Origin of Cultivated Plants. Alphonse de Candolle

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instance, but it seems more probable that the cultivated varieties were introduced. Authors indicate but few cultivated species or varieties (Plumier one, Sloane two) and few common names. The most widely spread is yam, igname, or inhame, which is of African origin, according to Hughes, and so also is the plant cultivated in his time in Barbados.305

      He says that the word yam means “to eat,” in several negro dialects on the coast of Guinea. It is true that two travellers nearer to the date of the discovery of America, whom Humboldt quotes,306 heard the word igname pronounced on the American continent: Vespucci in 1497, on the coast of Paria; Cabral in 1500, in Brazil. According to the latter, the name was given to a root of which bread was made, which would better apply to the manioc, and leads me to think there must be some mistake, more especially since a passage from Vespucci, quoted elsewhere by Humboldt,307 shows the confusion he made between the manioc and the yam. D. Cliffortiana, Lam., grows wild in Peru308 and in Brazil,309 but it is not proved to be cultivated. Presl says verosimiliter colitur, and the Flora Brasiliensis does not mention cultivation.

      The species chiefly cultivated in French Guiana, according to Sagot,310 is Dioscoreæ triloba, Lam., called Indian yam, which is also common in Brazil and the West India Islands. The common name argues a native origin, whereas another species, D. cayennensis, Kunth, also cultivated in Guiana, but under the name of negro-country yam, was most likely brought from Africa, an opinion the more probable that Sir W. Hooker likens a yam cultivated in Africa on the banks of the Nun and the Quorra,311 to D. cayennensis. Lastly, the free yam of Guiana is, according to Dr. Sagot, D. alata introduced from the Malay Archipelago and Polynesia.

      In Africa there are fewer indigenous Dioscoreæ than in Asia and America, and the culture of yams is less widely spread. On the west coast, according to Thonning,312 only one or two species are cultivated; Lockhardt313 only saw one in Congo, and that only in one locality. Bojer314 mentions four cultivated species in Mauritius, which are, he says, of Asiatic origin, and one, D. bulbifera, Lam., from India, if the name be correct. He asserts that it came from Madagascar, and has spread into the woods beyond the plantations. In Mauritius it bears the name Cambare marron. Now, cambare is something like the Hindu name kam, and marron (marroon) indicates a plant escaped from cultivation. The ancient Egyptians cultivated no yams, which argues a cultivation less ancient in India than that of the colocasia. Forskal and Delile mention no yams cultivated in Egypt at the present day.

      To sum up: several Dioscoreæ wild in Asia (especially in the Asiatic Archipelago), and others less numerous growing in America and in Africa, have been introduced into cultivation as alimentary plants, probably more recently than many other species. This last conjecture is based on the absence of a Sanskrit name, on the limited geographical range of cultivation, and on the date, which appears to be not very ancient, of the inhabitants of the Pacific Isles.

       Arrowroot—Maranta arundinacea, Linnæus. A plant of the family of the Scitamineæ, allied to the genus Canna, of which the underground suckers315 produce the excellent fecula called arrowroot. It is cultivated in the West India Islands and in several tropical countries of continental America. It has also been introduced into the old world – on the coast of Guinea, for instance.316

       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

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