Origin of Cultivated Plants. Alphonse de Candolle

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target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#n329" type="note">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

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