Origin of Cultivated Plants. Alphonse de Candolle

---

Скачать книгу

---

the point of view of botanical nomenclature, it matters little that mistakes were formerly made about the plants to which the name colocasia should be applied. Fortunately, modern scientific names are not based upon the doubtful definitions of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and it is sufficient to say now, if the etymology is insisted upon, that colocasia comes from colcas in consequence of an error.

      Apé, or Large-rooted Alocasia—Alocasia macrorrhiza, Schott; Arum macrorrhizum, Linnæus.

      This araceous plant, which Schott places now in the genus Colocasia, now in the Alocasia, and whose names are far more complicated than might be supposed from those indicated above,286 is less frequently cultivated than the common colocasia, but in the same manner and nearly in the same countries. Its rhizomes attain the length of a man’s arm. They have a distinctly bitter taste, which it is indispensable to remove by cooking.

      The aborigines of Otahiti call it apé, and those of the Friendly Isles kappe.287 In Ceylon, the common name is habara, according to Thwaites.288 It has other names in the Malay Archipelago, which argues an existence prior to that of the more recent peoples of these regions.

      The plant appears to be wild, especially in Otahiti.289 It is also wild in Ceylon, according to Thwaites, who has studied botany for a long time in that island. It is mentioned also in India290 and in Australia,291 but its wild condition is not affirmed – a fact always difficult to establish in the case of a species cultivated on the banks of streams, and which is propagated by bulbs. Moreover, it is sometimes confounded with the Colocasia indica of Kunth, which grows in the same manner, and is found here and there in cultivated ground; and this species grows wild, or is naturalized in the ditches and streams of Southern Asia, although its history is not yet well known.

       Konjak—Amorphophallus Konjak, Koch; Amorphophallus Rivieri, du Rieu, var. Konjak, Engler.292

      The konjak is a tuberous plant of the family Araceæ, extensively cultivated by the Japanese, a culture of which Vidal has given full details in the Bulletin de la Société d’Acclimatation of July, 1877. It is considered by Engler as a variety of Amorphophallus Rivieri, of Cochin-China, of which horticultural periodicals have given several illustrations in the last few years.293 It can be cultivated in the south of Europe, like the dahlia, as a curiosity; but to estimate the value of the bulbs as food, they should be prepared with lime-water, in Japanese fashion, so as to ascertain the amount of fecula which a given area will produce.

      Dr. Vidal gives no proof that the Japanese plant is wild in that country. He supposes it to be so from the meaning of the common name, which is, he says, konniyakou or yamagonniyakou, yama meaning “mountain.” Franchet and Savatier294 have only seen the plant in gardens. The Cochin-China variety, believed to belong to the same species, grows in gardens, and there is no proof of its being wild in the country.

      Yams—Dioscorea sativa, D. batatas, D. japonica and D. alata.

      The yams, monocotyledonous plants, belonging to the family Dioscorideæ, constitute the genus Dioscorea, of which botanists have described about two hundred species, scattered over all tropical and sub-tropical countries. They usually have rhizomes, that is, underground stems or branches of stems, more or less fleshy, which become larger when the annual, exposed part of the plant is near its decay.295 Several species are cultivated in different countries for these farinaceous rhizomes, which are cooked and eaten like potatoes.

      The botanical distinction of the species has always presented difficulties, because the male and female flowers are on different individuals, and because the characters of the rhizomes and the lower part of the exposed stems cannot be studied in the herbarium. The last complete work is that of Kunth,296 published in 1850. It requires revision on account of the number of specimens brought home by travellers in these last few years. Fortunately, with regard to the origin of cultivated species, certain historical and philological considerations will serve as a guide, without the absolute necessity of knowing and estimating the botanical characters of each.

      Roxburgh enumerates several Dioscoreæ297 cultivated in India, but he found none of them wild, and neither he nor Piddington298 mentions Sanskrit names. This last point argues a recent cultivation, or one of originally small extent, in India, arising either from indigenous species as yet undefined, or from foreign species cultivated elsewhere. The Bengali and Hindu generic name is alu, preceded by a special name for each species or variety; kam alu, for instance, is Dioscorea alata. The absence of distinct names in each province also argues a recent cultivation. In Ceylon, Thwaites299 indicates six wild species, and he adds that D. sativa, L., D. alata, L., and D. purpurea, Roxb., are cultivated in gardens, but are not found wild.

      The Chinese yam, Dioscorea batatas of Decaisne,300 extensively cultivated by the Chinese under the name of Sain-in, and introduced by M. de Montigny into European gardens, where it remains as a luxury, has not hitherto been found wild in China. Other less-known species are also cultivated by the Chinese, especially the chou-yu, tou-tchou, chan-yu, mentioned in their ancient works on agriculture, and which has spherical rhizomes (instead of the pyriform spindles of the D. batatas). The names mean, according to Stanislas Julien, mountain arum, whence we may conclude the plant is really a native of the country. Dr. Bretschneider301 gives three Dioscoreæ as cultivated in China (D. batatas, alata, sativa), adding, “The Dioscorea is indigenous in China, for it is mentioned in the oldest work on medicine, that of the Emperor Schen-nung.”

       Dioscorea japonica, Thunberg, cultivated in Japan, has also been found in clearings in various localities, but Franchet and Savatier302 say that it is not positively known to what degree it is wild or has strayed from cultivation. Another species, more often cultivated in Japan, grows here and there in the country according to the same authors. They assign it to Dioscorea sativa of Linnæus; but it is known that the famous Swede had confounded several Asiatic and American species under that name, which must either be abandoned or restricted to one of the species of the Indian Archipelago. If we choose the latter course, the true D. sativa would be the plant cultivated in Ceylon with which Linnæus was acquainted, and which Thwaites calls the D. sativa of Linnæus. Various authors admitted the identity of the Ceylon plant with others cultivated on the Malabar coast, in Sumatra, Java, the Philippine Isles, etc. Blume303 asserts that D. sativa, L., to which he attributes pl. 51 in Rheede’s Hortus Malabaricus, vol. viii., grows in damp places in the mountains of Java and of Malabar. In order to put faith in these assertions, it would be necessary to have carefully studied the question of species from authentic specimens.

      The yam, which is most commonly cultivated in the Pacific Isles under the name ubi, is the Dioscorea alata of Linnæus. The authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries speak of it as widely spread in Tahiti, in New Guinea, in the Moluccas, etc.304 It is divided into several varieties, according to the shape of the rhizome. No one pretends to have found this species in a wild state, but the flora of the islands whence it probably came, in particular that of Celebes and of New Guinea, is as yet little known.

      Passing to America, we find there also several species of this genus growing wild,

---

Скачать книгу