Part 2 — CHAPTER IV. (continued 3)
Reading edition
It was one of the first plants which the Spaniards introduced to the old world, both in Europe and Asia. Its singular appearance was the more striking that no other species belonging to the family had before been seen.1360 All sixteenth-century botanists mention it, and the plant became naturalized in the south of Europe and in Africa as its cultivation was introduced. It was in Spain that the prickly pear was first known under the American name tuna, and it was probably the Moors who took it into Barbary when they were expelled from the peninsula. They called it fig of the Christians.1361 The custom of using the plant for fences, and the nourishing property of the fruits, which contain a large proportion of sugar, have determined its extension round the Mediterranean, and in general in all countries near the tropics.
The cultivation of the cochineal, which was unfavourable to the production of the fruit,1362 is dying out since the manufacture of colouring matters by chemical processes.
Gooseberry—Ribes grossularia and R. Vacrispa, Linnæus.
The fruit of the cultivated varieties is generally smooth, or provided with a few stiff hairs, while that of the wild varieties has soft and shorter hairs; but intermediate forms exist, and it has been shown by experiment that by sowing the seeds of the cultivated fruit, plants with either smooth or hairy fruit are obtained.1363 There is, therefore, but one species, which has produced under cultivation one principal variety and several sub-varieties as to the size, colour, or taste of the fruit.
The gooseberry grows wild throughout temperate Europe, from Southern Sweden to the mountainous regions of Central Spain, of Italy, and of Greece.1364 It is also mentioned in Northern Africa, but the last published catalogue of Algerian plants1365 indicates it only in the mountains of Aures, and Ball has found a variety in the Atlas of Marocco.1366 It grows in the Caucasus,1367 and under more or less different forms in the western Himalayas.1368
The Greeks and Romans do not mention the species, which is rare in the South, and which is hardly worth planting where grapes will ripen. It is especially in Germany, Holland, and England that it has been cultivated from the sixteenth century,1369 principally as a seasoning, whence the English name, and the French groseille à maquereaux (mackerel currant). A wine is also made from it.
The frequency of its cultivation in the British Isles and in other places where it is found wild, which are often near gardens, has suggested to some English botanists the idea of an accidental naturalization. This is likely enough in Ireland;1370 but as it is an essentially European species, I do not see why it should not have existed in England, where the wild plant is more common, since the establishment of most of the species of the British flora; that is to say, since the end of the glacial period, before the separation of the island from the continent. Phillips quotes an old English name, feaberry or feabes, which supports the theory of an ancient existence, and two Welsh names,1371 of which I cannot, however, certify the originality.
Red Currant—Ribes rubrum, Linnæus.
The common red currant is wild throughout Northern and Temperate Europe, and in Siberia1372 as far as Kamtschatka, and in America, from Canada and Vermont to the mouth of the river Mackenzie.1373
Like the preceding species, it was unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and its cultivation was only introduced in the Middle Ages. The cultivated plant hardly differs from the wild one. That the plant was foreign to the south of Europe is shown by the name of groseillier d’outremer (currant from beyond the sea), given in France1374 in the sixteenth century. In Geneva the currant is still commonly called raisin de mare, and in the canton of Soleure meertrübli. I do not know why the species was supposed, three centuries ago, to have come from beyond seas. Perhaps this should be understood to mean that it was brought by the Danes and the Northmen, and that these peoples from beyond the northern seas introduced its cultivation. I doubt it, however, for the Ribes rubrum is wild in almost the whole of Great Britain1375 and in Normandy;1376 the English, who were in constant communication with the Danes, did not cultivate it as late as 1557, from a list of the fruits of that epoch drawn up by Th. Tusser, and published by Phillips;1377 and even in the time of Gerard, in 1597,1378 its cultivation was rare, and the plant had no particular name.1379 Lastly, there are French and Breton names which indicate a cultivation anterior to the Normans in the west of France.
The old names in France are given in the dictionary by Ménage. According to him, red currants are called at Rouen gardes, at Caen grades, in Lower Normandy gradilles, and in Anjou castilles. Ménage derives all these names from rubius, rubicus, etc., by a series of imaginary transformations, from the word ruber, red. Legonidec1380 tells us that red currants are also called Kastilez (l. liquid) in Brittany, and he derives this name from Castille, as if a fruit scarcely known in Spain and abundant in the north could come from Spain. These words, found both in Brittany and beyond its limits, appear to me to be of Celtic origin; and I may mention, in support of this theory, that in Legonidec’s dictionary gardis means rough, harsh, pungent, sour, etc., which gives a hint as to the etymology. The generic name Ribes has caused other errors. It was thought the plant might be one which was so called by the Arabs; but the word comes rather from a name for the currant very common in the north, ribs in Danish,1381 risp and resp in Swedish.1382 The Slav names are quite different and in considerable number.
Black Currant—Cassis; Ribes nigrum, Linnæus.
The black currant grows wild in the north of Europe, from Scotland and Lapland as far as the north of France and Italy; in Bosnia,1383 Armenia,1384 throughout Siberia, in the basin of the river Amur, and in the western Himalayas;1385 it often becomes naturalized, as for instance, in the centre of France.1386
This shrub was unknown in Greece and Italy, for it is proper to colder countries. From the variety of the names in all the languages, even in those anterior to the Aryans, of the north of Europe, it is clear that this fruit was very early sought after, and its cultivation was probably begun before the Middle Ages. J. Bauhin1387 says it was planted in gardens in France and Italy, but most sixteenth-century authors do not mention it. In the Histoire de la Vie Privée des Français, by Le Grand d’Aussy, published in 1872, vol. i. p. 232, the following curious passage occurs: “The black currant has been cultivated hardly forty years, and it owes its reputation to a pamphlet entitled Culture du Cassis, in which the author attributed to this shrub all the virtues it is possible to imagine.” Further on (vol. iii. p. 80), the author mentions the frequent use, since the publication of the pamphlet in question, of a liqueur made from the black currant. Bosc, who is always accurate in his articles in the Dictionnaire d’Agriculture, mentions this fashion under the head Currant, but he is careful to add, “It has been very long in cultivation for its fruit, which has a peculiar odour agreeable to some, disagreeable to others, and which is held to be stomachic and diuretic.” It is also used in the manufacture of the liqueurs known as ratafia de Cassis.1388
Olive—Olea Europea, Linnæus.
The wild olive, called in botanical books the variety sylvestris or oleaster, is distinguished from the cultivated olive tree by a smaller fruit, of which the flesh is not so abundant. The best fruits are obtained by selecting the seeds, buds, or grafts from good varieties.
The oleaster now exists over a wide area east and west of Syria, from the Punjab and Beluchistan1389 as far as Portugal and even Madeira, the Canaries and even Marocco,1390 and from the Atlas northwards as far as the south of France, the ancient Macedonia, the Crimea, and the Caucasus.1391 If we compare the accounts of travellers and of the authors of floras, it will be seen that towards the limits of this area there is often a doubt as to the wild and indigenous (that is to say ancient in the country) nature of the species. Sometimes it offers itself as a shrub which fruits little or not at all; and sometimes, as in the Crimea, the plants are rare as though they had escaped, as an exception, the destructive effects of winters too severe to allow of a definite establishment. As regards Algeria and the south of France, these doubts have been the subject of a discussion among competent men in the Botanical Society.1392 They repose upon the uncontestable fact that birds often transport the seed of the olive into uncultivated and sterile places, where the wild form, the oleaster, is produced and naturalized.
The question is not clearly stated when we ask if such and such olive trees of a given locality are really wild. In a woody species which lives so long and shoots again from the same stock when cut off by accident, it is impossible to know the origin of the individuals observed. They may have been sown by man or birds at a very early epoch, for olive trees of more than a thousand years old are known. The effect of such sowing is a naturalization, which is equivalent to an extension of area. The point in question is, therefore, to discover what was the home of the species in very early prehistoric times, and how this area has grown larger by different modes of transport.
It is not by the study of living olive trees that this question can be answered. We must seek in what countries the cultivation began, and how it was propagated. The more ancient it is in any region, the more probable it is that the species has existed wild there from the time of those geological events which took place before the coming of prehistoric man.
The earliest Hebrew books mention the olive sait, or zeit,1393 both wild and cultivated. It was one of the trees promised in the land of Canaan. It is first mentioned in Genesis, where it is said that the dove sent out by Noah should bring back a branch of olive. If we take into account this tradition, which is accompanied by miraculous details, it may be added that the discoveries of modern erudition show that the Mount Ararat of the Bible must be to the east of the mountain in Armenia which now bears that name, and which was anciently called Masis. From a study of the text of the Book of Genesis, François Lenormand1394 places the mountain in question in the Hindu Kush, and even near the sources of the Indus. This theory supposes it near to the land of the Aryans, yet the olive has no Sanskrit name, not even in that Sanskrit from which the Indian languages1395 are derived. If the olive had then, as now, existed in the Punjab, the eastern Aryans in their migrations towards the south would probably have given it a name, and if it had existed in the Mazanderan, to the south of the Caspian Sea, as at the present day, the western Aryans would perhaps have known it. To these negative indications, it can only be objected that the wild olive attracts no considerable attention, and that the idea of extracting oil from it perhaps arose late in this part of Asia.
Herodotus1396 tells us that Babylonia grew no olive trees, and that its inhabitants made use of oil of sesame. It is certain that a country so subject to inundation was not at all favourable to the olive. The cold excludes the higher plateaux and the mountains of the north of Persia.
I do not know if there is a name in Zend, but the Semitic word sait must date from a remote antiquity, for it is found in modern Persian, seitun,1397 and in Arabic, zeitun, sjetun.1398 It even exists in Turkish and among the Tartars of the Crimea, seitun,1399 which may signify that it is of Turanian origin, or from the remote epoch when the Turanian and Semitic peoples intermixed.
The ancient Egyptians cultivated the olive tree, which they called tat.1400 Several botanists have ascertained the presence of branches or leaves of the olive in the sarcophagi.1401 Nothing is more certain, though Hehn1402 has recently asserted the contrary, without giving any proof in support of his opinion. It would be interesting to know to what dynasty belong the most ancient mummy-cases in which olive branches have been found. The Egyptian name, quite different to the Semitic, shows an existence more ancient than the earliest dynasties. I shall mention presently another fact in support of this great antiquity.
Theophrastus says1403 that the olive was much grown, and the harvest of oil considerable in Cyrenaica, but he does not say that the species was wild there, and the quantity of oil mentioned seems to point to a cultivated variety. The low-lying, very hot country between Egypt and the Atlas is little favourable to a naturalization of the olive outside the plantations. Kralik, a very accurate botanist, did not anywhere see on his journey to Tunis and into Egypt the olive growing wild,1404 although it is cultivated in the oases. In Egypt it is only cultivated, according to Schweinfurth and Ascherson,1405 in their resumé of the Flora of the Nile Valley.
Its prehistoric area probably extended from Syria towards Greece, for the wild olive is very common along the southern coast of Asia Minor, where it forms regular woods.1406 It is doubtless here and in the archipelago that the Greeks early knew the tree. If they had not known it on their own territory, had received it from the Semites, they would not have given it a special name, elaia, whence the Latin olea. The Iliad and the Odyssey mention the hardness of the olive wood and the practice of anointing the body with olive oil. The latter was in constant use for food and lighting. Mythology attributed to Minerva the planting of the olive in Attica, which probably signifies the introduction of cultivated varieties and suitable processes for extracting the oil. Aristæus introduced or perfected the manner of pressing the fruit.
The same mythical personage carried, it was said, the olive tree from the north of Greece into Sicily and Sardinia. It seems that this may have been early done by the Phœnicians, but in support of the idea that the species, or a perfected variety of it, was introduced by the Greeks, I may mention that the Semitic name seit has left no trace in the islands of the Mediterranean. We find the Græco-Latin name here as in Italy,1407 while upon the neighbouring coast of Africa, and in Spain, the names are Egyptian or Arabic, as I shall explain directly.
The Romans knew the olive later than the Greeks. According to Pliny,1408 it was only at the time of Tarquin the Ancient, 627 B.C., but the species probably existed already in Great Greece, as in Greece and Sicily. Besides, Pliny was speaking of the cultivated olive.
A remarkable fact, and one which has not been noted or discussed by philologists, is that the Berber name for the olive, both tree and fruit, has the root taz or tas, similar to the tat of the ancient Egyptians. The Kabyles of the district of Algiers, according to the French-Berber dictionary, published by the French Government, calls the wild olive tazebboujt, tesettha, ou’ zebbouj, and the grafted olive tazemmourt, tasettha, ou’ zemmour. The Touaregs, another Berber nation, call it tamahinet.1409 These are strong indications of the antiquity of the olive in Africa. The Arabs having conquered this country and driven back the Berbers into the mountains and the desert, having likewise subjected Spain excepting the Basque country, the names derived from the Semitic zeit have prevailed even in Spanish. The Arabs of Algiers say zenboudje for the wild, zitoun for the cultivated olive,1410 zit for olive oil. The Andalusians call the wild olive azebuche, and the cultivated aceytuno.1411 In other provinces we find the name of Latin origin, olivio, side by side with the Arabic words.1412 The oil is in Spanish aceyte, which is almost the Hebrew name; but the holy oils are called oleos santos, because they belong to Rome. The Basques use the Latin name for the olive tree.
Early voyagers to the Canaries, Bontier for instance, in 1403, mention the olive tree in these islands, where modern botanists regard it as indigenous.1413 It may have been introduced by the Phœnicians, if it did not previously exist there. We do not know if the Guanchos had names for the olive and its oil. Webb and Berthelot do not give any in their learned chapter on the language of the aborigines,1414 so the question is open to conjecture. It seems to me that the oil would have played an important part among the Guanchos if they had possessed the olive, and that some traces of it would have remained in the actual speech of the people. From this point of view the naturalization in the Canaries is perhaps not more ancient than the Phœnician voyages.
No leaf of the olive has hitherto been found in the tufa of the south of France, of Tuscany, and Sicily, where the laurel, the myrtle, and other shrubs now existing have been discovered. This is an indication, until the contrary is proved, of a subsequent naturalization.
The olive thrives in dry climates like that of Syria and Assyria. It succeeds at the Cape, in parts of America, in Australia, and doubtless it will become wild in these places when it has been more generally planted. Its slow growth, the necessity of grafting or of choosing the shoots of good varieties, and especially the concurrence of other oil-producing species, have hitherto impeded its extension; but a tree which produces in an ungrateful soil should not be indefinitely neglected. Even in the old world, where it has existed for so many thousands of years, its productiveness might be doubled by taking the trouble to graft on wild trees, as the French have done in Algeria.
Star Apple—Chrysophyllum Caïnito, Linnæus.
The star apple belongs to the family of the Sapotaceæ. It yields a fruit valued in tropical America, though Europeans do not care much for it. I do not find that any pains have been taken to introduce it into the colonies of Asia or Africa. Tussac gives a good illustration of it in his Flore des Antilles, vol. ii. pl. 9.
Seemann1415 saw the star apple wild in several places in the Isthmus of Panama. De Tussac, a San Domingo colonist, considered it wild in the forests of the West India Islands, and Grisebach1416 says it is both wild and cultivated in Jamaica, San Domingo, Antigua, and Trinidad. Sloane considered it had escaped from cultivation in Jamaica, and Jacquin says vaguely, “Inhabits Martinique and San Domingo.”1417
Caïmito, or Abi—Lucuma Caïnito, Alph. de Candolle.
This Peruvian Caïmito must not be confounded with the Chrysophyllum Caïnito of the West Indies. Both belong to the family Sapotaceæ, but the flowers and seeds are different. There is a figure of this one in Ruiz and Pavon, Flora Peruviana, vol. iii. pl. 240. It has been transported from Peru, where it is cultivated, to Ega on the Amazon River, and to Para, where it is commonly called abi or abiu.1418 Ruiz and Pavon say it is wild in the warm regions of Peru, and at the foot of the Andes.
Marmalade Plum, or Mammee Sapota—Lucuma mammosa, Gærtner.
This fruit tree, of the order Sapotaceæ and a native of tropical America, has been the subject of several mistakes in works on botany.1419 There exists no satisfactory and complete illustration of it as yet, because colonists and travellers think it is too well known to send selected specimens of it, such as may be described in herbaria. This neglect is common enough in the case of cultivated plants. The mammee is cultivated in the West Indies and in some warm regions of America. Sagot tells us it is grown in Venezuela, but not in Cayenne.1420 I do not find that it has been transported into Africa and Asia, the Philippines1421 excepted. This is probably due to the insipid taste of the fruit. Humboldt and Bonpland found it wild in the forests on the banks of the Orinoco.1422 All authors mention it in the West Indies, but as cultivated or without asserting that it is wild. In Brazil it is only a garden species.
Sapodilla—Sapota achras, Miller.
The sapodilla is the most esteemed of the order Sapotaceæ, and one of the best of tropical fruits. “An over-ripe sapodilla,” says Descourtilz, in his Flore des Antilles, “is melting, and has the sweet perfumes of honey, jasmin, and lily of the valley.” There is a very good illustration in the Botanical Magazine, pls. 3111 and 3112, and in Tussac, Flore des Antilles, i. pl. 5. It has been introduced into gardens in Mauritius, the Malay Archipelago, and India, from the time of Rheede and Rumphius, but no one disputes its American origin. Several botanists have seen it wild in the forests of the Isthmus of Panama, of Campeachy,1423 of Venezuela,1424 and perhaps of Trinidad.1425 In Jamaica, in the time of Sloane, it existed only in gardens.1426 It is very doubtful that it is wild in the other West India Islands, although perhaps the seeds, scattered here and there, may have naturalized it to a certain degree. Tussac says that the young plants are not easy to rear in the plantations.
Aubergine—Solanum melongena, Linnæus; Solanum esculentum, Dunal.
The aubergine has a Sanskrit name, vartta, and several names, which Piddington in his Index considers as both Sanskrit and Bengali, such as bong, bartakon, mahoti, hingoli. Wallich, in his edition of Roxburgh’s Indian Flora, gives vartta, varttakou, varttaka bunguna, whence the Hindustani bungan. Hence it cannot be doubted that the species has been known in India from a very remote epoch. Rumphius had seen it in gardens in the Sunda Islands, and Loureiro in those of Cochin-China. Thunberg does not mention it in Japan, though several varieties are now cultivated in that country. The Greeks and Romans did not know the species, and no botanist mentions it in Europe before the beginning of the seventeenth century,1427 but its cultivation must have spread towards Africa before the Middle Ages. The Arab physician, Ebn Baithar,1428 who wrote in the thirteenth century, speaks of it, and he quotes Rhasis, who lived in the ninth century. Rauwolf1429 had seen the plant in the gardens of Aleppo at the end of the sixteenth century. It was called melanzana and bedengiam. This Arabic name, which Forskal writes badinjan, is the same as the Hindustani badanjan, which Piddington gives. A sign of antiquity in Northern Africa is the existence of a name, tabendjalts, among the Berbers or Kabyles of the province of Algiers,1430 which differs considerably from the Arab word. Modern travellers have found the aubergine cultivated in the whole of the Nile Valley and on the coast of Guinea.1431 It has been transported into America.
The cultivated form of Solanum melongena has not hitherto been found wild, but most botanists are agreed in regarding Solanum insanum, Roxburgh, and S. incanum, Linnæus, as belonging to the same species. Other synonyms are sometimes added, the result of a study made by Nees von Esenbeck from numerous specimens.1432 S. insanum appears to have been lately found wild in the Madras presidency and at Tong-dong in Burmah. The publication of the article on the Solanaceæ in the Flora of British India, will probably give more precise information on this head.
Red Pepper—Capsicum. In the best botanical works the genus Capsicum is encumbered with a number of cultivated forms, which have never been found wild, and which differ especially in their duration (which is often variable), or in the form of the fruit, a character which is of little value in plants cultivated for that special organ. I shall speak of the two species most often cultivated, but I cannot refrain from stating my opinion that no capsicum is indigenous to the old world. I believe them to be all of American origin, though I cannot absolutely prove it. These are my reasons.
Fruits so conspicuous, so easily grown in gardens, and so agreeable to the palate of the inhabitants of hot countries, would have been very quickly diffused throughout the old world, if they had existed in the south of Asia, as it has sometimes been supposed. They would have had names in several ancient languages. Yet neither Romans, Greeks, nor even Hebrews were acquainted with them. They are not mentioned in ancient Chinese books.1433 The islanders of the Pacific did not cultivate them at the time of Cook’s voyages,1434 in spite of their proximity to the Sunda Isles, where Rumphius mentions their very general use. The Arabian physician, Ebn Baithar, who collected in the thirteenth century all that Eastern nations knew about medicinal plants, says nothing about it. Roxburgh knew no Sanskrit name for the capsicums. Later, Piddington mentions a name for C. frutescens, bran-maricha,1435 which he says is Sanskrit; but this name, which may be compared to that of black pepper (muricha, murichung), is probably not really ancient, for it has left no trace in the Indian languages which are derived from Sanskrit.1436 The wild nature and ancient existence of the capsicum is always uncertain, owing to its very general cultivation; but it seems to me to be more often doubtful in Asia than in South America. The Indian specimens described by the most trustworthy authors nearly all come from the herbaria of the East India Company, in which we never know whether a plant appeared really wild, if it was found far from dwellings, in forests, etc. For the localities in the Malay Archipelago authors often give rubbish-heaps, hedges, etc. We pass to a more particular examination of the two cultivated species.
Annual Capsicum—Capsicum annuum, Linnæus.
This species has a number of different names in European languages,1437 which all indicate a foreign origin and the resemblance of the taste to that of pepper. In French it is often called poivre de Guinée (Guinea pepper), but also poivre du Brézil, d’Inde (Indian, Brazilian pepper), etc., denominations to which no importance can be attributed. Its cultivation was introduced into Europe in the sixteenth century. It was one of the peppers that Piso and Marcgraf1438 saw grown in Brazil under the name quija or quiya. They say nothing as to its origin. The species appears to have been early cultivated in the West Indies, where it has several Carib names.1439
Botanists who have most thoroughly studied the genus Capsicum1440 do not appear to have found in herbaria a single specimen which can be considered wild. I have not been more fortunate. The original home is probably Brazil.
C. grossum, Willdenow, seems to be a variety of the same species. It is cultivated in India under the name kafree murich, and kafree chilly, but Roxburgh did not consider it to be of Indian origin.1441
Shrubby Capsicum—Capsicum frutescens, Willdenow.
This species, taller and with a more woody stock than C. annuum, is generally cultivated in the warm regions of both hemispheres. The great part of our so-called Cayenne pepper is made from it, but this name is given also to the product of other peppers. Roxburgh, the author who is most attentive to the origin of Indian plants, does not consider it to be wild in India. Blume says it is naturalized in the Malay Archipelago in hedges.1442 In America, on the contrary, where its culture is ancient, it has been several times found wild in forests, apparently indigenous. De Martius brought it from the banks of the Amazon, Pœppig from the province of Maynas in Peru, and Blanchet from the province of Bahia.1443 So that its area extends from Bahia to Eastern Peru, which explains its diffusion over South America generally.
Tomato—Lycopersicum esculentum, Miller.
The tomato, or love apple, belongs to a genus of the Solaneæ, of which all the species are American.1444 It has no name in the ancient languages of Asia, nor even in modern Indian languages.1445 It was not cultivated in Japan in the time of Thunberg, that is to say a century ago, and the silence of ancient writers on China on this head shows that it is of recent introduction there. Rumphius1446 had seen it in gardens in the Malay Archipelago. The Malays called it tomatte, but this is an American name, for C. Bauhin calls the species tumatle Americanorum. Nothing leads us to suppose it was known in Europe before the discovery of America.
The first names given to it by botanists in the sixteenth century indicate that they received the plant from Peru.1447 It was cultivated on the continent of America before it was grown in the West India Islands, for Sloane does not mention it in Jamaica, and Hughes1448 says it was brought to Barbados from Portugal hardly more than a century ago. Humboldt considered that the cultivation of the tomato was of ancient date in Mexico.1449 I notice, however, that the earliest work on the plants of this country (Hernandez, Historia) makes no mention of it. Neither do the early writers on Brazil, Piso and Marcgraf, speak of it, although the species is now cultivated throughout tropical America. Thus by the process of exhaustion we return to the idea of a Peruvian origin, at least for its cultivation.
De Martius1450 found the plant wild in the neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro and Para, but it had perhaps escaped from gardens. I do not know of any botanist who has found it really wild in the state in which it is familiar to us, with the fruit more or less large, lumpy, and with swelled sides; but this is not the case with the variety with small spherical fruit, called L. cerasiforme in some botanical works, and considered in others (and rightly so, I think1451) as belonging to the same species. This variety is wild on the sea-shore of Peru,1452 at Tarapoto, in Eastern Peru,1453 and on the frontiers of Mexico and of the United States towards California.1454 It is sometimes naturalized in clearings near gardens.1455 It is probably in this manner that its area has extended north and south from Peru.
Avocado, or Alligator Pear—Persea gratissima, Gærtner.
The avocado pear is one of the most highly prized of tropical fruits. It belongs to the order Laurineæ. It is like a pear containing one large stone, as is well shown in Tussac’s illustrations, Flore des Antilles, iii. pl. 3, and in the Botanical Magazine, pl. 4580. The common names are absurd. The origin of that of alligator is unknown; avocado is a corruption of the Mexican ahuaca, or aguacate. The botanical name Persea has nothing to do with the persea of the Greeks, which was a Cordia. Clusius,1456 writing in 1601, says that the avocado pear is an American fruit tree introduced into a garden in Spain; but as it is widely spread in the colonies of the old world, and has here and there become almost wild,1457 it is possible to make mistakes as to its origin. This tree did not exist in the gardens of British India at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It had been introduced into the Sunda Isles1458 in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in 1750 into Mauritius and Bourbon.1459
In America its actual area in a wild state is of uncommon extent. The species has been found in forests, on the banks of rivers, and on the sea-shore from Mexico and the West Indies as far as the Amazon.1460 It has not always occupied this vast region. P. Browne says distinctly that the avocado pear was introduced from the Continent into Jamaica, and Jacquin held the same opinion as regards the West India Islands generally.1461 Piso and Marcgraf do not mention it for Brazil, and Martius gives no Brazilian name.
At the time of the discovery of America, the species was certainly wild and cultivated in Mexico, according to Hernandez. Acosta1462 says it was cultivated in Peru under the name of palto, which was that of a people of the eastern part of Peru, among whom it was abundant.1463 I find no proof that it was wild upon the Peruvian littoral.
Papaw—Carica Papaya, Linnæus; Papaya vulgaris, de Candolle.
The papaw is a large herbaceous plant rather than a tree. It has a sort of juicy trunk terminated by a tuft of leaves, and the fruit, which is like a melon, hangs down under the leaves.1464 It is now grown in all tropical countries, even as far as thirty to thirty-two degrees of latitude. It is easily naturalized outside plantations. This is one reason why it has been said, and people still say that it is a native of Asia or of Africa, whereas Robert Brown and I proved in 1848 and 1855 its American origin.1465 I repeat the arguments against its supposed origin in the eastern hemisphere.
The species has no Sanskrit name. In modern Indian languages it bears names derived from the American word papaya, itself a corruption of the Carib ababai.1466 Rumphius1467 says that the inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago considered it as an exotic plant introduced by the Portuguese, and gave it names expressing its likeness to other species or its foreign extraction. Sloane,1468 in the beginning of the eighteenth century, quotes several of his contemporaries, who mention that it was taken from the West Indies into Asia and Africa. Forster had not seen it in the plantations of the Pacific Isles at the time of Cook’s voyages. Loureiro,1469 in the middle of the eighteenth century, had seen it in cultivation in China, Cochin-China, and Zanzibar. So useful and so striking a plant would have been spread throughout the old world for thousands of years if it had existed there. Everything leads to the belief that it was introduced on the coasts of Africa and Asia after the discovery of America.
All the species of the family are American. This one seems to have been cultivated from Brazil to the West Indies, and in Mexico before the arrival of the Europeans, since the earliest writers on the productions of the new world mention it.1470
Marcgraf had often seen the male plant (always commoner than the female) in the forests of Brazil, while the female plants were in gardens. Clusius, who was the first to give an illustration of the plant, says1471 that his drawing was made in 1607, in the bay of Todos Santos (province of Bahia). I know of no modern author who has confirmed the habitation in Brazil. Martius does not mention the species in his dictionary of the names of fruits in the language of the Tupis.1472 It is not given as wild in Guiana and Columbia. P. Browne1473 asserts, on the other hand, that it is wild in Jamaica, and before his time Ximenes and Hernandez said the same for St. Domingo and Mexico. Oviedo1474 seems to have seen the papaw in Central America, and he gives the common name olocoton for Nicaragua. Yet Correa de Mello and Spruce, in their important article on the Papayaceæ, after having botanized extensively in the Amazon region, in Peru and elsewhere, consider the papaw as a native of the West Indies, and do not think it is anywhere wild upon the Continent. I have seen1475 specimens from the mouth of the river Manatee in Florida, from Puebla in Mexico, and from Columbia, but the labels had no remark as to their wild character. The indications, it will be noticed, are numerous for the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and for the West Indies. The habitation in Brazil which lies apart is very doubtful.
Fig—Ficus carica, Linnæus.
The history of the fig presents a close analogy with that of the olive in point of origin and geographical limits. Its area as a wild species may have been extended by the dispersal of the seeds as cultivation spread. This seems probable, as the seeds pass intact through the digestive organs of men and animals. However, countries may be cited where the fig has been cultivated for a century at least, and where no such naturalization has taken place. I am not speaking of Europe north of the Alps, where the tree demands particular care and the fruit ripens with difficulty, even the first crop, but of India for instance, the Southern States of America, Mauritius, and Chili, where, to judge from the silence of compilers of floras, the instances of quasi-wildness are rare. In our own day the fig tree grows wild, or nearly wild, over a vast region of which Syria is about the centre; that is to say, from the east of Persia, or even from Afghanistan, across the whole of the Mediterranean region as far as the Canaries.1476 From north to south this zone varies in width from the 25th to the 40th or 42nd parallel, according to local circumstances. As a rule, the fig stops like the olive at the foot of the Caucasus and the mountains of Europe which limit the Mediterranean basin, but it grows nearly wild on the south-west coast of France, where the winter is very mild.1477
We turn to historical and philological records to see whether the area was more limited in antiquity. The ancient Egyptians called the fig teb,1478 and the earliest Hebrew books speak of the fig, whether wild or cultivated, under the name teenah,1479 which leaves its trace in the Arabic tin.1480 The Persian name is quite different, unjir; but I do not know if it dates from the Zend. Piddington’s Index has a Sanskrit name, udumvara, which Roxburgh, who is very careful in such matters, does not give, and which has left no trace in modern Indian languages, to judge from four names quoted by authors. The antiquity of its existence east of Persia appears to me doubtful, until the Sanskrit name is verified. The Chinese received the fig tree from Persia, but only in the eighth century of our era.1481 Herodotus1482 says the Persians did not lack figs, and Reynier, who has made careful researches into the customs of this ancient people, does not mention the fig tree. This only proves that the species was not utilized and cultivated, but it perhaps existed in a wild state.
The Greeks called the wild fig erineos, and the Latins caprificus. Homer mentions a fig tree in the Iliad which grew near Troy.1483 Hehn asserts1484 that the cultivated fig cannot have been developed from the wild fig, but all botanists hold a contrary opinion;1485 and, without speaking of floral details on which they rely, I may say that Gussone obtained from the same seeds plants of the form caprificus, and other varieties.1486 The remark made by several scholars as to the absence of all mention of the cultivated fig sukai in the Iliad, does not therefore prove the absence of the fig tree in Greece at the time of the Trojan war. Homer mentions the sweet fig in the Odyssey, and that but vaguely. Hesiod, says Hehn, does not mention it, and Archilochus (700 B.C.) is the first to mention distinctly its cultivation by the Greeks of Paros. According to this, the species grew wild in Greece, at least in the Archipelago, before the introduction of cultivated varieties of Asiatic origin. Theophrastus and Dioscorides mention wild and cultivated figs.1487
Romulus and Remus, according to tradition, were nursed at the foot of a fig tree called ruminalis, from rumen, breast or udder.1488 The Latin name, ficus, which Hehn derives, by an effort of erudition, from the Greek sukai,1489 also argues an ancient existence in Italy, and Pliny’s opinion is positive on this head. The good cultivated varieties were of later introduction. They came from Greece, Syria, and Asia Minor. In the time of Tiberius, as now, the best figs came from the East.
We learnt at school how Cato exhibited to the assembled senators Carthaginian figs, still fresh, as a proof of the proximity of the hated country. The Phœnicians must have transported good varieties to the coast of Africa and their other colonies on the Mediterranean, even as far as the Canaries, where, however, the wild fig may have already existed.
For the Canaries we have a proof in the Guanchos words, arahormaze and achormaze, green figs, taharemenen and tehahunemen, dried figs. Webb and Berthelot,1490 who quote these names, and who admit the common origin of the Guanchos and Berbers, would have noted with pleasure the existence among the Touaregs, a Berber people, of the word tahart, fig tree,1491 and in the French-Berber dictionary, published since their time, the names tabeksist, green fig, and tagrourt, fig tree. These old names, of more ancient and local origin than Arabic, bear witness to a very ancient habitation in the north of Africa as far as the Canaries.
The result of our inquiry shows, then, that the prehistoric area of the fig tree covered the middle and southern part of the Mediterranean basin from Syria to the Canaries.
We may doubt the antiquity of the fig in the south of France, but a curious fact deserves mention. Planchon found in the quaternary tufa of Montpellier, and de Saporta1492 in those of Aygalades near Marseilles, and in the quaternary strata of La Celle near Paris, leaves and even fruit of the wild Ficus carica, with teeth of Elephas primigenius, and leaves of plants of which some no longer exist, and others, like Laurus canariensis, have survived in the Canaries. So that the fig tree perhaps existed in its modern form in this remote epoch. It is possible that it perished in the south of France, as it certainly did at Paris, and reappeared later in a wild state in the southern region. Perhaps the fig trees which Webb and Berthelot had seen as old plants in the wildest part of the Canaries were descended from those which existed in the fourth epoch.
Bread-Fruit—Artocarpus incisa, Linnæus.
The bread-fruit tree was cultivated in all the islands of the Asiatic Archipelago, and of the great oceans near the equator, from Sumatra to the Marquesas Isles, when first Europeans began to visit them. Its fruit is constituted, like the pine-apple, of an assemblage of bracts and fruits welded into a fleshy mass, more or less spherical; and as in the pine-apple, the seeds come to nothing in the most productive cultivated varieties.1493
Sonnerat1494 carried the bread-fruit tree to Mauritius, where the Intendant Poivre took care to spread it. Captain Bligh was commissioned to introduce it into the English West Indian Isles. The mutiny of his crew prevented his succeeding the first time, but a second attempt proved more fortunate. In January, 1793, he landed 153 plants at St. Vincent, whence the species has been diffused into several parts of tropical America.1495
Rumphius1496 saw the species wild in several of the Sunda Isles. Modern authors, less careful, or acquainted only with cultivated species, say nothing on this head. Seemann1497 says for the Fiji Isles, “cultivated, and to all appearance wild in some places.” On the continent of Asia it is not even cultivated, as the climate is not hot enough.
The bread-fruit is evidently a native of Java, Amboyna, and the neighbouring islands; but the antiquity of its cultivation in the whole of the archipelago, proved by the number of varieties, and the facility of propagating it by buds and suckers, prevent us from knowing its history accurately. In the islands to the extreme east, like Otahiti, certain fables and traditions point to an introduction which is not very ancient, and the absence of seeds confirms this.1498
Jack-Fruit—Artocarpus integrifolia, Linnæus.
The jack-fruit, larger than the bread-fruit, for it sometimes weighs as much as eighty pounds, hangs from the branches of a tree thirty to fifty feet high.1499 The common name is derived from the Indian names jaca, or tsjaka.
The species has long been cultivated in southern Asia, from the Punjab to China, from the Himalayas to the Moluccas. It has not spread into the small islands more to the east, such as Otahiti, which leads us to suppose it has not been so long in the archipelago as upon the continent. In the north-west of India, also, its cultivation does not perhaps date from a very remote epoch, for the existence of a Sanskrit name is not absolutely certain. Roxburgh mentions one, punusa, but Piddington does not admit it into his Index. The Persians and the Arabs do not seem to have known the species. Its enormous fruit must, however, have struck them if the species had been cultivated near their frontiers. Dr. Bretschneider does not speak of any Artocarpus in his work on the plants known to the ancient Chinese, whence it may be inferred that towards China, as in other directions, the jack-fruit was not diffused at a very early epoch. The first statement as to its existence in a wild state is given by Rheede in ambiguous terms: “This tree grows everywhere in Malabar and throughout India.” He perhaps confounded the planted tree with the wild one. After him, however, Wight found the species several times in the Indian Peninsula, notably in the Western Ghauts, with every appearance of a wild and indigenous tree. It has been extensively planted in Ceylon; but Thwaites, the best authority for the flora of this island, does not recognize it as wild. Neither is it wild in the archipelago to the south of India, according to the general opinion. Lastly, Brandis found it growing in the forests of the district of Attaran, in Burmah, but, he adds, always in the neighbourhood of abandoned settlements. Kurz did not find it wild in British Burmah.1500
The species is, therefore, a native of the region lying at the foot of the western mountains of the Indian Peninsula, and its cultivation in the neighbourhood is probably not earlier than the Christian era. It was introduced into Jamaica by Admiral Rodney in 1782, and thence into San Domingo.1501 It has also been introduced into Brazil, Mauritius, the Seychelles, and Rodriguez Island.1502
Date-Palm—Phœnix dactylifera, Linnæus.
The date-palm has existed from prehistoric times in the warm dry zone, which extends from Senegal to the basin of the Indus, principally between parallels 15 and 30. It is seen here and there further to the north, by reason of exceptional circumstances and of the aim which is proposed in its cultivation. For beyond the limit within which the fruit ripens every year, there is a zone in which they ripen ill or seldom, and a further region within which the tree can live, but without fruiting or even flowering. These limits have been traced by de Martius, Carl Ritter, and myself.1503 It is needless to reproduce them here, the aim of the present work being to study questions of origin.
As regards the date-palm, we can hardly rely on the more or less proved existence of really wild indigenous individuals. Dates are easily transported; the stones germinate when sown in damp soil near the source of a river, and even in the fissures of rocks. The inhabitants of oases have planted or sown date-palms in favourable localities where the species perhaps existed before man, and when the traveller comes across isolated trees, at a distance from dwellings, he cannot know that they did not spring from stones thrown away by caravans. Botanists admit a variety, sylvestris, that is to say wild, with small and sour fruit; but it is perhaps the result of recent naturalization in an unfavourable soil. Historical and philological data are of more value here, though doubtless from the antiquity of cultivation they can only establish probabilities.
From Egyptian and Assyrian remains, as well as from tradition and the most ancient writings, we find that the date-palm grew in abundance in the region lying between the Euphrates and the Nile. Egyptian monuments contain fruits and drawings of the tree.1504 Herodotus, in a more recent age (fifth century before Christ), mentions the wood of the date-palms of Babylonia, and still later Strabo used similar expressions about those of Arabia, whence it seems that the species was commoner than it is now, and more in the condition of a natural forest tree. On the other hand, Carl Ritter makes the ingenious observation that the earliest Hebrew books do not speak of the date-palm as producing a fruit valued as a food for man. David, about one thousand years before Christ, and about seven centuries after Moses, does not mention the date palm in his list of trees to be planted in his gardens. It is true that except at Jericho dates seldom ripen in Palestine. Later, Herodotus says of the Babylonian date-palms that only the greater part produced good fruit which was used for food. This seems to indicate the beginning of a cultivation perfected by the selection of varieties and of the transport of male flowers into the middle of the branches of female trees, but it perhaps signifies also that Herodotus was ignorant of the existence of the male plant.
To the west of Egypt the date-palm had probably existed for centuries or for thousands of years when Herodotus mentioned them. He speaks of Libya. There is no historical record with respect to the oases in the Sahara, but Pliny1505 mentions the date-palm in the Canaries.
The names of the species bear witness to its great antiquity both in Asia and in Africa, seeing they are numerous and very different. The Hebrews called the date-palm tamar, and the ancient Egyptians beq.1506 The complete difference between these words, both very ancient, shows that these peoples found the species indigenous and perhaps already named in Western Asia and in Egypt. The number of Persian, Arabic, and Berber names is incredible.1507 Some are derived from the Hebrew word, others from unknown sources. They often apply to different states of the fruit, or to different cultivated varieties, which again shows ancient cultivation in different countries. Webb and Berthelot have not discovered a name for the date-palm in the language of the Guanchos, and this is much to be regretted. The Greek name, phœnix, refers simply to Phœnicia and the Phœnicians, possessors of the date-palm.1508 The names dactylus and date are derivations of dachel in a Hebrew dialect.1509 No Sanskrit name is known, whence it may be inferred that the plantations of the date-palm in Western India are not very ancient. The Indian climate does not suit the species.1510 The Hindustani name khurma is borrowed from the Persian.
Further to the East the date-palm remained long unknown. The Chinese received it from Persia, in the third century of our era, and its cultivation was resumed at different times, but they have now abandoned it.1511 As a rule, beyond the arid region which lies between the Euphrates and the south of the Atlas and the Canaries, the date-palm has not succeeded in similar latitudes, or at least it has not become an important culture. It might be grown with success in Australia and at the Cape, but the Europeans who have colonized these regions are not satisfied, like the Arabs, with figs and dates for their staple food. I think, in fine, that in times anterior to the earliest Egyptian dynasties the date-palm already existed, wild or sown here and there by wandering tribes, in a narrow zone extending from the Euphrates to the Canaries, and that its cultivation began later as far as the north-west of India on the one hand and the Cape de Verde Islands1512 on the other, so that the natural area has remained very nearly the same for about five thousand years. What it was previously, palæontological discoveries may one day reveal.
Banana—Musa sapientum and M. paradisiaca, Linnæus; M. sapientum, Brown.
The banana or bananas were generally considered to be natives of Southern Asia, and to have been carried into America by Europeans, till Humboldt threw doubts upon their purely Asiatic origin. In his work on New Spain1513 he quoted early authors who assert that the banana was cultivated in America before the conquest.
He admits, on Oviedo’s authority,1514 its introduction by Father Thomas of Berlangas from the Canaries into San Domingo in 1516, whence it was introduced into other islands and the mainland.1515 He recognizes the absence of any mention of the banana in the accounts of Columbus, Alonzo Negro, Pinzon, Vespuzzi, and Cortez. The silence of Hernandez, who lived half a century after Oviedo, astonishes him and appears to him a remarkable carelessness; “for,” he says,1516 “it is a constant tradition in Mexico and on the whole of the mainland that the platano arton, and the dominico were cultivated long before the Spanish conquest.” The author who has most carefully noted the different epochs at which American agriculture has been enriched by foreign products, the Peruvian Garcilasso de la Vega,1517 says distinctly that at the time of the Incas, maize, quinoa, the potato, and, in the warm and temperate regions, bananas formed the staple food of the natives. He describes the Musa of the valleys in the Andes; he even distinguishes the rarer species, with a small fruit and a sweet aromatic flavour, the dominico, from the common banana or arton. Father Acosta1518 asserts also, although less positively, that the Musa was cultivated by the Americans before the arrival of the Spaniards. Lastly, Humboldt adds from his own observation, “On the banks of the Orinoco, of the Cassiquaire or of the Beni, between the mountains of Esmeralda and the banks of the river Carony, in the midst of the thickest forests, almost everywhere that Indian tribes are found who have had no relations with European settlements, we meet with plantations of Manioc and bananas.” Humboldt suggests the hypothesis that several species or constant varieties of the Banana have been confounded, some of which are indigenous to the new world.
Desvaux studied the specific question, and in a really remarkable work, published in 1814,1519 he gives it as his opinion that all the bananas cultivated for their fruits are of the same species. In this species he distinguishes forty-four varieties, which he arranges in two groups; the large-fruited bananas (seven to fifteen inches long), and the small-fruited bananas (one to six inches), commonly called fig bananas. R. Brown, in 1818, in his work on the Plants of the Congo, p. 51, maintains also that no structural difference in the bananas cultivated in Asia and those in America prevents us from considering them as belonging to the same species. He adopts the name Musa sapientum, which appears to me preferable to that of M. paradisiaca adopted by Desvaux, because the varieties with small fertile fruit appear to be nearer the condition of the wild Musæ found in Asia.
Brown remarks on the question of origin that all the other species of the genus Musa belong to the old world; that no one pretends to have found in America, in a wild state, varieties with fertile fruit, as has happened in Asia; lastly, that Piso and Marcgraf considered that the banana was introduced into Brazil from Congo. In spite of the force of these three arguments, Humboldt, in his second edition of his essay upon New Spain (ii. p. 397), does not entirely renounce his opinion. He says that the traveller Caldcleugh1520 found among the Puris the tradition that a small species of banana was cultivated on the borders of the Prato long before they had any communications with the Portuguese. He adds that words which are not borrowed ones are found in American languages to distinguish the fruit of the Musa; for instance, paruru in Tamanac, etc., arata in Maypur. I have also read in Stevenson’s travels1521 that beds of the leaves of the two bananas commonly cultivated in America have been found in the huacas or Peruvian tombs anterior to the conquest; but as this traveller also says that he saw beans1522 in these huacas, a plant which undoubtedly belongs to the old world, his assertions are not very trustworthy.
Boussingault1523 thought that the platano arton at least was of American origin, but he gives no proof. Meyen, who had also been in America, adds no argument to those which were already known;1524 nor does the geographer Ritter,1525 who simply reproduces the facts about America, given by Humboldt.
On the other hand, the botanists who have more recently visited America have no hesitation as to the Asiatic origin. I may name Seemann for the Isthmus of Panama, Ernst for Venezuela, and Sagot for Guiana.1526 The two first insist upon the absence of names for the banana in the languages of Peru and Mexico. Piso knew no Brazilian name. Martius1527 has since indicated, in the Tupi language of Brazil, the names pacoba or bacoba. This same word bacove is used, according to Sagot, by the French in Guiana. It is perhaps derived from the name bala, or palan, of Malabar, from an introduction by the Portuguese, subsequent to Piso’s voyage.
The antiquity and wild character of the banana in Asia are incontestable facts. There are several Sanskrit names.1528 The Greeks, Latins, and Arabs have mentioned it as a remarkable Indian fruit tree. Pliny1529 speaks of it distinctly. He says that the Greeks of the expedition of Alexander saw it in India, and he quotes the name pala which still persists in Malabar. Sages reposed beneath its shade and ate of its fruit. Hence the botanical name Musa sapientum. Musa is from the Arabic mouz or mauwz, which we find as early as the thirteenth century in Ebn Baithar. The specific name paradisiaca comes from the ridiculous hypothesis which made the banana figure in the story of Eve and of Paradise.
It is a curious fact that the Hebrews and the ancient Egyptians1530 did not know this Indian plant. It is a sign that it did not exist in India from a very remote epoch, but was first a native of the Malay Archipelago.
There is an immense number of varieties of the banana in the south of Asia, both on the islands and on the continent; the cultivation of these varieties dates in India, in China, and in the archipelago, from an epoch impossible to realize; it even spread formerly into the islands of the Pacific1531 and to the west coast of Africa;1532 lastly, the varieties bore distinct names in the most separate Asiatic languages, such as Chinese, Sanskrit, and Malay. All this indicates great antiquity of culture, consequently a primitive existence in Asia, and a diffusion contemporary with or even anterior to that of the human races.
The banana is said to have been found wild in several places. This is the more worthy of attention since the cultivated varieties seldom produce seed, and are multiplied by division, so that the species can hardly have become naturalized from cultivation by sowing itself. Roxburgh had seen it in the forests of Chittagong,1533 in the form of Musa sapientum. Rumphius1534 describes a wild variety with small fruits in the Philippine Isles. Loureiro1535 probably speaks of the same form by the name M. seminifera agrestis, which he contrasts with M. seminifera domestica, which is wild in Cochin-China.1536 Blanco also mentions a wild banana in the Philippines,1537 but his description is vague. Finlayson1538 found the banana wild in abundance in the little island of Pulo Ubi at the southern extremity of Siam. Thwaites1539 saw the variety M. sapientum in the rocky forests of the centre of Ceylon, and does not hesitate to pronounce it the original stock of the cultivated bananas. Sir Joseph Hooker and Thomson1540 found it wild at Khasia.
The facts are quite different in America. The wild banana has been seen nowhere except in Barbados,1541 but here it is a tree of which the fruit does not ripen, and which is, consequently, in all probability the result of cultivated varieties of which the seed is not abundant. Sloane’s wild plantain1542 appears to be a plant very different to the musa. The varieties which are supposed to be possibly indigenous in America are only two, and as a rule far fewer varieties are grown than in Asia. The culture of the banana may be said to be recent in the greater part of America, for it dates from but little more than three centuries. Piso1543 says positively that it was imported into Brazil, and has no Brazilian name. He does not say whence it came. We have seen that, according to Oviedo, the species was brought to San Domingo from the Canaries. This fact and the silence of Hernandez, generally so accurate about the useful plants, wild or cultivated, in Mexico, convince me that at the time of the discovery of America the banana did not exist in the whole of the eastern part of the continent.
Did it exist, then, in the western part on the shores of the Pacific? This seems very unlikely when we reflect that communication was easy between the two coasts towards the isthmus of Panama, and that before the arrival of the Europeans the natives had been active in diffusing throughout America useful plants like the manioc, maize, and the potato. The banana, which they have prized so highly for three centuries, which is so easily multiplied by suckers, and whose appearance must strike the least observant, would not have been forgotten in a few villages in the depths of the forest or upon the littoral.
I admit that the opinion of Garcilasso, descendant of the Incas, an author who lived from 1530 to 1568, has a certain importance when he says that the natives knew the banana before the conquest. However, the expressions of another writer, extremely worthy of attention, Joseph Acosta, who had been in Peru, and whom Humboldt quotes in support of Garcilasso, incline me to adopt the contrary opinion.1544 He says,1545 “The reason the Spaniards called it plane (for the natives had no such name) was that, as in the case of their trees, they found some resemblance between them.” He goes on to show how different was the plane (Platanus) of the ancients. He describes the banana very well, and adds that the tree is very common in the Indies (i.e. America), “although they (the Indians) say that its origin is Ethiopia.... There is a small white species of plantain (banana), very delicate, which is called in Espagnolle1546 dominico. There are others coarser and larger, and of a red colour. There are none in Peru, but they are imported thither from the Indies,1547 as into Mexico from Cuernavaca and the other valleys. On the continent and in some of the islands there are great plantations of them which form dense thickets.” Surely it is not thus that the author would express himself were he writing of a fruit tree of American origin. He would quote American names and customs; above all, he would not say that the natives regarded it as a plant of foreign origin. Its diffusion in the warm regions of Mexico may well have taken place between the epoch of the conquest and the time when Acosta wrote, since Hernandez, whose conscientious researches go back to the earliest times of the Spanish dominion in Mexico (though published later in Rome), says not a word of the banana.1548 Prescott the historian saw ancient books and manuscripts which assert that the inhabitants of Tumbez brought bananas to Pizarro when he disembarked upon the Peruvian coast, and he believes that its leaves were found in the huacas, but he does not give his proofs.1549
As regards the argument of the modern native plantations in regions of America, remote from European settlements, I find it hard to believe that tribes have remained absolutely isolated, and have not received so useful a tree from colonized districts.
Briefly, then, it appears to me most probable that the species was early introduced by the Spanish and Portuguese into San Domingo and Brazil, and I confess that this implies that Garcilasso was in error with regard to Peruvian traditions. If, however, later research should prove that the banana existed in some parts of America before the advent of the Europeans, I should be inclined to attribute it to a chance introduction, not very ancient, the effect of some unknown communication with the islands of the Pacific, or with the coast of Guinea, rather than to believe in the primitive and simultaneous existence of the species in both hemispheres. The whole of geographical botany renders the latter hypothesis improbable, I might almost say impossible, to admit, especially in a genus which is not divided between the two worlds.
In conclusion, I would call attention to the remarkable way in which the distribution of varieties favours the opinion of a single species—an opinion adopted, purely from the botanical point of view, by Roxburgh, Desvaux, and R. Brown. If there were two or three species, one would probably be represented by the varieties suspected to be of American origin, the other would belong, for instance, to the Malay Archipelago or to China, and the third to India. On the contrary all the varieties are geographically intermixed, and the two which are most widely diffused in America differ sensibly the one from the other, and each is confounded with or approaches very nearly to Asiatic varieties.
Pine-Apple—Ananassa sativa, Lindley; Bromelia Ananas, Linnæus.
In spite of the doubts of a few writers, the pine-apple must be an American plant, early introduced by Europeans into Asia and Africa.
Nana was the Brazilian name,1550 which the Portuguese turned into ananas. The Spanish called it pinas, because the shape resembles the fruit of a species of pine.1551 All early writers on America mention it.1552 Hernandez says that the pine-apple grows in the warm regions of Haiti and Mexico. He mentions a Mexican name, matzatli. A pine-apple was brought to Charles V., who mistrusted it, and would not taste it.
The works of the Greeks, Romans, and Arabs make no allusion to this species, which was evidently introduced into the old world after the discovery of America. Rheede1553 in the seventeenth century was persuaded of this; but Rumphius1554 disputed it later, because he said the pine-apple was cultivated in his time in every part of India, and was found wild in Celebes and elsewhere. He notices, however, the absence of an Asiatic name. That given by Rheede for Malabar is evidently taken from a comparison with the jack-fruit, and is in no sense original. It is doubtless a mistake on the part of Piddington to attribute a Sanskrit name to the pine-apple, as the name anarush seems to be a corruption of ananas. Roxburgh knew of none, and Wilson’s dictionary does not mention the word anarush. Royle1555 says that the pine-apple was introduced into Bengal in 1594. Kircher1556 says that the Chinese cultivated it in the seventeenth century, but it was believed to have been brought to them from Peru.
Clusius1557 in 1599 had seen leaves of the pine-apple brought from the coast of Guinea. This may be explained by an introduction there subsequent to the discovery of America. Robert Brown speaks of the pine-apple among the plants cultivated in Congo; but he considers the species to be an American one.
Although the cultivated pine-apple bears few seeds or none at all, it occasionally becomes naturalized in hot countries. Examples are quoted in Mauritius, the Seychelles, and Rodriguez Island,1558 in India,1559 in the Malay Archipelago, and in some parts of America, where it was probably not indigenous—the West Indies, for instance.