Origin of Cultivated Plants. Alphonse de Candolle

      On the continent of Asia, authors speak more of it as a plant cultivated in Bengal and China. Wight, who gives a good illustration of the plant, does not mention its native place. Edgeworth,628 who has studied on the spot the flora of the district of Banda, says that it is found in “the fields.” In the Flora of British India, Masters, who drew up the article on the Tiliaceæ from the herbarium at Kew, says “in the hottest regions of India, cultivated in most tropical countries.”629 I have a specimen from Bengal which is not given as cultivated. Loureiro says “wild, and cultivated in the province of Canton in China,”630 which probably means wild in Cochin-China, and cultivated in Canton. In Japan the plant grows in cultivated soil.631 In conclusion, I am not convinced that the species exists in a truly wild state north of Calcutta, although it may perhaps have spread from cultivation and have sown itself here and there.

      C. capsularis has been introduced into various parts of tropical Africa and even of America, but it is only cultivated on a large scale for the production of jute thread in Southern Asia, and especially in Bengal.

       C. olitorius is more used as a vegetable than for its fibres. Out of Asia it is employed exclusively for the leaves. It is one of the commonest of culinary plants among the modern Egyptians and Syrians, who call it in Arabic melokych, but it is not likely that they had any knowledge of it in ancient times, as we know of no Hebrew name.632 The present inhabitants of Crete cultivate it under the name of mouchlia,633 evidently derived from the Arabic, and the ancient Greeks were not acquainted with it.

      According to several authors634 this species of Corchorus is wild in several provinces of British India. Thwaites says it is common in the hot districts of Ceylon; but in Java, Blume only mentions it as growing among rubbish (in ruderatis). I cannot find it mentioned in Cochin-China or Japan. Boissier saw specimens from Mesopotamia, Afghanistan, Syria, and Anatolia, but gives as a general indication, “culta, et in ruderatis subspontanea.” No Sanskrit name for the two cultivated species of Corchorus is known.635