Origin of Cultivated Plants. Alphonse de Candolle

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target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#n412" type="note">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

      Without entering here into a purely botanical discussion, I may say that, after reading the descriptions quoted by Boissier, and looking at Wight’s433 plate of Spinacia tetandra, Roxb., cultivated in India, and the specimens of several herbaria, I see no decided difference between this plant and the cultivated spinach with prickly fruit. The term tetandra implies that one of the plants has five and the other four stamens, but the number varies in our cultivated spinaches.434

      If, as seems probable, the two plants are two varieties, the one cultivated, the other sometimes wild and sometimes cultivated, the oldest name, S. oleracea, ought to persist, especially as the two plants are found in the cultivated grounds of their original country.

      The Dutch or great spinach, of which the fruit has no spines, is evidently a garden product. Tragus, or Bock was the first to mention it in the sixteenth century.435

      Amaranth—Amarantus gangeticus, Linnæus.

      Several annual amaranths are cultivated as a green vegetable in Mauritius, Bourbon, and the Seychelles Isles, under the name of brède de Malabar.436 This appears to be the principal species. It is much cultivated in India. Anglo-Indian botanists mistook it for a time for Amarantus oleraceus of Linnæus, and Wight gives an illustration of it under this name,437 but it is now acknowledged to be a different species, and belongs to A. gangeticus. Its numerous varieties, differing in size, colour, etc., are called in the Telinga dialect tota kura, with the occasional addition of an adjective for each. There are other names in Bengali and Hindustani. The young shoots sometimes take the place of asparagus at the table of the English.438 A. melancholicus, often grown as an ornamental plant in European gardens, is considered one of the forms of this species.

      Its original home is perhaps India, but I cannot discover that the plant has ever been found there in a wild state; at least, this is not asserted by any author. All the species of the genus Amarantus spread themselves in cultivated

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