to have had its origin, as in Syria, Egypt, and Greece; (4) that it is commonly without flowers, whence the name of Cepa sterilis given by Bauhin, and the number of its bulbs is an allied fact; (5) when it does flower, the organs of the flower are similar to those of A. Cepa, or at least no difference has been hitherto discovered, and according to Koch252 the only difference in the whole plant is that the stalk and leaves are less swelled, although fistulous.”

      Such was formerly my opinion.253 The facts published since 1855 do not destroy my doubts, but, on the contrary, justify them. Regel, in 1875, in his monograph of the genus Allium, declares he has only seen the shallot as a cultivated species. Aucher Eloy has distributed a plant from Asia Minor under the name of A. ascalonicum, but judging from my specimen this is certainly not the species. Boissier tells me that he has never seen A. ascalonicum in the East, and it is not in his herbarium. The plant from the Morea which bears this name in the flora of Bory and Chaubard is quite a different species, which he has named A. gomphrenoides. Baker,254 in his review of the Alliums of India, China, and Japan, mentions A. ascalonicum in districts of Bengal and of the Punjab, from specimens of Griffith and Aitchison; but he adds, “They are probably cultivated plants.” He attributes to A. ascalonicum Allium sulvia, Ham., of Nepal, a plant little known, and whose wild character is uncertain. The shallot produces many bulbs, which may be propagated or preserved in the neighbourhood of cultivation, and thus cause mistakes as to its origin.

      Finally, in spite of the progress of botanical investigations in the East and in India, this

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