Origin of Cultivated Plants: The International Scientific Series Volume XLVIII Flashcards
Alphonse de Candolle · Public domain edition · 413 cards · 114 chapters
Alphonse de Candolle’s Origin of Cultivated Plants argues that cultivated species can be traced to specific geographic regions using botanical, linguistic, and historical evidence rather than legend. The deck covers his criteria for identifying origins, regional case studies, and his skepticism toward ancient historians and wild-plant claims.
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Chapter 1 · Question
What does the chapter say about divine or heroic attributions of agriculture's origin?
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Chapter 1 · Answer
The chapter states that traditions of ancient peoples, embellished by poets, commonly attributed the first steps in agriculture and the introduction of useful plants to a divinity or a great emperor or Inca. Reflection shows this is hardly probable, and observation of agriculture among savage tribes of the present day proves the facts are quite otherwise. Beginnings of civilization are usually feeble, obscure, and limited.
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Section 11 cards
What does the chapter say about divine or heroic attributions of agriculture's origin?
The chapter states that traditions of ancient peoples, embellished by poets, commonly attributed the first steps in agriculture and the introduction of useful plants to a divinity or a great emperor or Inca. Reflection shows this is hardly probable, and observation of agriculture among savage tribes of the present day proves the facts are quite otherwise. Beginnings of civilization are usually feeble, obscure, and limited.
Chapter 1
Section 24 cards
What does de Candolle claim is more important than selection of varieties in early agriculture?
The author argues that in every epoch, and especially in its earliest stage, the choice of species is more important than the selection of varieties. He notes that Darwin's concept of selection plays an important part once agriculture is established, but that the difference between cultivated plants and completely wild ones exceeds differences among already improved plants.
Chapter 2
Why does the author say agriculture was late in northern Asia, Europe, and America?
The climate is unfavourable and the indigenous plants are unproductive there, but hunting and fishing offered resources, so agriculture could be introduced late and the good southern species dispensed with without great suffering. In Australia, Patagonia, and southern Africa, distance or drought excluded useful plants while the indigenous flora was very poor.
Chapter 2
What evidence does the author give for the antiquity of agriculture in Egypt and China?
In Egypt, a drawing of figs was found in the pyramid of Gizeh, whose construction implies an organized people with established agriculture dating back centuries. In China, 2,700 years before Christ, the Emperor Chenming instituted a yearly ceremony sowing five useful plants: rice, sweet potato, wheat, and two kinds of millet.
Chapter 2
What does the Swiss lake-dwelling evidence suggest about early European agriculture?
Heer showed that inhabitants of eastern Switzerland, while possessing polished stone and no metals, cultivated several plants, some of Asiatic origin, suggesting intercourse with regions south of the Alps or plants received from the Iberians. When lake-dwellers possessed bronze, their agriculture was more varied. The author argues agriculture was generally more ancient in temperate Europe than the Greeks implied.
Chapter 2
Section 33 cards
Why is finding a cultivated plant growing wild not simple proof of origin?
The author argues it demands special botanical and geographical knowledge. Plants may spring from nearby cultivated individuals, seeds may be carried by birds, wind, or ship ballast, and collectors often fail to note the circumstances of finding. Near dwellings, walls, rubbish-heaps, and roadsides, botanists should be cautious before judging a plant a genuine wild native.
Chapter 3
What are naturalized species, and why are they hard to detect?
Naturalized species are foreign plants introduced into an ancient flora that persist so well that observation alone cannot distinguish them. Detecting them requires historical records or botanical and geographical considerations. The author argues that, over long periods, nearly all species outside the tropics have at some time been naturalized, moving from one region to another.
Chapter 3
Why do cultivated plants simplify the study of plant origins?
The author argues that although modern species predate the great glacial extension, cultivation began afterward, often within historic time. So researchers need not trace events back to undefinable ancient dates; they examine each species only since its cultivation or shortly before. This limits the question of age and allows historical records and geographical botany to be applied.
Chapter 3
Section 42 cards
What does the composition of a genus suggest about a plant's true origin?
Genera usually contain several species but are often confined to one region. The more species of a genus all belong to the same quarter of the globe, the more probable it is that a species apparently indigenous elsewhere was transported and naturalized by escaping cultivation. The author notes this applies especially to tropical genera, which are more often restricted to either the old or the new world.
Chapter 4
Which parts of a cultivated species vary most, and what does that imply for finding its origin?
The author argues a cultivated species varies chiefly in those parts for which it is cultivated; other parts remain unmodified or show trifling changes the cultivator ignores. So one may expect the wild fruit of a fruit tree to be small and of doubtful flavour, cereal grain small, potato tubercles small, and indigenous tobacco leaves narrow. Yet man would not have begun cultivating a plant lacking some useful quality from the start.
Chapter 4
Section 54 cards
What three regions does de Candolle identify as the origins of major agriculture?
The author argues that agriculture of the principal species originated in three isolated regions: China, south-west Asia (with Egypt), and intertropical America. He allows that savage tribes elsewhere may have cultivated a few species locally, but holds that the great civilizations based on agriculture began in these three regions. He notes Old World communities settled along rivers, while American ones dwelt on the highlands of Mexico and Peru.
Chapter 5
Why does de Candolle warn against trusting ancient historians on plant origins?
He warns that authors must not be accepted without examination. Many ancient historians confused a species being cultivated in a country with its existing there in a wild state, and assumed a plant came from wherever it was shipped from. Thus Greeks and Romans called the peach the Persian apple though it was native to China, and the pomegranate the apple of Carthage. Very ancient authors like Herodotus are yet more liable to error.
Chapter 5
What did Chang-Kien bring back to China, and when?
During the reign of Emperor Wu-ti in the second century BCE, the ambassador Chang-Kien returned from Western Asia with plants then unknown to the Chinese, including the bean, cucumber, lucern, saffron, sesame, walnut, pea, spinach, and water-melon, as recorded in the Pent-sao. De Candolle notes Chang-Kien spent ten years in the West and belonged to an already civilized people whose emperor had consecrated plant cultivation in 2700 BCE.
Chapter 5
What does de Candolle say about common plant names as historical evidence?
He holds that common names of cultivated plants are usually well known and may indicate a species' history, but some are absurd, based on errors, or vague and doubtful, so caution is needed. His examples: French blé de Turquie for maize, which is not a wheat and comes from America; and English Jerusalem artichoke, which is neither from Jerusalem nor an artichoke but from North America.
Chapter 5
Section 64 cards
What two explanations does de Candolle give for a shared plant name across languages?
De Candolle says identity of a common name may mean a plant was spread by a dispersed people, as with hemp, whose root name is similar across Aryan-derived tongues. Or it may result from transmission of a plant with its original name, as with the American name tobacco and the Chinese name tea, which spread without philological or ethnographic filiation. He notes the second case is commoner in modern times.
Chapter 6
How does de Candolle rank languages for reliability of plant names?
He places first those languages with botanical works, such as Greek descriptions by Dioscorides and Theophrastus, Latin texts of Cato, Columella, and Pliny, and Chinese books, citing Bretschneider's papers. The second degree is languages with only theological, poetical, or chronicle literature, like Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Armenian, where names must be inferred from scattered mentions plus local flora and derived languages.
Chapter 6
Why does de Candolle say short, simple plant names are more valuable for origin questions?
The author argues compound names are most doubtful, since both the root and the added epithet may be mistaken, the addition usually marking geography, a visible quality, or comparison. Shorter names better merit consideration for origin or antiquity, because erroneous epithets accumulate over years, migrations, and plant transport. He compares this to simple signs in Chinese and Egyptian writing marking long-known species.
Chapter 6
What does de Candolle say about philologists versus naturalists in tracing plant origins?
He argues philologists are often too eager to find an etymology for every name and do not allow enough for human stupidity producing absurd words from error or superstition. He claims a naturalist with ordinary education can spot fundamental connections between names, and that botany is more useful than deep etymology here, since philologists are more often deficient in botany than naturalists in philology.
Chapter 6
Section 74 cards
What two methods does de Candolle propose for guessing plant names in dead languages without literature?
He names two methods, both to be used with caution: first, consulting languages believed to derive directly from the ancient tongue (Basque for Iberian, Albanian for Pelasgic, Breton, Erse and Gaelic for Keltic); second, reconstructing the dead language from words common to its descendant languages, as with Western Aryan. The danger is mistaken filiation, or assuming a plant-name is ancient when another people introduced it.
Chapter 7
Why does de Candolle warn that Basque and Berber plant-names may mislead?
He warns that the Basque language contains many words apparently borrowed from Latin during the Roman rule, Berber is full of Arabic words, and Persian holds words of every origin that probably did not exist in Zend. So a plant-name in a derived language may be a later import rather than evidence of the ancient tongue, making filiation the chief danger.
Chapter 7
How does de Candolle rank the different methods for tracing cultivated plants?
He ranks archaeological records, such as Egyptian monuments or Swiss lake-dwellings, as facts of remarkable accuracy; then botanical data, especially on a species' spontaneous existence, which may be very important if carefully examined. Assertions by early historians and naturalists carry less value, and common names are only an accessory and not entirely trustworthy means, especially in modern languages.
Chapter 7
What does de Candolle conclude when several independent methods yield the same probability?
He argues that each method alone reaches only probabilities, since the facts are ancient and beyond direct observation. But when three or four different methods attain the same probability, we approach very near to certainty, as much certainty as historical science can claim. He cites his own 1855 work, whose conclusions scarcely altered when probabilities became certainties.
Chapter 7
Section 84 cards
What evidence supports the idea that Raphanus sativus is a variety of R. raphanistrum?
Webb, Gay, and Spach found both unilocular and articulated pods among plants of R. sativus raised from the same seed, and Webb saw self-sown radishes produce Raphanistrum siliquae. Carrière sowed slender-rooted Raphanistrum in stiff and light soil and by the fourth generation obtained fleshy, pungent radishes of varied colour and form.
Chapter 8
What geographical objection does de Candolle raise against the R. raphanistrum origin of R. sativus?
De Candolle notes that R. raphanistrum is a European plant that does not exist in Asia. It therefore cannot have supplied the radishes cultivated for centuries in India, China, and Japan, and it is hard to see how a plant modified in Europe could have crossed all of Asia in ancient times, since plant transport commonly went from Asia into Europe.
Chapter 8
Where does de Candolle place the original home of the radish, and on what grounds?
The author argues it came from Western Asia, between Palestine, Anatolia, and the Caucasus, perhaps also Greece, spreading east and west from an early period. His grounds are that the species spreads easily from cultivation in western Asia and southern Europe, is not certainly in the flora of Eastern Asia, and occurs south of the Caucasus without signs of culture.
Chapter 8
What evidence does de Candolle give that horse-radish originated in eastern Europe?
The author argues Cochlearia Armoracia belongs to temperate eastern Europe, from Finland to Astrakhan and the Cuman desert, with localities in Turkey in Europe. Western floras grow less sure it is indigenous, and the primitive Slavic name chren recurs across Slavic and Lithuanian, unlike later descriptive names such as Meerretig or horse-radish.
Chapter 8
Section 94 cards
According to de Candolle, what is the original homeland of the Brassicae with fleshy roots?
The author concludes that the Brassicae with fleshy roots were originally natives of temperate Europe. He reaches this through combined botanical, historical, and philological evidence, noting that all the Brassicæ are of European and Siberian origin and still occur wild or half wild there. He adds that their cultivation spread in Europe before, and in Asia after, the Aryan invasion.
Chapter 9
How does the economic use of a Brassica plant relate to where it stores nutritious matter?
De Candolle explains that when the root or lower stem is fleshy, the seed is not abundant nor worth extracting oil from. When those organs are slender, seed production becomes more important and decides the plant's economic use. Thus the store of nutritious matter sits sometimes in the lower, sometimes in the upper part of the plant, although flower and fruit organization is similar.
Chapter 9
What philological evidence does de Candolle give for the Asian versus European origin of turnips and rapes?
He notes there is no Sanskrit name for these plants, only modern Hindu and Bengalee names, and Kæmpfer's Japanese turnip names show nothing ancient. Bretschneider mentions no Brassica in ancient Chinese works. In contrast, old European languages have apparently original names, such as Welsh meipen and Latin rapa. Arab names like selgam and subjum indicate cultivation spread in south-west Asia since Hebrew antiquity.
Chapter 9
Why does de Candolle doubt that the Greeks and Romans knew the skirret?
He questions whether the sisaron of Dioscorides and siser of Columella and Pliny refer to the skirret, since those authors never noted that several roots descend from the stem base, unlike other cultivated umbels with a single tap-root. He suggests Columella's siser may have been the parsnip, and notes the name sisaron is unknown in modern and medieval Greece, where the plant is not now cultivated.
Chapter 9
Section 104 cards
Why did attempts to introduce the arracacha into Europe fail?
The author reports repeated failures in England, France, Italy, and elsewhere. The damp climate of England explains Sir William Hooker's failure, but his own attempts under very different conditions also failed: the lateral bulbs did not form and the central bulb died in its winter house. He concludes that even if the arracacha rivals the potato in America, it never will in Europe.
Chapter 10
What does the chapter say about the original wild home of madder?
The author argues the ancient, undoubted home is western temperate Asia and south-east Europe: Italy, Greece, the Crimea, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, Armenia, and near Lenkoran. Westward in southern Europe its wild status grows doubtful, and in northern France it is naturalized or subspontaneous, escaped from former cultivation. It exists in India only as a cultivated plant, with no Sanskrit name.
Chapter 10
What evidence supports a north-east American origin for the Jerusalem artichoke?
Botanical analogies and contemporary testimony agree. Helianthus species are numerous in North America and absent from Brazil. Champlain in 1603 saw roots the natives cultivated that tasted like artichoke, and Lescarbot described such roots brought to France and sold as topinambaux. Decaisne cites seventeenth-century horticulturists saying it came from Canada, though "Canada" then vaguely included parts of the modern United States.
Chapter 10
What does the chapter state about the cultivation history of scorzonera?
The author says it seems to have been cultivated only within the last hundred or hundred and fifty years. Sixteenth-century botanists treated it as a wild species occasionally introduced into botanical gardens, and Olivier de Serres does not mention it. It was formerly supposed an antidote to adder bites and called the viper's plant; the name Scorzonera is evidently derived from the Spanish word for viper.
Chapter 10
Section 114 cards
Who did Banks and Dunal credit with first introducing the potato to Europe, and who was second?
Sir Joseph Banks and Dunal insisted the potato was first introduced by the Spaniard, since credit had long been wrongly given to Sir Walter Raleigh. The author states Raleigh was the second introducer, and that other Englishmen had actually introduced the batata (sweet potato), which was often confused with the true potato.
Chapter 11
What two causes of error must be removed before judging where the potato grows wild?
First, confusion of allied Solanum species with the potato—such as S. Commersonii, S. maglia, S. immite, and S. verrucosum, which have smaller tubers. Second, travellers' mistakes about the wild character of the plant, as Weddell explains: plants persisting on long-abandoned Indian cultivation plots may be gathered as wild without proof.
Chapter 11
What did de l'Ecluse report about the potato's original form under nearly three centuries of culture?
De l'Ecluse published the first good description and illustration under the name Papas Peruanorum. He reported the plant yielded up to fifty unequal tubers, one to two inches long, reddish, ripening in November at Vienna, with pinkish flowers striped green. The author notes the species has changed little; de l'Ecluse compared the flower's scent to the lime.
Chapter 11
What evidence does the author give against the potato existing in Virginia or the United States before Europeans?
Roulin found no signs of the potato in the United States before European arrival, and Asa Gray and Mr. Harris agreed. The author argues a plant so easy to cultivate would have spread even among nomadic tribes had they possessed it, and suggests Virginia inhabitants, perhaps English colonists, received tubers from Spanish travellers or Raleigh's pillaged vessels.
Chapter 11
Section 124 cards
Where does de Candolle say the potato is truly wild, and in what form?
The author concludes the potato is wild in Chili, in a form still seen in cultivated plants. Darwin found it abundant on sandy sea-shores in southern Chili, growing vigorously in the damp climate, with tall plants but small, watery, insipid tubers. Gay also reported it in the Chilian mountains. De Candolle treats Peru and New Granada as very doubtful as its natural home.
Chapter 12
Why does de Candolle doubt the potato is wild in Peru?
He notes that Pavon's Peruvian specimen belongs, according to Dunal, to a distinct species, S. immite, which de Candolle examined and accepts as separate from S. tuberosum. The Lima coast heat seems too great for a temperate or cold-climate species. Hooker's and Matthews's Peruvian specimens are varieties or distinct forms, and Weddell never found S. tuberosum in Peru under conditions proving it indigenous.
Chapter 12
What evidence supports an American rather than Asiatic origin of the sweet potato?
De Candolle cites that all fifteen known Batatas species occur in America, eleven there alone; early cultivation in Brazil and the West Indies; American names like camote and batatas; Columbus offering sweet potatoes to Queen Isabella; Oviedo seeing them cultivated at St. Domingo by 1526 and introducing them to Spain; Rumphius saying Spaniards brought them to Manilla; and their absence from ancient Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Egypt.
Chapter 12
How does de Candolle distinguish the sweet potato from the common potato?
He explains that sixteenth-century navigators confused them because both have swollen tubers, but the sweet potato belongs to the Convolvulus family while the potato belongs to the Solanum family. The fleshy parts of the sweet potato are roots, whereas those of the potato are subterranean branches. The sweet potato is sugary as well as farinaceous, and is cultivated throughout or near the tropics.
Chapter 12
Section 134 cards
What does de Candolle conclude about the sweet potato's likely origin?
The author argues the arguments for an American origin are much stronger. He notes that if the sweet potato had been known in Hindustan at the epoch of Sanskrit it would have spread through the old world, yet its cultivation long remained unknown in the Sunda Isles and Egypt. No botanist, he says, claimed to have found Batatas edulis wild in India or America.
Chapter 13
How does de Candolle explain the sweet potato's wide prehistoric distribution?
He suggests assuming prehistoric communication between Asia and America, or that the Convolvulaceae include species with very wide areas across continents. A species tolerating the climates of Virginia and Japan might have existed further north before the great glacier extension, and prehistoric men may have carried it south as climate changed, with cultivation alone preserving it.
Chapter 13
What does the chapter say about beetroot's wild range and early cultivation?
The slender-rooted variety grows wild in sandy, especially coastal, soil in the Canary Isles and along the Mediterranean as far as the Caspian, Persia, and Babylon, perhaps west India. It has no Sanskrit name and no common Indo-European name; the Greeks called it teutlion, the Romans beta. De Candolle concludes its cultivation dates from no more than three or four centuries before the Christian era.
Chapter 13
Why does de Candolle doubt that any manioc variety is entirely non-poisonous?
Botanists disagree whether manioc varieties form one or several species; Müller places the aipi variety in M. palmata, said to be non-poisonous. But Sagot, comparing a dozen Cayenne varieties, said there are maniocs more poisonous than others yet doubted any are entirely free from noxious principles. De Candolle compares this to the potato, where the fecula itself is never harmful.
Chapter 13
Section 144 cards
What evidence supports the American origin of manioc over Raynal's African claim?
The author cites five reasons: pre-European cultivation in Brazil, Guiana, and Mexico; less diffusion in Africa and rarity in Asia; ancient native American names for varieties; numerous cultivated varieties in the Americas; and all forty-two other Manihot species being wild only in America. Robert Brown denied the African origin in 1818, and Humboldt, Moreau de Jonnes, and Saint Hilaire insisted on American origin.
Chapter 14
How does the author think manioc reached Guinea and Congo?
Having established American origin, the author suggests manioc was probably introduced to Guinea and Congo through the frequent communications established in the sixteenth century by Portuguese merchants and slave-traders. He notes it is less widely diffused in Africa, especially away from the west coast, and that Labourdonnais introduced it to the Isle of Bourbon.
Chapter 14
Has Manihot utilissima ever been found in an undoubtedly wild state?
The author says no. Humboldt and Bonpland found a plant they called 'almost wild' on the Magdalena banks, but Sagot says it has not been found in Guiana, and Brazilian botanists have been no more fortunate. Pohl suggested Manihot pusilla as a possible source, and Martius declared in 1867 that the plant was not known wild. Piso's wild mandihoca report is doubted by some authors.
Chapter 14
Where has garlic been found truly wild, and what do its many names suggest?
The only country where garlic was found certainly wild is the desert of the Kirghis of Sungari; bulbs were cultivated at Dorpat and seen by Regel. The great diversity of Keltic, Slav, Greek, and Latin names, differing from Sanskrit, leads the author to argue its original abode extended farther west than now known, before Aryan migrations.
Chapter 14
Section 154 cards
What evidence does de Candolle use to argue the shallot is not a true species?
The author argues Allium ascalonicum is not a species, citing that Theophrastus and ancient writers treated it as a form of Allium Cepa, its wild existence cannot be proved, it is little cultivated in its supposed homelands of Syria, Egypt, and Greece, it commonly lacks flowers, and when it does flower its organs match A. Cepa. Regel and Boissier later found it only cultivated.
Chapter 15
Where did Russian botanists find Allium fistulosum (Welsh onion) growing wild?
Russian botanists found Allium fistulosum wild in Siberia toward the Altaï mountains and on Lake Baikal in the land of the Kirghis. The ancients did not know the plant; it likely reached Europe through Russia in the Middle Ages or a little later. Dodoens, a sixteenth-century author, gave a hardly recognizable figure of it as Cepa oblonga.
Chapter 15
What wild specimens of Allium Cepa does de Candolle cite to support a Western Asian origin?
Stokes found Allium Cepa wild in Beluchistan on the Chehil Tun; Griffith brought it from Afghanistan and Thomson from Lahore; Boissier has a wild specimen from the mountains of Khorassan with smaller umbels but no other difference; and Regel found it south of Kuldscha in Western Siberia. Hasselquist reported it near Jericho.
Chapter 15
Why does de Candolle doubt that onions were indigenous to the Americas?
Humboldt claimed the Americans always knew onions, citing the Mexican word xonacatl and Cortes on the market of Tenochtitlan. De Candolle argues the word is not in Hernandez, Acosta says distinctly that Peruvian onions and garlics are of European origin, Sloane saw only one Allium cultivated in Jamaica in a garden with European vegetables, and Allium species are rare in America.
Chapter 15
Section 162 cards
What does de Candolle conclude about the origin of the rocambole form of Allium?
The author argues it is more probable than ever that this Allium is a modification of A. Cepa dating from about the beginning of the Christian era—a modification less considerable than many observed in other cultivated plants, such as the cabbage. He notes that despite botanical investigations in the East and India, this form has not been found wild with certainty.
Chapter 16
What does the chapter say about the antiquity of rocambole cultivation?
The cultivation of this onion does not appear to be of ancient date. It is not mentioned by Greek and Roman authors, nor in the list of plants Charlemagne recommended to his garden intendants, and Olivier de Serres does not speak of it. Only a small number of original common names exist among ancient peoples, the most distinctive being northern: skovlög in Denmark, keipe and rackenboll in Sweden, and Rockenbolle in German.
Chapter 16
Section 174 cards
What evidence does de Candolle give for the konjak's origin?
De Candolle notes that Dr. Vidal offers no proof the Japanese konjak is wild; Vidal infers it from the name yamagonniyakou, where yama means "mountain." Franchet and Savatier saw the plant only in gardens. The Cochin-China variety, treated by Engler as the same species, also grows in gardens with no proof of wild status.
Chapter 17
Why is the botanical classification of Dioscorea species so difficult?
Male and female flowers grow on separate individuals, and the characters of the rhizomes and lower stem cannot be studied in herbarium specimens. Kunth's 1850 monograph needs revision because of newer travellers' specimens. De Candolle says historical and philological considerations can guide origin questions without settling every species' botanical characters.
Chapter 17
What does the absence of Sanskrit yam names suggest to de Candolle?
Roxburgh listed several Dioscorea cultivated in India but found none wild, and neither he nor Piddington cited Sanskrit names. De Candolle argues this points to recent cultivation, or one originally small in extent, from undefined indigenous species or foreign ones. The lack of distinct provincial names supports the same conclusion.
Chapter 17
Where does de Candolle think the word "yam" originated?
Hughes holds the word is of African origin, meaning "to eat" in several Guinea-coast dialects, and that the Barbados plant was African too. Vespucci and Cabral reportedly heard igname in America, but de Candolle suspects error, since Cabral's root made into bread fits manioc better, and Vespucci confused manioc with yam.
Chapter 17
Section 184 cards
What evidence does de Candolle give that the cabbage is of European origin?
The author argues the cabbage is European, citing its wild growth on Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, the many varieties formed in Europe since the ancient Greeks, and the five or six distinct ancient European name-roots (kap, caul/kohl, bresic, aza, krambai). He doubts Eastern etymologies for crambe, noting the Sanskrit meaning is doubtful and the Persian word may not be ancient.
Chapter 18
Where does the wild cabbage grow, and what anomaly does de Candolle note about its distribution?
Wild cabbage is found on sea-shore rocks in Denmark (Laland, Heligoland), southern England and Ireland, the Channel Isles, and islands off Charente-Inférieure, plus the north Mediterranean near Nice, Genoa, and Lucca. De Candolle notes it is absent from Greece, the Caspian, Siberia, and Persia, and its scattered, isolated stations suggest either self-sowing from cultivation or a formerly common species now declining.
Chapter 18
What does de Candolle conclude about the antiquity of yam cultivation?
He conjectures that yams were introduced into cultivation more recently than many other species. This rests on three points: the absence of a Sanskrit name, the limited geographical range of cultivation, and the apparently not very ancient date of the inhabitants of the Pacific Isles. Several wild Dioscoreae occur in Asia, especially the Asiatic Archipelago, with others in America and Africa.
Chapter 18
What is the origin of arrowroot (Maranta arundinacea), and what complicates the evidence?
De Candolle states Maranta arundinacea is certainly American, noting Sloane's account that it was brought from Dominica to Barbados and thence to Jamaica, suggesting it was not indigenous to the West Indies. Körnicke's specimens came from Guadeloupe, Mexico, Central America, Guiana, and Brazil, but collectors rarely indicate whether plants were wild, cultivated, or naturalized, leaving the question obscure.
Chapter 18
Section 194 cards
What does de Candolle conclude about the origin of purslane from philology and botany?
The author argues that philology and botany alike show purslane is indigenous throughout the region from the western Himalayas to southern Russia and Greece. He notes Sanskrit, Persian, and other names with several distinct roots, suggesting ancient European names predating Asiatic migrations. He admits it is hard to tell cultivated, naturalized, and truly wild specimens apart.
Chapter 19
What did Dioscorides and Pliny say about parsley, and when was it cultivated?
Dioscorides and Pliny mention parsley as Petroselinon and Petroselinum, but only as a wild medicinal plant; nothing proves it was cultivated in their time. Charlemagne later ordered it grown in his gardens, Olivier de Serres cultivated it in the sixteenth century, and English gardeners received it in 1548. Cultivation has already produced two varieties.
Chapter 19
Why does de Candolle suspect corn salad is indigenous only in Sardinia and Sicily?
He suspects it is indigenous only in those islands and introduced or naturalized elsewhere. His grounds: no name assignable to the plant appears in Greek or Latin authors, no medieval or sixteenth-century botanist mentions it, and it is absent from seventeenth-century French vegetable lists, including the Jardinier Français of 1651 and Laurenberg's Horticultura of 1632.
Chapter 19
What happened to Smyrnium olus-atrum, or Alexanders, in cultivation?
It was one of the commonest garden vegetables for nearly fifteen centuries and is now abandoned. Theophrastus called it a medicinal plant, Ipposelinon; three centuries later Dioscorides said root or leaves might be eaten, implying cultivation. Charlemagne ordered it sown, Italians used it as macerone, and by the late eighteenth century only a tradition of former cultivation survived in England.
Chapter 19
Section 204 cards
What evidence supports the artichoke being a cultivated form of the wild cardoon?
Moris cultivated the wild Sardinian cardoon beside the artichoke at Turin and found no true distinguishing characters remained. Willkomm and Lange, observing both wild and cultivated in Spain, shared this opinion. The artichoke has never been found outside gardens, and since the Mediterranean home of all Cynarae has been thoroughly explored, it can safely be asserted it exists nowhere wild.
Chapter 20
How does the number of varieties in cardoon versus artichoke support their relationship?
The cultivated cardoon varies considerably in leaf division, spine number, and size, indicating long cultivation. The artichoke offers fewer varieties, which the author says bears out the opinion that it is a form derived from the cardoon. The author also notes the artichoke has not been naturalized anywhere, another sign of its artificial origin.
Chapter 20
What does the chapter say about the antiquity and spread of Cynara cultivation?
The author is doubtful the ancient Egyptians cultivated cardoon or artichoke, finding Unger's monument figures extremely doubtful and noting no Hebrew name exists. There is an Arab name and a Persian name but no Sanskrit name; Hindus took the Persian word, showing late introduction. Targioni shows the artichoke reached Florence from Naples in 1466 and was unknown to Athenaeus. England received it in 1548.
Chapter 20
What is the origin and early cultivation history of the cultivated lettuce?
Botanists agree the cultivated lettuce is a modification of wild Lactuca Scariola, which grows across temperate Europe, the Mediterranean, Abyssinia, and temperate Eastern Asia. The Greeks and Romans cultivated it as a salad. No Sanskrit, Hebrew, or reconstructed Aryan name is known, though Greek, Latin, Persian, Hindu, and Arabic names exist. Bretschneider confirmed the author's supposition that lettuce reached China from the West, first mentioned in works of A.D. 600 to 900.
Chapter 20
Section 214 cards
What does de Candolle conclude about spinach's origin and its wild state?
The author argues spinach comes from the empire of the ancient Medes and Persians, not Northern Asia. He notes it has not been found truly wild, unless it is a cultivated modification of Spinacia tetrandra, wild south of the Caucasus, in Turkestan, Persia, and Afghanistan. He sees no decided difference between that plant and prickly-fruited cultivated spinach, since stamen number varies in cultivated forms.
Chapter 21
How did spinach reach Europe, and when?
Spinach was unknown to the Greeks and Romans and was new to Europe in the sixteenth century. Its name derives from Arabic isfânâdsch, not from Spain or its prickly fruit. De Candolle notes Herrera's 1513 Spanish agriculture work omits the species, so European cultivation likely came from the East around the fifteenth century. He found nothing showing the Arabs carried it to Spain.
Chapter 21
What is the leek according to J. Gay's monograph?
According to J. Gay's careful monograph, the leek is only a cultivated variety of Allium ampeloprasum, common in the East and Mediterranean region, especially Algeria, and sometimes naturalized in Central European vineyards. The cultivated Porrum variety has not been found wild, only in doubtful localities like vineyards and gardens. Gay quoted only Algerian localities, though earlier writers suspected the identity.
Chapter 21
What does de Candolle say about lucern's origin and names?
Lucern (Medicago sativa) was known to Greeks and Romans, called medica because brought from Media around 470 BCE. It was mentioned by Varro, Columella, and Virgil, though not Cato. De Candolle notes Spanish names like eruye and userdas may underlie the French laouzerdo, and Arabic-derived alfalfa names exist. He argues common names suggest Spain, Piedmont, or Persia, but botanists can furnish direct proof of origin.
Chapter 21
Section 224 cards
Where does de Candolle say lucern (alfalfa) grows wild as an indigenous plant?
The author states it has been found wild with every appearance of an indigenous plant in several provinces of Anatolia, south of the Caucasus, parts of Persia, Afghanistan, Beluchistan, and Kashmir. Localities in southern Russia and southern Europe may instead result from cultivation, so the Greeks could have introduced the plant from Asia Minor as well as from India.
Chapter 22
What does the absence of Sanskrit names for lucern, clover, and sainfoin lead de Candolle to suppose?
He notes as a singular fact that no Sanskrit name is known for lucern, and that clover and sainfoin have none either. From this he infers that the Aryans had no artificial meadows. The argument rests on naming evidence rather than direct cultivation records, so it is the author's inference, not a demonstrated fact.
Chapter 22
When and where does de Candolle trace the origin of sainfoin cultivation?
The author argues sainfoin was not long in cultivation: the Greeks did not grow it, and their descendants had not adopted it in his day. The Onobrychis of Dioscorides and Pliny is a different, uncultivated species. It was esteemed in southern France in the sixteenth century under Olivier de Serres, spread in Italy only in the eighteenth, and he concludes its cultivation likely began in southern France perhaps as late as the fifteenth century.
Chapter 22
How did clover (Trifolium pratense) cultivation spread to Germany and England?
Clover was not cultivated in ancient times though widely known. Its use was first introduced into Flanders in the sixteenth century, perhaps earlier. According to Schwerz, Protestants expelled by the Spaniards carried it into Germany under the Elector Palatine's protection. England received it from Flanders in 1633 through the influence of Weston, Earl of Portland, then Lord Chancellor.
Chapter 22
Section 234 cards
What evidence does de Candolle give for the antiquity of vetch (Vicia) cultivation?
The Romans sowed it for seed and fodder as early as Cato's time, but de Candolle found no proof of older cultivation. The root vik, whence vicia, is very ancient in Europe, appearing in Albanian, Slav, Swedish, and Germanic tongues. He argues this only shows the plant was early named, not cultivated, since it is distinct and useful to herbivorous animals.
Chapter 23
Where does de Candolle believe Lathyrus sativus (chickling vetch) was indigenous, and how did it spread?
He thinks it was probably indigenous before cultivation in the region from the south of the Caucasus or Caspian Sea to northern India. From there it spread toward Europe along with ancient cultivation, perhaps mixed with cereals. He notes it has no Hebrew or Sanskrit name, arguing its cultivation in those regions was not very ancient.
Chapter 23
Why does de Candolle doubt that fenugreek is truly wild in Southern Europe?
He reasons that a plant of this nature, if indigenous to Southern Europe, would be far more common and would not be missing from island floras such as Sicily, Ischia, and the Balearic Isles. Careful authors note the species probably escaped from cultivation, and the further west one goes, the more cited localities are fields or cultivated ground.
Chapter 23
How did Brotero and Cosson clarify the identity of Ornithopus sativus?
Brotero first described the true bird's foot in 1804, and Cosson distinguished it more clearly from allied species. Earlier authors had confused it with O. roseus, and agriculturists sometimes misnamed it O. perpusillus, which is too small for cultivation. The ripe pod, contracted at intervals and considerably bent, is the reliable identifying feature.
Chapter 23
Section 244 cards
What evidence does de Candolle give that the tea plant may be wild in India?
De Candolle states that English travellers gathered specimens of the tea plant in Upper Assam and in the province of Cachar, so the plant must be wild in the mountainous region separating the plains of India from those of China. He adds, however, that the use of the leaves was not formerly known in India, and that no Sanskrit or modern Indian names for tea are cited.
Chapter 24
How did Linnaeus's classification of tea plants change, and what was later proven?
Linnaeus first named the shrub Thea sinensis, then in the second edition of Species Plantarum distinguished two species, Thea bohea and Thea viridis, which he believed matched the commercial black/green distinction. It was later proven there is only one species with several varieties, and that either black or green tea can be obtained from all of them depending on the manufacturing process.
Chapter 24
What does de Candolle conclude about the original home of guinea grass?
De Candolle argues the probabilities favor an African origin, as the common name indicates and as the general but insufficiently grounded opinion of authors confirms. He notes the species grows wild in Brazil and Africa, was introduced to Mauritius by Labourdonnais, and reached Asia only recently, since Roxburgh and Miquel do not mention it.
Chapter 24
What does de Candolle say about the diversity of European names for spergula?
De Candolle notes no Greek or Latin name is known, but the Italian spergola and related French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German names share a root, suggesting the Romans carried the species across southern Europe before Latin split. In the north, diverse Russian, Danish, and Swedish names argue ancient cultivation there. He concludes its original home must have been Europe.
Chapter 24
Section 254 cards
How did British Indian tea production change between 1870 and 1880?
According to the chapter, British India produced three million pounds of tea in 1870, thirty-seven million pounds in 1878, and a harvest of seventy million pounds was expected in 1880. The author notes the Assam product was of superior quality to average Chinese teas and that quantity increased rapidly.
Chapter 25
What climate conditions favor tea, and how do they compare with the vine?
The author states tea will not bear frost and suffers from drought. He argues the conditions favoring tea are the opposite of those suiting the vine, though tea flourishes in the Azores where good wine is made. He adds that many plants can be grown in gardens on a small scale without being profitable on a large scale.
Chapter 25
How did Heer classify the forms of Linum usitatissimum?
Heer concluded there was a single species composed of several slightly different forms. He described four: annuum (annual, with subforms vulgare and humile), hyemale (winter), ambiguum (doubtful), and angustifolium (narrow-leaved). The author notes the annual, biennial, or perennial quality is vague, especially for angustifolium, and that forms pass easily into one another.
Chapter 25
What evidence does the author cite for the antiquity of flax cultivation?
The author cites Herodotus's affirmation that Egyptians and Hebrews used linen, Egyptian drawings of the plant, and microscope evidence that mummy bandages are linen. He notes flax culture was known to the Kelts and in India, and that widely different common names — Keltic lin, Greco-Latin linum, Hebrew pischta, Sanskrit ooma/atasi/utasi — indicate ancient cultivation or long use.
Chapter 25
Section 264 cards
What flax species did Swiss lake-dwellers cultivate, and how was this shown?
Oswald Heer's examination of capsules, seeds, and a carefully extracted plant from Robenhausen sediment showed the lake-dwellers of Eastern Switzerland used Linum angustifolium, the perennial flax wild south of the Alps, not the common annual flax. The plant had a root with two to four stems, and the stems were cut rather than the plant being pulled up by the roots.
Chapter 26
Why did Heer conclude the Swiss lake-dwellers imported flax seeds from Italy?
Alongside the Robenhausen flax remains were grains of Silene cretica, a species foreign to Switzerland but abundant in Italian flax fields. Heer therefore concluded the lake-dwellers imported Italian flax seeds. De Candolle notes this was apparently so, unless the Swiss climate then differed from today's, since the perennial flax would not now survive Eastern Swiss winters.
Chapter 26
What do European flax names suggest about where its cultivation began?
The name lin, linu, linon, linum, lein, lan exists in Keltic, Slavonic, Greek, and Latin, but not in the Aryan languages of India. Pictet therefore judged that cultivation began with the western Aryans before their arrival in Europe. De Candolle adds that Basque liho or lino for flax agrees with the southern European name, suggesting the Basques received flax from Aryan peoples.
Chapter 26
Why does de Candolle think ancient Egyptian flax was annual, not perennial?
De Candolle argues Egyptian flax must have been annual: paintings show it uprooted rather than reaped with a sickle, and Egypt's summer drought would rule out a perennial variety, just as northern cold does. He notes the annual variety humile is the only one now grown in Abyssinia and seen by modern collectors in Egypt, and he inclines to L. humile over Heer's suggestion of sown annual L. angustifolium.
Chapter 26
Section 274 cards
According to de Candolle, how did the annual flax spread into Europe and Hindustan?
The author argues the annual flax (L. usitatissimum) was introduced into northern Europe by the Finns of Turanian race, then into the rest of Europe by the western Aryans and perhaps here and there by the Phoenicians, and lastly into Hindustan by the eastern Aryans after their separation from the European Aryans.
Chapter 27
What does de Candolle conclude about the wild origin of Corchorus capsularis north of Calcutta?
He is not convinced the species exists in a truly wild state north of Calcutta, though it may have spread from cultivation and sown itself here and there. He notes Blume found it in Javan marshes and Thwaites called it very common in Ceylon, but Wight gave no native place and Masters listed it as cultivated in most tropical countries.
Chapter 27
How does de Candolle characterize the antiquity of Corchorus olitorius cultivation?
He suggests it spread from Timor to Northern Australia, Africa, and Anatolia in the wake of a cultivation not perhaps earlier than the Christian era, even at its origin. He notes no Sanskrit name is known, no Hebrew name exists, and the ancient Greeks were not acquainted with it, though it is now common among Egyptians and Syrians as melokych.
Chapter 27
What use does de Candolle give for cultivated Rhus coriaria, and what does he predict?
The tree is cultivated in Spain and Italy for young shoots and leaves, dried and powdered for tanning; he saw a Sicilian plantation exporting to America. He predicts the cultivation will spread as oak-bark grows scarce and tanning substances are in demand, since it suits sandy, sterile regions, and suggests Algeria, Australia, the Cape, and the Argentine Republic could introduce it with advantage.
Chapter 27
Section 282 cards
Where does Catha edulis grow wild, and where is it cultivated?
The chapter states Catha edulis is wild in Abyssinia but has not yet been found wild in Arabia, though the interior of Arabia is nearly unknown to botanists. It is largely cultivated in Abyssinia under the name tchut or tchat, and in Arabia as cat or gat. The author notes uncertainty over whether Arabian wild plants are indigenous or escaped from cultivation.
Chapter 28
What does the chapter say about the original home of Erythroxylon Coca?
The author argues the original home of coca in America is not clearly ascertained. Early authors such as Joseph de Jussieu, Lamarck, and Cavanilles had only seen cultivated specimens. Mathews collected it in Peru's Chinchao ravine, beyond cultivation limits; Poeppig doubted his Cuchero specimens were wild; D'Orbigny thought he saw it wild in eastern Bolivia. The author concludes it is indigenous only in eastern Peru and Bolivia.
Chapter 28
Section 294 cards
What evidence does de Candolle give for the American origin of Nicotiana Tabacum?
De Candolle cites wild specimens sent by Blanchet from Bahia and Pavon's Peruvian collections, plus Edouard André's specimens from a virgin forest on the western slope of the Corazon volcano in Ecuador. He argues the original range may have stretched from Mexico to Bolivia and east to Venezuela, disputing Flückiger and Hanbury's claim that common tobacco is not known wild.
Chapter 29
How does de Candolle use Asian tobacco history to argue against an Old World origin?
The author argues no Asian people used tobacco before Columbus. Tiedemann's research found no mention by medieval travelers, and Belon and Rauwolf, crossing Turkey and Persia between 1540 and 1603, never noted it. Tobacco reached Turkey in the early seventeenth century, India by 1605, and China only after the late sixteenth century, spreading too fast for an ancient Asian origin.
Chapter 29
What does de Candolle say about the Sanskrit name sakachera for henna?
He doubts its reality. Although a Sanskrit name sakachera is attributed to the species, it left no trace in modern Indian languages, so he is inclined to doubt it. By contrast, the Persian hanna is widely diffused and retained, appearing as hina, henneh, alhenna, and kinna, which he says supports a Persian border origin spreading east to west.
Chapter 29
How did tobacco use differ between South and North America at first contact?
De Candolle reports that South Americans chewed tobacco or took snuff rather than smoking, except in La Plata, Uruguay, and Paraguay, where no form was used. In North America, from Panama and the West Indies to Canada and California, smoking was universal and ancient, evidenced by pipes found in Aztec tombs and United States mounds, some depicting animals foreign to North America.
Chapter 29
Section 304 cards
What evidence does de Candolle give that tobacco is American, not Asian?
The author argues that common names confirm an American origin: Chinese, Japanese, Javanese, Indian, and Persian names derive from American petum or tabak, tabok, tamboc. He notes Sanskrit names like dhumrapatra mean only 'leaf for smoking' and appear modern, while Arabic docchan simply means smoke. He concludes no tobacco species is native to Asia.
Chapter 30
How does de Candolle explain the supposed Asiatic species Nicotiana chinensis and N. persica?
He argues N. chinensis was likely just N. Tabacum with seeds perhaps from China, since horticulturists often misattribute origins. N. persica, sent from Ispahan as Schiraz tobacco, actually matched N. alata, a Brazilian species grown at Berlin from Sello's Southern Brazil seed. He concludes the Persian tobacco is American in origin.
Chapter 30
When and how did cinnamon cultivation begin, according to the chapter?
The author stresses how modern cinnamon culture is compared with the ancient trade in its bark. Only between 1765 and 1770 did a Ceylon colonist named de Koke, aided by governor Falck, establish plantations that proved wonderfully successful. Plantations later declined in Ceylon but were established in tropical regions of both old and new worlds.
Chapter 30
What does de Candolle say about the origin and varieties of China grass (Boehmeria nivea)?
He warns against trusting vague author statements and herbarium labels, since cultivated, naturalized, and wild plants are often confused, and the varieties B. nivea and B. tenacissima intergrade. The white-backed variety is reported from China, Cochin-China, Hongkong, Japan, and the Philippines, but he finds no proof it is wild in Java or Sumatra. Other varieties are nowhere found wild, supporting cultivation as their origin.
Chapter 30
Section 314 cards
Where does de Candolle consider hemp certainly wild, and where does he doubt it?
He accepts it as wild beyond doubt south of the Caspian Sea, in Siberia near the Irtysch, the Kirghiz desert, and beyond Lake Baikal in Dahuria. He treats reports from southern and central Russia and the south of the Caucasus as less certain, since hemp seeds spread easily from gardens in populous regions. He also doubts it is indigenous in Persia.
Chapter 31
Why does de Candolle think the white mulberry's original home is hard to pin down?
Birds eat the fruit and carry seeds far into uncultivated ground, so the tree naturalizes readily and obscures its true origin. He also notes it thrives in mountainous temperate countries, suggesting it may have come from northern China into southern plains. He argues it was likely naturalized early in Persia and the Caspian region rather than indigenous there, against Grisebach.
Chapter 31
What evidence leads de Candolle to place the black mulberry's origin near the south Caucasus?
He argues Morus nigra is probably wild and indigenous south of the Caucasus and Caspian because it is unknown even in cultivation in India, China, and Japan; it has no Sanskrit name; and it reached Greece early, a country with early intercourse with Armenia. He notes Boissier called it probably wild in northern Persia near the Caspian.
Chapter 31
What does de Candolle conclude about the origin of the American aloe?
He argues it probably came originally from Mexico, judging by the many uses made of it there before the Europeans arrived, including extracting pulque from the flower stem and the fibre pite. He notes it spreads easily by suckers and was planted far from dwellings for fences and fibre, making its original habitat hard to determine, and that it appears indigenous around the Mediterranean despite its known American origin.
Chapter 31
Section 324 cards
What does the chapter say about finding Saccharum officinarum wild in Asia?
No botanist had discovered Saccharum officinarum growing wild in India, adjacent countries, or the south Asian archipelago, either when Ritter wrote or since. Anglo-Indian authors such as Roxburgh, Wallich, Royle, and Aitchison mention it only as cultivated. Roxburgh expressly said he did not know where it grew wild, and Bentham stated there was no authentic proof of a locality where the common sugar-cane is wild.
Chapter 32
What linguistic evidence does the chapter give for an Asiatic origin of sugar-cane?
The Sanskrit name of the sugar-cane was ikshu, ikshura, or ikshava, while sugar was called sarkara or sakkara, from which European Aryan names, including the ancient Greek ones, are clearly derived. These words survive in Bengali as ik and akh. Beyond the Indus, names vary greatly, such as panchadara in Telinga, kyam in Burmese, mia in Cochin-China, and tubu or tabu among the Malays.
Chapter 32
What does the chapter say about sugar-cane flowering and producing seed?
The chapter states the sugar-cane rarely flowers and still more rarely bears fruit, as is common with plants propagated by buds or suckers. Claims that it seeds on the Ganges are unsupported; Roxburgh never saw seeds despite long residence there. Rumphius said it never flowers or fruits unless left several years in a stony place, and no one has described or drawn the seed.
Chapter 32
According to the chapter, when did the Chinese first learn of the sugar-cane?
The author argues the Chinese were not acquainted with the sugar-cane at a very remote period and received it from the West. Bretschneider found no allusion to it in the five classics; it is first mentioned by authors of the second century BC, with the first description in the fourth century AD. In 286 AD Funan sent sugar as tribute, and an emperor reigning 627 to 650 AD sent a man to Behar to learn sugar manufacture.
Chapter 32
Section 334 cards
According to de Candolle, what was the probable original range of the sugar-cane?
The author argues it most probably extended from Bengal to Cochin-China, possibly including the Sunda Isles and Moluccas, though he says there are equally good reasons to think it was early introduced there from Cochin-China or the Malay peninsula. He notes Loureiro's indication of a Cochin-China origin receives unexpected confirmation, and that nothing in the works examined says the plant grows wild in China.
Chapter 33
How did the sugar-cane spread from the Old World to the Americas?
Don Henriquez took it from Sicily to Madeira, then to the Canaries in 1503, and it reached Brazil in the early sixteenth century. It was taken to St. Domingo around 1520 and soon after to Mexico, to Guadeloupe in 1644, and to Martinique about 1650. The Arabs had earlier introduced it to Egypt, Sicily, and southern Spain in the Middle Ages.
Chapter 33
Why does de Candolle doubt that the clove was known to the Romans?
He doubts the genuine character of Roxburgh's claim that Sanskrit had a name, luvunga, for the clove. Even granting an early trade, he argues the Romans would have known a substance so easily transported, and it does not appear to have been introduced into Europe before the Portuguese discovery of the Moluccas. He also notes no proof exists that the true clove tree has been found wild.
Chapter 33
What evidence does de Candolle give for the hop being native to Europe?
He notes the hop grows wild from England and Sweden to the Mediterranean mountains and in Asia to Damascus, the south Caspian, and eastern Siberia, but not in India, north China, or the Amur basin. The diversity of European names with distinct roots, such as Lettish Apini and Esthonian tap, suggests the species existed in Europe before the arrival of the Aryan nations.
Chapter 33
Section 344 cards
Where has botanists' search for wild carthamine succeeded, according to de Candolle?
Nowhere. No botanist has found carthamine truly wild; authors doubtfully assign it to India or Africa (especially Abyssinia), but it is known only cultivated or as an escape. Clarke lists it in India only as cultivated, and Schweinfurth and Ascherson's Nile-region summary and Rohlfs's journey list also lack a wild carthamine.
Chapter 34
What evidence does de Candolle cite for an Arabian origin of carthamine?
Since carthamine is not wild in India or Africa and has been cultivated in both for thousands of years, de Candolle looked to the intermediate region, Arabia. Interior Arabia is almost unknown, and Forskal, Botta and Bové report nothing. But the Arab Abu Anifa, quoted by thirteenth-century writer Ebn Baithar, described two kinds, cultivated and wild, both growing in Arabia.
Chapter 34
How does de Candolle treat the Sanskrit and Hebrew names sometimes linked to saffron?
He is cautious. The two Sanskrit names given by Piddington probably applied to saffron brought from the West, since kasmirajamma seems to indicate Kashmir as origin; the other is kunkuma. The Hebrew karkom, commonly translated saffron, more probably means carthamine, judging by the Arabic name. Saffron, he notes, is not cultivated in Egypt or Arabia.
Chapter 34
What does Maw conclude about wild Crocus sativus and the cultivated saffron variety?
Maw, preparing a Crocus monograph from garden and herbarium observations, connects six wild forms from mountainous districts between Italy and Kurdistan with C. sativus. None of these, he says, is identical with the cultivated variety, though certain forms described under other names (C. Orisnii, C. Cartwrightianus, C. Thomasii) hardly differ from it; these come from Italy and Greece.
Chapter 34
Section 354 cards
What evidence does de Candolle give for an American origin of Anona squamosa?
De Candolle argues the sum of facts favors an American origin, with the species usually wild in the forests of Para. He notes cultivation was ancient in America, since Oviedo wrote about the country in 1535. He adds that no true Asiatic Anona species exists, that recent Asiatic floras treat these trees as naturalized near settlements, and that it is hard to explain early American cultivation under an Old World origin hypothesis.
Chapter 35
What does de Candolle conclude about the original country of Anona squamosa?
He concludes it can hardly be doubted, in his opinion, that the original country is America, and especially the West India Islands. He supports this with McNab finding it in dry plains of Jamaica, Eggers reporting it common in thickets of Santa Cruz and the Virgin Islands, and an uncertain wild specimen from the Magdalena valley. He notes it is cultivated or naturalized from cultivation in Para, Guiana, and New Granada.
Chapter 35
Where does de Candolle consider Anona Cherimolia indigenous, and on what grounds?
De Candolle concludes it is most probable the chirimoya is indigenous in Ecuador, and perhaps neighboring Peru. He revises earlier doubts after Ed. André gathered specimens in a valley in south-west Ecuador, which André's careful labeling habits lead him to regard as wild. He notes Grisebach's claim of wild range from Peru to Mexico lacks proof, and that most other reports describe cultivated or naturalized plants.
Chapter 35
Why does de Candolle say early Citrus classification was methodologically flawed?
He states the method was wrong from the beginning because the plants observed were all cultivated, hence more or less artificial and perhaps sometimes hybrids. He praises Gallesio and Risso's horticultural works but notes this fundamental problem. He says botanists are now more fortunate, since travelers' discoveries in British India allow them to distinguish wild, true natural species, and he follows Brandis via Hooker.
Chapter 35
Section 364 cards
What evidence does de Candolle give that Citrus medica is indigenous to India?
Wight affirms the sweet lime variety is wild in the Nilgherry Hills, and other Anglo-Indian botanists found forms matching the other three varieties wild from Garwal to Sikkim, at Chittagong and in Burmah, and in the western Ghauts and Satpura Mountains. De Candolle concludes the species cannot be doubted to be indigenous in India, even under different forms of prehistoric antiquity.
Chapter 36
Why does de Candolle doubt Citrus medica is native to China or the Malay Archipelago?
Loureiro mentions it in Cochin-China only as cultivated; Bretschneider notes the lemon's Chinese names are absent from ancient writings and use complicated characters suggesting a foreign species; in Japan it is only cultivated. Rumphius' 'in hortis sylvestribus' may mean shrubberies, and Miquel says Citrus medica and C. Limonum are only cultivated in the archipelago.
Chapter 36
How did the citron reach the Greeks and Romans, and when was it cultivated in Italy?
Two acid varieties had Sanskrit names, and the Greeks knew the fruit through the Medes, hence the name Citrus medica. Theophrastus first described it as the apple of Media and Persia. The Romans did not grow it in gardens at the start of the Christian era; it is supposed to have been cultivated in Italy in the third or fourth century, and Palladius in the fifth speaks of it as well established.
Chapter 36
What does de Candolle say about the Hebrew word hadar and the citron?
The modern Jewish custom of holding a citron at the Feast of Tabernacles led to belief that hadar in Leviticus meant lemon or citron. Risso, comparing ancient texts, showed it means a fine fruit or fruit of a fine tree, and even thinks the Hebrews did not know the citron at the beginning of our era, since the Septuagint translates hadar as fruit of a fine tree.
Chapter 36
Section 374 cards
How does de Candolle distinguish oranges from shaddocks and from lemons/citrons?
Oranges differ from shaddocks (C. decumana) by complete absence of down on young shoots and leaves, smaller always-spherical fruit, and thinner rind. They differ from lemons and citrons by pure white flowers, fruit never elongated and without a nipple at the summit, and rind smooth or nearly so, adhering only lightly to the pulp.
Chapter 37
Why does de Candolle treat sweet and bitter oranges as varieties rather than species?
No author, including Risso, Brandis, and Hooker, found any character besides taste to separate them. De Candolle considered the difference botanically slight, and contradictory seed experiments (Gallesio vs. Macfadyen, Duchassaing, Ernst) show variable heredity, confirming two varieties rather than two species.
Chapter 37
According to Gallesio's experiments, what fruit do seeds of sweet and bitter oranges produce?
Gallesio reported that over many years, sowing pips of sweet oranges (from natural or grafted trees) always produced sweet-fruited trees, and no bitter tree arose from sweet seed nor sweet from bitter seed. After the 1709 frost at Finale, trees raised from sweet seed all bore sweet juice.
Chapter 37
How did the bitter orange spread westward, and where is it likely native?
Gallesio's researches trace it from the Persian Gulf coast after the Empire's fall, reaching Arabia by the ninth century via Oman, Bassora, Irak, and Syria. Crusaders saw it in Palestine; it was cultivated in Sicily from 1002 and introduced to Spain by Arabs. Hooker found it wild south of the Himalayas.
Chapter 37
Section 384 cards
What does Gallesio conclude about the oranges the Arabs brought to Europe?
Gallesio proves that the orange trees the Arabs brought from India into Palestine, Egypt, southern Europe, and the east coast of Africa were not the sweet-fruited tree. Up to the fifteenth century, Arab books and chronicles mention only bitter or sour oranges. The author finds this study of ancient authors extremely interesting for the historical question of the sweet orange's origin.
Chapter 38
Why does de Candolle doubt that the sweet orange was cultivated very early in India?
He argues that if it had been, it would have had a special Sanskrit name, the Greeks would have known it after Alexander's expedition, and the Hebrews would have received it early through Mesopotamia. It would then have been valued and propagated in the Roman empire in preference to the lemon, citron, and bitter orange. Its existence in India must therefore be less ancient.
Chapter 38
What evidence does de Candolle cite for the African origin of the ochro (gombo)?
Marcgraf mentions a Congo and Angola name, quillobo, which the Portuguese corrupted into quingombo. Schweinfurth and Ascherson saw the plant wild in the Nile Valley in Nubia, Kordofan, Senaar, Abyssinia, and the Baar-el-Abiad. Flückiger and Hanbury found that Abul-Abas-Elnabati, visiting Egypt in 1216, described the gombo then cultivated by the Egyptians.
Chapter 38
What does de Candolle say about the mangosteen's origin and cultivation range?
The mangosteen is certainly wild in the forests of the Sunda Islands and the Malay Peninsula. It demands a very hot climate: Roxburgh could not make it grow north of twenty-three and a half degrees latitude in India, and transported to Jamaica it bears but poor fruit. It is cultivated in the Sunda Islands, the Malay Peninsula, and Ceylon, and is one of the most local of cultivated plants.
Chapter 38
Section 392 cards
What evidence shows the vine's antiquity in Europe before history?
Grape seeds were found in the lake-dwellings of Castione near Parma, dating from the bronze age, in a prehistoric settlement of Lake Varese, and at Wangen in Switzerland at an uncertain depth. Vine-leaves were also found in the tufa round Montpellier, probably deposited before the historical epoch, and in the tufa of Meyrargue in Provence, which is certainly prehistoric though later than the tertiary.
Chapter 39
When did vine cultivation reach Egypt and China, according to the chapter?
Records of grape cultivation and wine-making in Egypt go back five or six thousand years. In the West, the Phœnicians, Greeks, and Romans spread the culture, but east of Asia it came late: the Chinese, who now cultivate the vine in northern provinces, did not possess it earlier than 122 B.C. Pictet admits both Semitic and Aryan nations knew wine and could carry it into India, Egypt, and Europe.
Chapter 39
Section 404 cards
Where does de Candolle believe the common jujube originated, and how did it spread?
The author argues the common jujube is probably native to northern China. It was introduced and naturalized in western Asia after the Sanskrit era, perhaps 2,500 to 3,000 years ago. Greeks and Romans knew it around the beginning of the era, and the Romans carried it to Barbary and Spain, where cultivation partly naturalized it.
Chapter 40
Why does de Candolle doubt the lotus-eaters cultivated the lotus jujube?
The author argues the small, tasteless or slightly sweet berry would not satisfy ordinary men, so the lotus-eaters were very poor or very temperate. There is no proof they cultivated the shrub; they likely gathered it wild, since it is common in North Africa. One edition of Theophrastus mentions stoneless lotus, implying some cultivation, but this was not common.
Chapter 40
What evidence supports an Indian origin for the Indian jujube (Zizyphus jujube)?
De Candolle cites its abundance in a wild state in Burmah and British India, specimens Wallich gathered in Burmah, and Kurz seeing it in dry forests near Ava and Prome. He also notes three Sanskrit names and eleven names in modern Indian languages. Beddone admits it wild in British Indian forests, though Brandis found it only near native settlements.
Chapter 40
Why does de Candolle reject an Asiatic origin for the cashew?
The author argues the cashew is American: it is wild in Brazil, Guiana, Panama, and the West Indies, and the Malay name cadju is American. Rumphius reported the Portuguese introduced it from America, and Garcia ab Orto did not find it at Goa in 1550. Piddington gives no Sanskrit name, and Anglo-Indian colonists now admit early importation from America.
Chapter 40
Section 414 cards
Why does de Candolle believe the mango is native to South Asia or the Malay Archipelago?
The author argues the mango's Asian origin is shown by the many varieties cultivated there, numerous ancient common names including a Sanskrit one, and its abundance in the gardens of Bengal, the Dekkan Peninsula, and Ceylon even in Rheede's time. He notes Rumphius reported it introduced to some Asiatic Archipelago islands within living memory, yet the variety of local names argues ancient introduction there despite Rumphius's opinion.
Chapter 41
How and when did the mango reach the New World?
The mango was first introduced into Brazil, and seeds were brought from there to Barbados in the middle of the last century. In 1782 a French vessel carrying young trees from Bourbon to Saint Domingo was captured by the English, who took them to Jamaica, where they succeeded wonderfully. After slave emancipation, abandoned coffee plantations became mango forests from stones the freed people scattered.
Chapter 41
What does the chapter say about the strawberry's wild range and seed dispersal?
The common strawberry is one of the most widely diffused plants, partly because birds carry its small seeds to great distances, attracted by the fleshy part. It grows wild in Europe from Lapland and the Shetland Isles to southern mountains, in Madeira, Spain, Sicily, and Greece, and in Asia from Armenia to Dahuria. De Candolle doubts Himalayan and Japanese attributions and a report of it in China.
Chapter 41
When and how was the strawberry brought into cultivation, according to the chapter?
The Greeks and Romans did not cultivate the strawberry. Its cultivation was probably introduced in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Champier, in the sixteenth century, speaks of it as a novelty in the north of France, but it already existed in the south and in England. Transported into colonial gardens, it became naturalized in a few cool localities far from dwellings, as in Jamaica, Mauritius, and Bourbon.
Chapter 41
Section 423 cards
What two wild species do all cultivated cherries belong to, and how do they differ?
Prunus avium is tall, lacks root suckers, has downy leaf undersides, and sweet fruit; Prunus cerasus is shorter, sends up root suckers, has glabrous leaves, and bears more or less sour or bitter fruit. The white and black cherries derive from P. avium, while Montmorency and griotte cherries come from P. cerasus.
Chapter 42
What does de Candolle say about Lucullus and the cherry's introduction to Italy?
The author argues the common claim that Lucullus introduced the cherry to Italy in 65 B.C. is an error repeated in classical schools. Cherry trees, at least the bird-cherry, already existed in Italy before him. Lucullus likely brought a fine cultivated variety from the Pontus, which growers then propagated by grafting, but his role was confined to that.
Chapter 42
What archaeological evidence exists for cherry stones in prehistoric European settlements?
Heer illustrated P. avium stones from peat above Stone Age deposits in western Switzerland; de Mortillet, Gross, Strobel, and Pigorini found similar stones at Bourget, Corcelette, and Parma, all post-Stone-Age settlements. Only one P. cerasus stone turned up in prehistoric sites, and its stratum is uncertain. De Candolle concludes naturalization may have followed the Aryan migrations.
Chapter 42
Section 433 cards
Why does de Candolle doubt that Prunus domestica is indigenous to Europe?
The author argues it is very doubtful. In southern Europe it grows chiefly in hedges near dwellings, looking like a scarcely naturalized tree maintained by stones brought from plantations. Fraas says it is not wild in Greece, Heldreich confirms this for Attica, and Steven says the same for the Crimea. No plum is depicted in Pompeii frescoes, and P. domestica stones were absent from Italian, Swiss, and Savoy lake-dwellings.
Chapter 43
What evidence does de Candolle give for the antiquity and range of Prunus insititia?
It grows wild in southern Europe, Cilicia, Armenia, south of the Caucasus, and Talysch near the Caspian; it seems truly wild especially in European Turkey and south of the Caucasus, but is probably naturalized north of the Alps. The ancient Greeks distinguished their Coccumelea from Syria's, suggesting theirs was P. insititia. Heer described P. insititia stones from the Robenhausen lake-dwellings.
Chapter 43
What does de Candolle conclude about the apricot's native country?
The Greeks and Romans received the apricot around the beginning of the Christian era; Dioscorides calls it mailon armeniacon and Pliny mentions præcocium. Pallas, Guldenstadt, and Hohenacker reported it near the Caucasus and Terek, and Boissier admits these localities without confirming wild status. Yet Tchihatcheff did not see it wild, and Karl Koch, after long residence in Armenia, called the native country unknown.
Chapter 43
Section 442 cards
What evidence does de Candolle use to argue for a Chinese origin of the apricot?
The author argues for a Chinese origin, citing Bretschneider's finding that the Shan-hai-king, attributed to the Emperor Yü (2205-2198 B.C.), mentions several sings (apricots) growing on hills, and that the apricot has its own Chinese character. Decaisne, who first suspected this origin, received specimens of small, sour wild apricots from the Pekin mountains, twice as small as cultivated fruit.
Chapter 44
Why does de Candolle reject India as the original home of the almond?
Anglo-Indian botanists say the almond is cultivated in cool parts of India but does not thrive there, and many almonds are imported from Persia. No Sanskrit name is known, nor any in Sanskrit-derived languages. De Candolle concludes the north-west of India is evidently not the original home of the species.
Chapter 44
Section 452 cards
Why does the absence of Sanskrit and Hebrew names matter to de Candolle's argument?
The author argues these absences are the most important fact. Peoples speaking Sanskrit came into India from the north-west, the supposed home of the species, and the Hebrews and early Greeks radiated from the Euphrates region. If the peach were native there, they should have cultivated it. Its absence implies introduction from a more distant land, namely China.
Chapter 45
What does the chapter say about supposedly wild peach trees in the Caucasus and Persia?
The author is skeptical. Pallas saw small, sour, walnut-sized velvety peaches on the Terek and suspected they had degenerated from cultivated trees. Later botanists like Marshall, Bieberstein, Meyer, and Hohenacker do not list the wild peach near the Caucasus. Stones Brugnière and Olivier brought from Ispahan came from a garden, not a wild tree.
Chapter 45
Section 464 cards
What evidence does de Candolle cite for the peach arriving in Italy at the start of the Christian era?
He cites the absence of peach stones in the terra-mare or lake-dwellings of Parma and Lombardy, together with representations of the peach tree in wall paintings of richer houses at Pompeii. He treats these as confirming an arrival at the beginning of the Christian era, which he had formerly inferred from more scanty data.
Chapter 46
Why does de Candolle reject Knight's theory that the peach is a modification of the almond?
He argues geographical botany opposes it: the almond originated in Western Asia and reached China only after the Christian era, while the peach was cultivated in China for thousands of years with two wild forms. If the almond had produced the peach, the peach could not have existed so early in China while unknown to Greeks and Latins. Decaisne called Knight's idea a strange hypothesis.
Chapter 46
What does de Candolle conclude about the nectarine's origin and nature?
The author argues the nectarine derives from the common peach, citing Darwin's many cases of a nectarine branch appearing unexpectedly on a peach tree. He adds that the nectarine has every appearance of an artificial tree: it is not found wild, never becomes naturalized, and each tree lives a shorter time than the common peach, making it a weakened form.
Chapter 46
What evidence leads de Candolle to place the peach's origin in China?
He notes the peach was first cultivated in China, spoken of there two thousand years before its introduction into the Greco-Roman world and perhaps a thousand years before the Sanskrit-speaking lands. The peach group is essentially Chinese, including two indigenous wild forms, P. simonii and P. Davidii. Bretschneider at Pekin conceded de Candolle may be right.
Chapter 46
Section 474 cards
What does de Candolle conclude from the absence of a Sanskrit name for the pear?
The author argues that the lack of a Sanskrit pear name indicates its cultivation was not long established in north-west India, and that vague reports of wild trees in Kashmir are unimportant. He explains the absence of Hebrew or Aramaic names by noting the pear does not flourish in the hot countries where those languages were spoken.
Chapter 47
What pear remains were found at Swiss and Italian lake-dwellings, and how were they preserved?
Pears are sometimes but rarely found among lake-dweller stores. Heer illustrated one from Wangen or Robenhausen, 28 mm by 19 mm, narrowing toward the stalk and cut lengthways to show little pulp versus the cartilaginous center. Raggazzoni found one at Bardello, Lago di Varese, 25 mm by 16. The dwellers dried fruits after cutting them lengthways, causing slight shrinkage.
Chapter 47
How does de Candolle explain the many diverse European names for the pear?
He lists Armenian and Georgian pauta, Hungarian vatzkor, Slav gruscha, hrusska, kruska, and Keltic peir, per, plus Basque udarea and madaria, which resemble no known European or Asiatic name. He argues this number and diversity indicates the species existed very anciently from the Caspian Sea to the Atlantic, and that the Basques, likely descendants of conquered Iberians, preserved names not derived from Keltic or Latin.
Chapter 47
What is the snowy pear, and what does de Candolle say about its origin and ancient use?
Pyrus nivalis is cultivated in Austria, northern Italy, and parts of France; Austrian peasants eat the fruit when snow is on the ground, and the French call it Poirier sauger for its sage-like downy leaves. Decaisne derived its varieties from P. kotschyana of Asia Minor. The author argues Greek and Roman descriptions are too imperfect to confirm they had it, though they made cider.
Chapter 47
Section 484 cards
What did lake-dwelling inhabitants do with apples, and how did Heer classify them?
Inhabitants of the Parma terra-mare and Lombardy, Savoy, and Switzerland palafittes cut apples lengthways and dried them as winter provisions. Heer distinguished two varieties known before metals: a smaller kind 15–24 mm long, and a larger 29–32 mm long by 36 wide, matching the modern German-Swiss campaner apple.
Chapter 48
What does de Candolle conclude about the apple's presence in prehistoric Europe?
From the lake-dwelling finds, de Candolle considers the apple existed in Europe both wild and cultivated since prehistoric times. He argues that lack of communication with Asia before the Aryan invasion makes it probable the tree was indigenous in Europe as in Anatolia, the south of the Caucasus, and Northern Russia, with cultivation beginning early everywhere.
Chapter 48
Where is the quince wild, and what do its names and history suggest?
The quince grows wild in northern Persia near the Caspian, south of the Caucasus, and Anatolia; finds in Crimea and northern Greece may be naturalized. No Sanskrit or Hebrew name is known, but Greek, Persian, Russian, Polish, Slav, and Albanian names differ widely. De Candolle thinks it was naturalized in eastern Europe before the Trojan war and little modified by cultivation.
Chapter 48
Why does de Candolle reject a North African origin for the pomegranate?
De Candolle argues the Romans' name Malum punicum reflects Carthage cultivation, not origin; the Phoenicians likely introduced it there. He notes the Semitic name rimmon prevailed in Greek, Arabic, and Berber, and that Latins would have had more original names had it been wild in North Africa or southern Europe. He places it wild in Persia, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, and Beluchistan.
Chapter 48
Section 493 cards
What evidence supports the Malay Archipelago as the indigenous home of the Malay apple?
The numerous varieties indicate ancient cultivation in the Malay Archipelago, where the species is indigenous. Forster found it already established in the Pacific Islands from Otahiti to the Sandwich Isles at the time of Cook's voyages. It grows wild in the forests of the Malay Archipelago and the peninsula of Malacca, and Tussac says it was brought to Jamaica from Otahiti in 1793.
Chapter 49
Why did Raddi and most botanists treat the guava's two forms as a single species?
Earlier authors admitted two species: one with elliptical or spherical red-fleshed fruit, another with pyriform fruit and white or pink flesh. Raddi observed pyriform and round fruits growing on the same tree in Brazil, showing no essential difference. Most botanists, especially those observing guavas in the colonies, followed Raddi, an opinion de Candolle says he inclined to even in 1855 from geographical distribution reasons.
Chapter 49
What does de Candolle argue about the guava's American origin and its spread?
He argues the guava came from America: all carefully studied species among the sixty of genus Psidium are American, and Asian finds were recent naturalizations. Common Malay names derive from the American word guiava, and ancient Chinese authors do not mention it. He suspects the most ancient habitation extended from Mexico to Colombia and Peru, with the spherical harsh-fruited form earliest and the other perhaps a cultivation result.
Chapter 49
Section 504 cards
What botanical features identify Lagenaria vulgaris despite its variable fruit forms?
The species may always be recognized by its white flower and by the hardness of the outer rind of the fruit. This hard rind allows the fruit to be used as a vessel for liquids or as an air reservoir suitable as a buoy for novice swimmers. The flesh is sometimes sweet and eatable, sometimes bitter and even purgative.
Chapter 50
What did Linnaeus, de Candolle, and later evidence conclude about the gourd's origin?
Linnaeus pronounced the species American. De Candolle thought it was probably of Indian origin, and this opinion has since been confirmed. The plant has been found wild on the coast of Malabar and in humid forests of Deyra Doon, and also wild in Abyssinia, according to Dillon and Schimper.
Chapter 50
What evidence does the author give against the gourd existing in America before Europeans?
The author argues the Brazilian specimens do not prove pre-Columbian presence, since far more time elapsed between Vespucci's 1504 voyage and the botanists of 1637-38 than an easily cultivated annual with long-lived seeds would need to spread. Elliott in 1824 said it was certainly not indigenous and was brought from a warmer climate.
Chapter 50
How does the author assess early records of the gourd in Egypt, Arabia, and China?
The author doubts the ancient Egyptians possessed the plant, despite a single tomb figure of leaves sometimes identified with it, since Braun, Ascherson, and Magnus list several Cucurbitaceae without mentioning this one. The Arabs seem not to have known it early, as Ibn Alawam and Ibn Baithar say nothing of it. The earliest Chinese work mentioning it dates to the first century BC.
Chapter 50
Section 514 cards
How did Naudin define species within the genus Cucurbita?
Naudin established species by cultivating varieties and experimenting with crossed fertilization: groups that cannot fertilize each other, or whose product is not fertile and stable, he regarded as species; forms that cross and yield a fertile, varied product he treated as races or varieties. Later experiments showed exceptions, but in Cucurbita physiological facts agree with exterior differences.
Chapter 51
What leaf and flower characters distinguish Cucurbita maxima from C. Pepo?
According to Naudin's characters, C. maxima has leaves with rounded lobes, smooth peduncles, and corolla lobes curved outwards. C. Pepo has leaves with pointed lobes, peduncles marked with ridges and furrows, and a corolla narrowed towards the base with lobes nearly always upright.
Chapter 51
Why does de Candolle mistrust early claims about the gourd's origin?
He argues common names and ancient authors' descriptions do not agree with botanical definitions, so earlier assertions about where and when a gourd was cultivated must be mistrusted. Sixteenth-century names like 'Indian gourd' are insufficient proof, since popular indications of origin are often erroneous and East and West Indies were confused.
Chapter 51
What is de Candolle's conclusion on the native country of Cucurbita maxima?
Despite doubts about a single traveller's report of it wild on the Niger, the author argues C. maxima is native to the Old World and was introduced into America by Europeans. He notes no one found it wild in the Americas, and early travellers never recorded the botanical characters needed to identify the species.
Chapter 51
Section 524 cards
What evidence does de Candolle weigh for the origin of Cucurbita Pepo?
Botanical indications favor a Mexican or Texan origin, chiefly C. texana found by Lindheimer on the upper Guadaloupe, though Asa Gray thought it perhaps naturalized. No wild form is reported anywhere in Asia or Africa; all Asiatic and African floras list the species only as cultivated. Historical records neither contradict nor support an American origin, since old names cannot be tied to a single species.
Chapter 52
Why can't Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin pumpkin names settle the origin question?
De Candolle says it is impossible to discover whether a given Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin name for the pumpkin belongs to one species rather than another. Fruit form is often the same, and authors never mention the distinctive characters. Sixteenth-century plates may show the plant, but the names imply foreign origin while 'the Indies' meant both Southern Asia and America.
Chapter 52
What does de Candolle conclude about the origin of Cucurbita moschata?
Cogniaux suspects southern Asia but gives no proof. De Candolle searched the floras of both hemispheres and found no truly wild occurrence. The nearest indications are a possibly uncultivated specimen from Bangka, Welwitsch's Angola specimens called probably introduced, and five Brazilian, Guianan, or Nicaraguan specimens of unknown status. Rumphius, Blume, Clarke, and Schweinfurth know it only as cultivated.
Chapter 52
How does Naudin's work change the question of melon origin?
Naudin's 1859 paper on Cucumis, based on about two thousand living plants, showed that Cucumis Melo is one species containing an extraordinary number of varieties and breeds that cross and yield variable products. He classed them into ten groups, including canteloups, sucrins, serpents, Chito, and Dudaim. Earlier botanists had named these forms as separate species, ignoring transitions and crossing.
Chapter 52
Section 533 cards
What did Naudin conclude about wild Cucumis forms and cultivated varieties?
Naudin observed that several wild forms described as separate species may be the types and sources of cultivated forms, and that these differing wild forms may have produced different cultivated varieties. He considered this more probable because the forms sometimes inhabit distant regions such as Southern Asia and tropical Africa, where differences in climate and isolation could have created and consolidated varieties.
Chapter 53
What evidence settled the origin of the water-melon?
The water-melon's origin was long mistaken or unknown; Linnæus wrongly said Southern Italy, and others guessed India or Africa without proof. It was eventually found indigenous in tropical Africa on both sides of the equator, which settles the question. Livingstone saw districts covered with it, and both people and wild animals eagerly ate the wild fruit, which is sometimes bitter.
Chapter 53
What does the chapter say about the melon's introduction to China and the Græco-Roman world?
The chapter states the melon's introduction into China appears to date only from the eighth century CE, judging from the first work mentioning it. It was probably introduced into the Græco-Roman world around the beginning of the Christian era, at the time of the Empire, and was likely of indifferent quality given the silence or faint praise of writers.
Chapter 53
Section 544 cards
What evidence does de Candolle give for the water-melon's antiquity in North Africa?
He cites the Berber name tadelaât, which differs too widely from the Arabic battich to have arisen after the Arab conquest, suggesting pre-conquest cultivation. He also notes Egyptian paintings depicting the water-melon and the Spanish and Sardinian names zandria and sindria, which he cannot connect to other languages, indicating ancient culture in the eastern Mediterranean.
Chapter 54
Why does de Candolle place the cucumber's original habitat in north-west India?
He reasons from its ancient cultivation in Asia and Europe, especially a Sanskrit name soukasa, and conjectures Cabul or adjacent regions. He notes this was confirmed if one accepts that Cucumis Hardwickii, found at the foot of the Himalayas, is the same species, since its stems, leaves, and flowers match C. sativus exactly, though its fruit is bitter.
Chapter 54
When and how did the cucumber reach China, according to the chapter?
The cucumber was cultivated in India for at least three thousand years but only introduced into China in the second century before Christ, when the ambassador Chang-kien returned from Bactriana. De Candolle contrasts this with its faster spread westward, where the ancient Greeks cultivated it as sikuos.
Chapter 54
What does de Candolle argue about the origin of Cucumis Anguria?
He doubts the common view that it is native to the West Indies. He notes Naudin's observation that other Cucumis species are Old World, and Hooker's suggestion that it is a modified form of an African species allied to C. prophetarum and C. Figarei. De Candolle adds that the name 'maroon cucumber' implies it became wild, and its coastal range from Brazil to the West Indies follows the slave trade.
Chapter 54
Section 552 cards
How does de Candolle judge the continent of origin of Luffa cylindrica?
He concludes the Asiatic origin is certain, the African very doubtful, and the American imaginary or the effect of naturalization. He notes wild reports from Malabar, Hindustan, Burmah, Ceylon, and Queensland, but finds no Sanskrit name and no Chinese luffa, suggesting cultivation was not ancient even in India. African specimens lack wild/cultivated labels, and Egyptian monuments show no trace.
Chapter 55
What does de Candolle conclude about the origin of the Snake Gourd, Trichosanthes anguina?
He considers an Indian origin most probable. Although seventeenth-century botanists assumed it was indigenous to China because they received it from there, Bretschneider notes the Chinese name mankua means 'cucumber of the southern barbarians,' implying introduction. No author asserts it has been found distinctly wild; Clarke, Naudin, Rumphius, Loureiro, and Kurz report it only as cultivated.
Chapter 55
Section 564 cards
What does de Candolle conclude about the origin and spread of Sechium edule (chayote)?
The author argues the chayote is probably native to southern Mexico and Central America, and was transported to the West Indies and Brazil in the eighteenth century. He rejects East Indian and Jamaican origins, noting Browne said it was cultivated in Jamaica and early writers like Piso and Marcgraf never mention it. It was later introduced to Mauritius and Algeria, where it thrives.
Chapter 56
Why does de Candolle say the name 'Indian fig' for Opuntia is erroneous?
The author argues the name is doubly wrong: the plant is not a fig tree and the fruit is not a fig, and its origin is American, not Indian. He notes Linnaeus took the botanical name from this popular term, so the specific name was retained to avoid confusing changes. He also treats the spiny and spineless forms as one species, not distinct.
Chapter 56
How did the prickly pear spread to the Old World, and what role did the Moors play?
It was among the first plants Spaniards introduced to Europe and Asia, and sixteenth-century botanists all mention it. It naturalized in southern Europe and Africa as cultivation spread. In Spain it was known by the American name tuna; the author suggests the Moors probably carried it to Barbary when expelled from the peninsula, calling it 'fig of the Christians.'
Chapter 56
What evidence does de Candolle give that the gooseberry is a single species, not two?
The author notes cultivated fruit is generally smooth or has a few stiff hairs, while wild fruit has soft, shorter hairs, but intermediate forms exist. Experiments sowing seeds of cultivated fruit produced plants with either smooth or hairy fruit. He therefore concludes there is one species, Ribes grossularia, which under cultivation yielded one principal variety and several sub-varieties differing in size, colour, or taste.
Chapter 56
Section 574 cards
How does de Candolle explain the origin of the name Ribes for currants?
The author argues Ribes was wrongly thought to be an Arabic plant name. He instead derives it from northern European words for the currant, such as ribs in Danish and risp and resp in Swedish. He notes the Slav names are quite different and numerous.
Chapter 57
What does de Candolle claim about the French names gardes, gradilles, and castilles for red currants?
Ménage derived these names from Latin ruber, red, through imagined transformations, and Legonidec traced Kastilez to Castille. The author argues both are wrong: the words appear in Brittany and beyond, and he considers them Celtic, citing Legonidec's gardis, meaning rough, harsh, pungent, or sour.
Chapter 57
What does the chapter say about the early cultivation and reputation of the black currant?
It grows wild from Scotland and Lapland to northern France and Italy, and across Siberia and the western Himalayas. The author argues cultivation probably began before the Middle Ages, though Le Grand d'Aussy claims it was cultivated hardly forty years and owed its fame to a pamphlet on its virtues. Bosc notes it was long grown for its fruit and liqueurs.
Chapter 57
Why does de Candolle doubt the olive was truly wild in some regions, and where does he look for its origin?
Birds often carry olive seeds to sterile places, naturalizing the oleaster, and long-lived trees make individual origins unknowable. The author argues the real question is the species' prehistoric home and how cultivation spread, so he turns to ancient names and records, such as the Hebrew sait and Egyptian tat, rather than living trees.
Chapter 57
Section 584 cards
What evidence does de Candolle give that the olive was known early in Greece rather than received from the Semites?
The author argues the Greeks gave the olive a special name, elaia (Latin olea), and that the wild olive forms regular woods along the southern coast of Asia Minor. If the Greeks had received the tree from the Semites, he reasons, they would not have coined their own distinct name for it. The Iliad and Odyssey already mention olive wood and anointing with olive oil.
Chapter 58
What does de Candolle infer from the Berber names for the olive?
He notes the Berber name for the olive tree and fruit has the root taz or tas, similar to the tat of the ancient Egyptians, calling this a strong indication of the olive's antiquity in Africa. He adds that after the Arab conquests, names derived from the Semitic zeit prevailed even in Spanish, giving zenboudje and zitoun in Algiers and azebuche and aceytuno in Andalusia.
Chapter 58
Why does de Candolle doubt the olive is ancient in the Canary Islands?
Early voyagers such as Bontier in 1403 mention the olive in the Canaries, where modern botanists regard it as indigenous, but de Candolle argues it may have been introduced by the Phoenicians. He reasons that if the Guanchos had possessed the olive, oil would have played an important part among them and left traces in their speech, yet Webb and Berthelot give no such names.
Chapter 58
What does the absence of olive leaves in European tufa deposits suggest to de Candolle?
No olive leaf has been found in the tufa of southern France, Tuscany, and Sicily, where the laurel, myrtle, and other shrubs now existing have been discovered. De Candolle treats this, until the contrary is proved, as an indication of a subsequent naturalization of the olive in those regions. He also notes the olive thrives in dry climates like Syria and Assyria and could double its yield if wild trees were grafted.
Chapter 58
Section 593 cards
What evidence does de Candolle give that the aubergine was known in India from a remote epoch?
De Candolle cites the aubergine's Sanskrit name vartta and related Sanskrit and Bengali names such as bong, bartakon, mahoti, and hingoli, recorded by Piddington. Wallich gives vartta, varttakou, and varttaka bunguna, from which the Hindustani bungan derives. De Candolle concludes from this that the species cannot be doubted to have been known in India from a very remote epoch.
Chapter 59
When and how does de Candolle say the aubergine reached Europe and Africa?
The Greeks and Romans did not know the species, and no botanist mentions it in Europe before the early seventeenth century. Its cultivation must have spread toward Africa before the Middle Ages: the Arab physician Ebn Baithar, writing in the thirteenth century, quotes Rhasis from the ninth, and Rauwolf saw the plant in Aleppo gardens at the end of the sixteenth century.
Chapter 59
Why does de Candolle argue that no capsicum is indigenous to the Old World?
The author argues all capsicums are of American origin, though he admits he cannot absolutely prove it. His reasons: such conspicuous, easily grown fruits would have spread quickly and gained names in ancient languages, yet Romans, Greeks, Hebrews, and ancient Chinese books do not mention them; Pacific islanders did not cultivate them at Cook's voyages; Ebn Baithar says nothing; and Roxburgh knew no Sanskrit name.
Chapter 59
Section 604 cards
What evidence supports the American origin of the papaw against an Asian or African origin?
The author argues the papaw is American: all species of its family are American; it has no Sanskrit name, and modern Indian names derive from the American word papaya (from Carib ababai); Rumphius says Malays considered it a Portuguese introduction; Sloane cites contemporaries who said it was taken from the West Indies to Asia and Africa; and Forster had not seen it in the Pacific during Cook's voyages.
Chapter 60
What does the chapter say about the avocado's wild range and its introduction to the West Indies?
In America the avocado is wild over an uncommon extent, found in forests, on river banks, and on the sea-shore from Mexico and the West Indies as far as the Amazon. However, P. Browne states it was introduced from the Continent into Jamaica, and Jacquin held the same view for the West India Islands generally. At discovery it was certainly wild and cultivated in Mexico, per Hernandez.
Chapter 60
How does the chapter describe the fig's wild geographical range in modern times?
The fig grows wild or nearly wild over a vast region centred on Syria, from eastern Persia or even Afghanistan across the whole Mediterranean region to the Canaries. North to south the zone varies from the 25th to the 40th or 42nd parallel. As a rule it stops like the olive at the foot of the Caucasus and European mountains, but grows nearly wild on France's south-west coast.
Chapter 60
What does the chapter say about the relationship between wild and cultivated figs?
Hehn asserts the cultivated fig cannot have been developed from the wild fig, but all botanists hold the contrary opinion. The author notes Gussone obtained plants of the form caprificus and other varieties from the same seeds. The absence of the cultivated fig sukai in the Iliad therefore does not prove the fig tree was absent from Greece at the Trojan war.
Chapter 60
Section 614 cards
What evidence does de Candolle cite for the fig's prehistoric range around the Mediterranean?
De Candolle argues the prehistoric area of the fig tree covered the middle and southern Mediterranean basin from Syria to the Canaries. He cites ancient Berber and Guancho names for figs and fig trees, older than Arabic, as evidence of very ancient habitation in North Africa as far as the Canaries. He also notes Phoenician transport of good varieties to African and Mediterranean colonies.
Chapter 61
How did the bread-fruit tree reach the West Indies, and what happened on the first attempt?
Captain Bligh was commissioned to introduce the bread-fruit into the English West Indian Isles. A mutiny of his crew prevented success the first time, but a second attempt succeeded: in January 1793 he landed 153 plants at St. Vincent, whence the species spread into parts of tropical America. Sonnerat had earlier carried it to Mauritius, where Intendant Poivre spread it.
Chapter 61
What does de Candolle conclude about the jack-fruit's native region and the antiquity of its cultivation?
De Candolle concludes the jack-fruit is native to the region at the foot of the western mountains of the Indian Peninsula, and that its cultivation there is probably not earlier than the Christian era. He notes the Sanskrit name is uncertain, Persians and Arabs seem not to have known it, and early Chinese records do not mention it.
Chapter 61
Why does de Candolle distrust claims of truly wild date-palms, and what evidence does he prefer?
De Candolle says we can hardly rely on more or less proved wild indigenous date-palms, since dates are easily transported and stones germinate in damp soil or rock fissures; isolated trees may spring from stones thrown away by caravans. The variety sylvestris may be recent naturalization. He prefers historical and philological data, though these establish only probabilities.
Chapter 61
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What evidence does de Candolle cite for the date-palm's antiquity in Asia and Africa?
He points to the numerous, very different names for the species: the Hebrews called it tamar and the ancient Egyptians beq, words so completely different that both peoples likely found it indigenous and perhaps already named. He also notes the incredible number of Persian, Arabic, and Berber names, some derived from Hebrew, others from unknown sources, often applying to fruit states or cultivated varieties.
Chapter 62
What was de Candolle's conclusion about the date-palm's original zone and cultivation spread?
The author argues that before the earliest Egyptian dynasties the date-palm existed, wild or sown by wandering tribes, in a narrow zone from the Euphrates to the Canaries, and that cultivation later extended to north-west India and the Cape Verde Islands. He concludes the natural area has remained nearly the same for about five thousand years, leaving earlier history to future palaeontological discoveries.
Chapter 62
What arguments did R. Brown give for the banana's Old World origin?
Brown noted that all other species of the genus Musa belong to the Old World; that no one claims to have found wild fertile-fruited varieties in America, as has happened in Asia; and that Piso and Marcgraf considered the banana introduced into Brazil from Congo. De Candolle adds that later botanists such as Seemann, Ernst, and Sagot favored Asiatic origin, citing the absence of banana names in Peruvian and Mexican languages.
Chapter 62
What evidence does de Candolle find unreliable regarding bananas in pre-conquest America?
He distrusts Stevenson's report of banana leaves in Peruvian huacas because the same traveler also claimed to have seen beans there, a plant undoubtedly from the Old World. He notes Boussingault asserted the platano arton was American without proof, and that Meyen and Ritter added no new arguments. He also suggests the Tupi name bacoba may derive from Malabar bala via later Portuguese introduction.
Chapter 62
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Why does de Candolle doubt the banana was native to America?
The author argues the banana was likely introduced early by the Spanish and Portuguese into San Domingo and Brazil. He notes Acosta reported natives considered it foreign (from Ethiopia), Hernandez never mentioned it in Mexico, and few varieties exist compared to Asia. He rejects Garcilasso's claim that Peruvians knew it before the conquest, though he admits later evidence might suggest a chance introduction from the Pacific or Guinea.
Chapter 63
What evidence supports the banana's great antiquity of cultivation in Asia?
De Candolle cites the immense number of varieties in south Asia, their cultivation in India, China, and the archipelago from an epoch impossible to realize, their former spread to Pacific islands and West Africa, and distinct names in separate languages like Chinese, Sanskrit, and Malay. He notes the Hebrews and Egyptians did not know it, suggesting it was first native to the Malay Archipelago rather than remote India.
Chapter 63
Why is the pine-apple considered an American plant by de Candolle?
The author argues it must be American because Greek, Roman, and Arab works never mention it, and it appeared in the Old World only after the discovery of America. Early American writers like Hernandez described it in Haiti and Mexico, with a Mexican name matzatli and Brazilian name nana. Rumphius disputed this because it was cultivated widely in India and wild in Celebes, but de Candolle notes the absence of any original Asiatic name.
Chapter 63
How does de Candolle use variety distribution to argue for a single banana species?
He argues that if there were two or three species, each would likely be confined to a region—one American, one Malay, one Indian. Instead, all varieties are geographically intermixed, and the two most widespread in America differ from each other yet each closely approaches Asiatic varieties. This supports the single-species view held botanically by Roxburgh, Desvaux, and R. Brown.
Chapter 63
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What evidence does de Candolle give for the pine-apple's American origin?
De Candolle treats the pine-apple as an American species. He explains Clusius's 1599 sighting of leaves from the Guinea coast as a post-Columbian introduction, and notes Robert Brown lists it among Congo plants while considering the species American. Though the cultivated form bears few or no seeds, it occasionally naturalizes in hot countries, and it has been reported wild from Mexico and Veraguas to the upper Orinoco, Guiana, and Bahia.
Chapter 64
How was cacao used and spread after the discovery of America?
Cacao was grown in Central America and Yucatan at the time of discovery; its seeds were sent to the Mexican highlands and even used as money, and drinking chocolate was general, the name being Mexican. The Spaniards carried cacao from Acapulco to the Philippines in 1674 and 1680, where it thrived, and it is also cultivated in the Sunda Isles. De Candolle doubts it would succeed on the Guinea and Zanzibar coasts.
Chapter 64
What does de Candolle conclude about the broad bean's wild origin?
De Candolle finds the broad bean's origin obscure. Linnæus claimed without proof that it inhabits Egypt; Lerche reported it wild in the Mungan desert south of the Caspian, but later collectors rarely confirmed this. Munby's claim of wild beans at Oran is unsupported: Cosson never saw a North African specimen, and none is in Munby's Kew herbarium. Pliny's wild Mauritanian bean was hard and uncookable, casting doubt on the species.
Chapter 64
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Why did Julien's claim that the bean was one of China's five sacred plants fail?
Stanislas Julien inferred from Chinese works that the bean was among five plants Emperor Chin-nong ordered sown annually 4,600 years ago. Bretschneider, working at Pekin, showed the seed used in that ceremony is Dolichos soja, and the bean only reached China from Western Asia a century before the Christian era, during Chang-kien's embassy. The author notes this fits the absence of ancient bean cultivation and of any Sanskrit or modern Indian name.
Chapter 65
What evidence does the chapter give for the bean's prehistoric cultivation in Europe?
The author cites small-fruited bean remains from the bronze age in Switzerland and Italy. Heer named them Celtica nana, only six to nine millimetres long versus ten to twelve in modern field beans, comparing specimens from Lake Morat, Lake Bienne, and Parma. Mortellet found the same small bean in lake-dwellings on Lake Bourget, resembling a variety still grown in Spain. The author argues western Aryans likely introduced the bean to Europe in early migrations.
Chapter 65
Why does the chapter doubt bean cultivation in ancient Egypt despite Herodotus?
Herodotus says Egyptians never sowed the bean and priests could not endure its sight, deeming it unclean; no beans appear in sarcophagi or monuments. The author reasons the plant nonetheless existed in Egypt, probably in cultivated ground, since suitable soil was generally farmed, and perhaps the poor or certain nomes ignored priestly prejudice. Plutarch and Diodorus later mention Egyptian bean cultivation, writing five hundred years after Herodotus.
Chapter 65
What does the chapter conclude about the bean's original wild habitat?
The author argues the wild habitat was probably twofold thousands of years ago: one centre south of the Caspian, another in north Africa. He calls this a disjunctive area, rare in dicotyledons, and suggests the bean's range had long been shrinking and going extinct, since its seed cannot disperse and rodents prey on it. He argues cultivation saved the plant, as with maize, from gradual disappearance.
Chapter 65
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What evidence suggests the lentil existed in Europe before cultivation?
The author notes that the Greek name fakos and the Latin lens differ, suggesting the species perhaps existed in Greece and Italy before cultivation. Lentils found in the bronze-age lake-dwellings of St. Peter's Island, Lake of Bienne, provide another proof of ancient European existence, though the species may have been introduced from Italy.
Chapter 66
Why does de Candolle doubt the lentil was known in India before Sanskrit speakers?
Roxburgh and Piddington gave no lentil name in other Indian languages, though an analogous Hindustani and Bengali name mussour exists. The author supposes masura signifies lentil, and concludes the lentil was probably not known in India before the invasion of the Sanskrit-speaking race.
Chapter 66
Where does de Candolle place the original home of the cultivated chick-pea?
The author argues botanical, historical, and philological data agree on a pre-cultivation habitat south of the Caucasus and north of Persia. The species has not been found undoubtedly wild; quasi-wild reports from Armenia and the Caucasus only point to that origin. Western Aryans perhaps carried it to Southern Europe and India.
Chapter 66
What made de Candolle suspect the chick-pea was unknown to ancient Egyptians and Hebrews?
He found no proof in Egyptian drawings or grain stores, though it may have been considered common or unclean like the bean and lentil. Reynier's guess that ketsech was the chick-pea is uncertain, and the Arabs' totally different name omnos makes it unlikely the Jews' ketsech was the same plant.
Chapter 66
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What evidence does de Candolle give that the garden-pea was known to ancient Greeks and Aryans?
Theophrastus records that Greeks cultivated Pisum sativum, calling it pisos or pison; the Albanians, descendants of the Pelasgians, call it pizelle, and the Latins had pisum. De Candolle argues this uniformity of nomenclature suggests the Aryans knew the plant on arriving in Greece and Italy and perhaps brought it with them, though other Aryan names cannot be tied specifically to Pisum sativum.
Chapter 67
Where has the garden-pea been found archaeologically, and what does its seed shape indicate?
The garden-pea has been found in lake-dwelling remains of the bronze age in Switzerland and Savoy. Its seed is spherical, which distinguishes it from Pisum arvense. It is smaller than the modern pea. Heer also reports it from stone-age relics at Moosseedorf but is less positive, figuring only the less ancient pea of St. Peter's Island; if it dates from the stone age, it would predate Aryan immigration.
Chapter 67
Why does de Candolle doubt that the soy bean is native to India?
Linnæus claimed it inhabited India, citing Kæmpfer on Japan and his own Ceylon flora where it was only cultivated; Thwaites's modern Ceylon flora omits it. Roxburgh saw it only in Calcutta's botanical gardens, brought from the Moluccas, and there are no common Indian names. De Candolle adds that ancient Indian cultivation would have spread westward into Syria and Egypt, which did not happen.
Chapter 67
What does de Candolle conclude about the original range and spread of Pisum sativum?
De Candolle concludes the species seems to have existed in Western Asia, perhaps from the south of the Caucasus to Persia, before cultivation. The Aryans introduced it into Europe, but it perhaps existed in Northern India before the arrival of the eastern Aryans. It no longer exists in a wild state, and half-wild field occurrences are not said to approach another species.
Chapter 67
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What does de Candolle conclude about the pigeon-pea's original homeland?
The author argues the pigeon-pea's pre-cultivation home is uncertain: botanists have placed it in India or tropical Africa, and Bentham favored Africa in 1861 but leaned toward Asia in 1865. De Candolle doubts it is truly wild in Asia or grown there over three thousand years, but considers a long African existence possible, with ancient traders carrying it from Zanzibar to India or Ceylon.
Chapter 68
Why does de Candolle think the pigeon-pea's culture is not very ancient?
He reasons that the species, though spread across three continents, has remarkably few varieties—only two, based solely on yellow or reddish flower color, which were once treated as separate species but merged following Linnaeus. The small number of variations, even in the organ cultivated, signals no very ancient culture. He also notes the ease of naturalization weakens collectors' wild-found claims.
Chapter 68
What evidence does de Candolle cite against the carob being native to southern Europe?
He notes the dearth of ancient names: a Greek name meaning horn-like pod and an Arabic word meaning pod, with no special Latin name—Romans used the Greek term or siliqua græca. The Italian carrubo derives from Arabic, suggesting introduction after the Roman epoch by medieval Arabs. Bianca also observed the carob is not always healthy or productive in its restricted Sicilian and Italian localities.
Chapter 68
How does de Candolle treat the theory that Homer's lotus was the carob?
He is skeptical. Bianca maintained the theory of Hœfer and Bonné that the lotus of the lotophagi was the carob, noting its sweet flower and honey-tasting fruit fit Homer, and the lotus-eaters lived in Cyrenaica. De Candolle counters that Pliny and Herodotus described the lotus differently, and that a hypothesis about a poet's doubtful plant cannot ground natural-history arguments.
Chapter 68
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Where did de Candolle believe the carob tree grew wild, and how did it spread?
The author argues the carob grew wild in the Levant, probably on the southern coast of Anatolia and in Syria, perhaps also in Cyrenaica. Its cultivation began within historic time. The Greeks diffused it in Greece and Italy, but the Arabs, who esteemed it more highly, later propagated it as far as Marocco and Spain. In these countries it became naturalized in a less productive form requiring grafting.
Chapter 69
Why did de Candolle doubt that Phaseolus vulgaris was known in Asia before the Christian era?
The author argues several points: there is no Sanskrit name, no Hebrew name answering to Phaseolus or Dolichos, and Chinese authors do not mention P. vulgaris. Only recent Hindustani names (loba, bakla) exist, suggesting recent introduction into Southern Asia. He also notes the faseolos was absent at Rome in Cato's time, appearing in Latin authors only at the beginning of the empire.
Chapter 69
What did Wittmack identify among seeds from the Peruvian tombs at Ancon?
Wittmack studied leguminæ brought from the Ancon tombs by Reiss and Stubel and reported several varieties of the common haricot, Phaseolus vulgaris, alongside Phaseolus lunatus. He matched them to the varieties Oblongus purpureus, Ellipticus præcox, and Ellipticus atrofuscus, which belong to the dwarf or branchless haricots. Rochebrune, by contrast, had said none of his three haricot kinds was P. vulgaris.
Chapter 69
How did de Candolle counter the objection that Ancon tomb seeds cannot prove American origin?
He notes that all fifty species in Rochebrune's list are American, with none suspected of European origin. He argues the plants were either deposited before the conquest, or in later tombs the natives deliberately avoided foreign species, since depositing plants was a native custom, not Catholic. He admits the seeds alone are insufficient to determine a Phaseolus species.
Chapter 69
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What evidence does de Candolle give that Phaseolus vulgaris is American in origin?
He argues it was not long cultivated in India, southwest Asia, or Egypt, and is not certainly known in Europe before the discovery of America. At that time varieties suddenly increased in European gardens. Most species of the genus exist in South America, and seeds apparently of the species were found in Peruvian tombs of uncertain date, mixed with American species.
Chapter 70
How does de Candolle explain the origin of the French word haricot?
He rejects the idea that the plant's name comes from the mutton ragout, and rejects Keltic and Bescherelle's derivations. He traces it to the Italian araco (Latin Aracus niger), a leguminous plant now attributed to Lathyrus ochrus, carried by French cultivators to another legume, with ara becoming ari. Tournefort first used haricot; Feuillée wrote aricot.
Chapter 70
What does de Candolle conclude about the origin of Phaseolus lunatus (Lima bean)?
He rejects Linnæus's claims of Bengal and Africa as unproven. Bentham considered the species certainly American. De Candolle finds no sign of ancient Asian existence: no wild plants, no Sanskrit or modern Indian names, no Chinese mention. He believes it is a Brazilian species spread by cultivation, probably introduced to Guinea by the slave trade and thence to Mozambique.
Chapter 70
Which Indian Phaseolus species does de Candolle say show signs of recent versus ancient cultivation?
He argues Phaseolus aconitifolius (moth) shows recent cultivation, lacking a Sanskrit name and differing modern names. Phaseolus trilobus has a Sanskrit name and several modern names, suggesting cultivation or knowledge for three thousand years. Phaseolus mungo has many varieties and three modern names but no Sanskrit name, suggesting one or two thousand years.
Chapter 70
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Where does de Candolle place the wild origin of common buckwheat, and when did it reach Europe?
The author states it grows wild in Mantschuria on the Amur, in Dahuria, and near Lake Baikal, though wild status in China and northern India is uncertain. Cultivation is not ancient; the first Chinese author to mention it lived in the tenth or eleventh century CE. It entered Europe in the Middle Ages via Tartary and Russia, with the first German cultivation mention in a Mecklenburg register of 1436.
Chapter 71
Why does de Candolle doubt that the name 'sarrasin' proves a Saracen origin for buckwheat?
He notes the name blé sarrasin was adopted in the sixteenth century when the plant spread into Belgium, France, and Italy. Common names are often absurd and unthinkingly bestowed, so it is unclear whether the name refers to the grain's colour attributed to Saracens or to a supposed Arab introduction. The species does not exist south of the Mediterranean, nor in Syria and Persia. Reynier first opposed the southern-origin idea fifty years earlier.
Chapter 71
How does de Candolle distinguish the Tartary buckwheat from common buckwheat in origin and naming?
Tartary buckwheat is less sensitive to cold but yields poorer seed, and its cultivation is recent; sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors do not mention it, and Linnæus was among the first to call it of Tartar origin. It is undoubtedly wild in Tartary and Siberia as far as Dauria, but Russian botanists did not find it further east in the Amur basin. Because it arrived in Eastern Europe later, common buckwheat bears Slav names like tatarka that would better suit it.
Chapter 71
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What did de Candolle conclude about the two American quinoas?
The author argues that the coloured-leaf quinoa and the green-leaf, white-seeded quinoa are two very ancient varieties of a single species, not separate species. He rejects Moquin's view that the white-seeded form belongs to a little-known Asiatic species. The less coloured, more farinaceous kind is probably derived from the other. No botanist has reported quinoa as wild or semi-wild.
Chapter 72
What did Tessier conclude about autumn versus spring wheats?
Tessier found the distinction unimportant: all wheats can be spring or autumn sown depending on the country, and they pass gradually from one state to the other if the change is made slowly year by year. Some varieties simply tolerate winter cold less, so custom sows them in spring. De Candolle says this distinction need not be considered when studying wheat's origin.
Chapter 72
What evidence does the chapter give for wheat's great antiquity of cultivation?
Cultivation is prehistoric in the Old World: ancient Egyptian monuments and the Hebrew Scriptures show it established, and Egyptians and Greeks attributed its origin to mythical figures like Isis, Ceres and Triptolemus. Lake-dwellers of Western Switzerland grew a small-grained wheat Heer named Triticum vulgare antiquorum. The Chinese grew wheat in 2700 B.C., and many ancient languages have distinct wheat names.
Chapter 72
How does the chapter describe the chestnut's natural area and cultivation?
The chestnut has an extended but disjunctive natural area, forming forests in temperate mountains from the Caspian Sea to Portugal, plus Edough in Algeria and near Tunis; with varieties japonica and americana it also occurs in Japan and temperate North America. It has been planted widely in southern and western Europe, making wild versus cultivated status hard to determine. Cultivation chiefly means grafting good varieties onto trees with indifferent fruit.
Chapter 72
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What evidence does de Candolle give against wheat being indigenous to China?
De Candolle argues Chinese scholars' claims that the five ceremony seeds are native are insufficient. Bretschneider notes China–Western Asia contact dates only from Chang-kien's second-century BC embassy. Since wheat was cultivated in western Asia two or three thousand years before Chin-nong and its seeds travel easily, it could have reached northern China via isolated unknown travellers, much as peach and apricot stones likely moved from China to Persia in prehistoric times.
Chapter 73
What did Balansa and Olivier each claim about wild wheat, and how were their findings corrected?
Balansa believed he found wild wheat on Mount Sipylus in Asia Minor, but the specimen he brought back was identified by a careful botanist as a spelt, Triticum monococcum. Olivier, on the Euphrates's right bank northwest of Anah in uncultivable country, found wheat, barley, and spelt in a ravine, noting he had seen them several times in Mesopotamia. De Candolle treats these as insufficient proof of genuinely wild wheat.
Chapter 73
What is de Candolle's conclusion on the specific unity of the principal wheat races, and what supports it?
De Candolle concludes that T. vulgare, T. turgidum, and T. durum share specific unity, derived from common wheat through cultivation at a probably not very ancient epoch. He cites Alefeld's observations of the three grown together under identical conditions and Henri Vilmorin's artificial fertilization experiments, where the most distinct principal forms crossed easily and produced fertile hybrids. Historical and vernacular-name evidence supports this. He also notes mummy wheat has never been known to germinate.
Chapter 73
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Why does de Candolle doubt that kussemeth in the Bible refers to spelt?
He argues spelt is not grown in hot countries; modern travellers from Rauwolf onward never saw it cultivated in Egypt, nor has it been found in ancient monuments. He therefore supposes the Hebrew kussemeth should not be attributed to spelt, and suggests it might be T. monococcum instead, though that too is not grown in Egypt.
Chapter 74
What evidence leads de Candolle to think T. dicoccum is an ancient cultivated variety of spelt?
He notes T. dicoccum has never been found wild and has remarkably few common names. Combined with the slight value of the botanical characters distinguishing it from T. spelta, these circumstances lead him to conclude it is an ancient cultivated variety of spelt rather than a distinct wild species.
Chapter 74
Why do most botanists consider T. monococcum a distinct species?
It differs from the two preceding spelts by a single seed in the little ear and other characters, leading most botanists to treat it as a real species. H. Vilmorin's crossing experiments support this so far, since he has not succeeded in crossing T. monococcum with other spelts or wheats, though he admits this may be due to his method.
Chapter 74
What does de Candolle conclude about the order in which wheats and spelts arose?
He concludes the separation of free-grained wheat from spelt must have occurred before all history, perhaps before agriculture began. Wheat appeared first in Asia, then spelt probably in Eastern Europe and Anatolia. Among spelts, T. monococcum seems the most ancient form, from which the others gradually developed over thousands of years of cultivation and selection.
Chapter 74
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Where has the common two-rowed husked barley been found wild, and where not?
It has been found wild in Western Asia: Arabia Petraea, near Mount Sinai, the ruins of Persepolis, near the Caspian Sea, between Lenkoran and Baku, the desert of Chirvan and Awhasia south of the Caucasus, and Turcomania. No author mentions it in Greece, Egypt, or east of Persia, and Willdenow's report from Samara is unconfirmed.
Chapter 75
Which barley did the author say was most cultivated in antiquity, and what evidence supports this?
The author states six-rowed barley (Hordeum hexastichon) was most commonly cultivated in antiquity. It is mentioned by Greek authors and found in the earliest Egyptian monuments and in lake-dwellings of Switzerland (Stone Age), Italy, and Savoy (Bronze Age). Heer distinguished two varieties formerly cultivated in Switzerland, one matching barley on coins of Metapontis.
Chapter 75
What two hypotheses does the author offer for the origin of four- and six-rowed barleys?
The author argues two possibilities: first, that four- and six-rowed barleys were derived in prehistoric agriculture, earlier than the Egyptians who built the monuments, from Hordeum distichon, the only form now found wild; second, that they were formerly wild species extinct since the historical epoch, though he finds it strange no trace remains in the vast region between India, the Black Sea, and Abyssinia.
Chapter 75
What historical and philological evidence does the author give for rye's origin and early cultivation?
Rye is absent from Egyptian monuments and has no Semitic, Sanskrit, or modern Indian name; the Greeks did not know it. Pliny first mentions secale near Turin, and Galen saw it in Thrace and Macedonia. Northern European names (Anglo-Saxon ryge, Scandinavian rûgr, Old High German roggo, Slavonic ruji) suggest the author's view that rye originated north of the Danube, with cultivation hardly earlier than the Christian era in the Roman empire but perhaps older in Russia and Tartary.
Chapter 75
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Did the ancient Greeks and Romans cultivate common oats?
There is no proof the Greeks cultivated common oats; their name bromos and the Latin avena were commonly applied to uncultivated species and weeds mixed with cereals. Pliny's remark that Germans lived on oatmeal implies the Romans did not cultivate the species. Cultivation was practised anciently north of Italy and Greece and spread later and partially into the southern Roman empire.
Chapter 76
What did last-century opinion claim about the origin of oats, and why is it wrong?
De Candolle says the opinion reigning in the last century that oats came originally from the island of Juan Fernandez, apparently from an assertion by the navigator Anson, is erroneous. He argues the home of the species is not in the Austral hemisphere but in northern-hemisphere countries where it was anciently cultivated, supported by philological and historical facts.
Chapter 76
Why does de Candolle doubt reports of truly wild oats?
Oats sow themselves on rubbish-heaps, by roadsides, and near cultivated ground more easily than other cereals, sometimes persisting so as to appear wild, as observed in Algeria, Japan, Paris, and north China. This makes de Candolle sceptical of Bové's Sinai report and of Olivier in Persia. He found no really wild oats in books or herbaria, and Bentham confirmed none at Kew.
Chapter 76
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What evidence makes de Candolle doubt Italian millet's Italian origin?
The author argues the specific name italicum is absurd: the plant is rarely cultivated in Italy and never wild there. He notes it is common in Southern Asia, was grown in China by 2700 B.C., and appears in Swiss lake-dwelling remains, suggesting an Asiatic origin with westward spread rather than an Italian one.
Chapter 77
Why does de Candolle doubt that ancient Egyptians cultivated Italian millet?
Pickering claimed to recognize it in Egyptian drawings and said it is cultivated in Egypt as dokhn, but dokhn is the name for Panicum miliaceum. The author therefore calls Egyptian cultivation very doubtful, though the species was found among Swiss lake-dwelling remains of the stone age.
Chapter 77
What evidence argues against an Indian origin for common sorghum?
Roxburgh, in his 1820 flora, says he saw sorghum only cultivated, as did Aitchison. The author adds that no certain Sanskrit name exists, which he argues indicates introduction only a few centuries before the Christian era. Linnæus and later authors nonetheless called it Indian.
Chapter 77
How does de Candolle explain sorghum's spread to Egypt and China?
He argues it is easier to understand that sorghum is indigenous in tropical Africa, was introduced into Egypt in prehistoric time, then into India, and finally into China, where the first work mentioning it dates to the fourth century A.D. He treats Bretschneider's claim of Chinese indigeneity as the lone assertion.
Chapter 77
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Where does de Candolle place the origin of sweet sorghum, and why?
The author argues sweet sorghum likely originated in tropical Africa, not India. He notes it is only cultivated in India and the Sunda Isles, lacks a Sanskrit name, and is not reported indigenous in China. Hooker cited specimens from the river Nun possibly wild. He proposes spread from interior Africa to Egypt, Arabia, the Indian Archipelago, India, and China, and finds the east-to-west hypothesis objectionable.
Chapter 78
How does de Candolle compare the antiquity of rice cultivation in China and India?
The author argues rice was cultivated in China before India. Chinese tradition treats rice as indigenous, with an imperial sowing ceremony dated 2800 B.C. In India rice dates at least from the Aryan invasion, with Sanskrit names vrihi and arunya. He suggests Indians used rice after the Chinese, and that it spread to the Euphrates earlier than the Aryan invasion.
Chapter 78
What evidence does de Candolle give that rice may have existed in India before cultivation?
The author argues rice probably existed in India before cultivation. Roxburgh reported wild rice called newaree growing abundantly on lake shores in the Circars, prized by rich Hindus but not planted for low yield, and he had no doubt it was the original plant. Thomson found wild rice at Moradabad. The author notes aquatic plants often have wide ranges and cautions that naturalization can mimic wildness.
Chapter 78
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What is de Candolle's position on the origin of maize?
The author argues maize is of American origin and was introduced to the Old World only after the discovery of the New World. He calls these two assertions positive, despite contrary opinions from some authors and the doubts of the agriculturist Bonafous, whose treatise on maize he nonetheless praises as the most complete.
Chapter 79
Why does the Incisa charter fail as evidence for maize in medieval Europe?
The charter claimed two crusaders gave the town of Incisa in 1204 a seed called meliga from Anatolia. Delile, Targionitozzetti, and Bonafous thought it might be a sorghum, not maize. Comte de Riant then showed the charter was the fabrication of a modern impostor, which the author says renders these old discussions absurd.
Chapter 79
What evidence does the author give against maize existing in ancient Egypt?
The author notes Egyptian monuments show no specimen or drawing of maize, and Hebrew and Sanskrit lack names for it. A maize ear found in a Thebes sarcophagus is believed an Arab impostor's trick. Prosper Alpin in 1592 and Forskal at the end of the eighteenth century both found maize little grown in Egypt with no distinct name.
Chapter 79
How does the author explain the name 'Turkish wheat' for maize?
The author argues the name proves no Eastern origin, comparing it to the erroneous 'turkey' for an American bird. It dates from the sixteenth century, first used by Ruellius in 1536, and sprang from an error about the plant's origin, perhaps from the tufts compared to a Turkish beard or from the plant's vigour.
Chapter 79
Section 804 cards
What evidence does de Candolle give that maize was not native to the Old World?
The author argues maize is not native to the Old World because it spread so rapidly there after the discovery of America. He reasons that had it existed anywhere in Asia or Africa, it would have played an important agricultural role for thousands of years, which the facts contradict.
Chapter 80
What evidence shows maize was ancient and widespread in America at the time of discovery?
Maize was a staple from the La Plata valley to the United States, with names in all languages. Natives planted it around temporary dwellings; burial-mounds, Inca tombs, and Peruvian catacombs contain ears or grains. Mexico had a maize goddess, Cinteutl, receiving first-fruits, and Cusco's virgins of the sun sacrificed maize bread.
Chapter 80
What did Darwin find regarding maize in Peru, and what did it suggest?
Darwin found ears of Indian corn and eighteen species of shells of our epoch buried in Peruvian shore soil now at least eighty-five feet above sea level. De Candolle notes this maize was perhaps not cultivated, but in that case it would be even more interesting as an indication of the origin of the species.
Chapter 80
Where does de Candolle guess the primitive form of maize originated, and why?
The author argues wild maize probably existed in the high grounds of Chili and Mexico, where great populations first settled, rather than low-lying Paraguay, the Amazon, or hot damp districts. Forests are unfavourable to annuals, and maize does not thrive in warm damp climates where manioc is grown. He suggests New Granada as an intermediate point of departure.
Chapter 80
Section 813 cards
What does de Candolle propose as the best route to settling maize's origin?
The author argues that maize's original wild habitat was probably so small that botanists may not yet have found it, and that because the species is so distinct and striking, natives or unscientific colonists would have noticed and spoken of it. He therefore expects certainty about its origin to come from archaeological discoveries—studying monuments across America and deciphering hieroglyphic inscriptions—rather than from finding it wild.
Chapter 81
What evidence does de Candolle cite for poppy cultivation among ancient Greeks and Romans?
Homer, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides mention the cultivated poppy, and the Greeks knew the somniferous properties of its sap; Dioscorides mentions a white-seeded variety. The Romans cultivated it before the republic, as shown by the anecdote of Tarquin and the poppy-heads, and mixed its seeds with flour in making bread. The Egyptians of Pliny's time used poppy juice as a medicament, but there is no proof of earlier Egyptian cultivation.
Chapter 81
According to Bretschneider's letters, when and how did opium smoking begin in China?
Bretschneider states that opium is eaten, not smoked, in India and Persia, and that smoking appears to be a modern Chinese invention. Nothing proves the Chinese smoked opium before the middle of the last century; seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit missionaries do not mention it, and Father d'Incarville in 1750 says sale was forbidden because of suicides. Edicts forbidding smoking date from before 1730, and Don Sinibaldo di Mas says the Chinese took the practice from Assam.
Chapter 81
Section 824 cards
Which cotton species did de Candolle consider most cultivated in the United States, and how was it likely introduced?
Gossypium herbaceum, which the author says was probably introduced to the United States from Europe. He notes it was a new cultivation a hundred years earlier, citing a bale of North American cotton confiscated at Liverpool in 1774 on the plea that the cotton-plant did not grow there. The silky sea-island cotton he treats as a separate American species.
Chapter 82
What did Parlatore conclude about the cotton seeds Rosellini found at ancient Thebes?
Parlatore examined the seeds in the Florence museum and declared them to belong to Gossypium arboreum. De Candolle concludes that if the seeds were really ancient they were a rarity, perhaps from a garden tree or from Upper Egypt, where tree-cotton is known to be wild. He notes mummy cloths are always linen according to Thompson and other microscopic observers.
Chapter 82
Where did de Candolle and Anglo-Indian botanists place the origin of Gossypium arboreum?
They held it is not an Indian species and is rarely cultivated in India, but a native of tropical Africa, seen wild in Upper Guinea, Abyssinia, Sennaar, and Upper Egypt. So many collectors brought it from these countries that there is no room for doubt, though cultivation has diffused and mixed it with other species, so it was described under several names in works on Southern Asia.
Chapter 82
How did de Candolle explain the spread of cotton cultivation to the Mediterranean, and what does the word byssos suggest?
He attributes propagation on Mediterranean shores to the Arabs, citing the name qutn or kutn, which passed into southern European languages as cotone, coton, algodon. On byssos, he notes most scholars think it was cotton, cultivated at Elis per Pausanias and Pliny, but Curtius and C. Ritter consider it a general term for threads, probably fine linen here. He argues cotton was never or rarely cultivated by the ancients.
Chapter 82
Section 834 cards
What difficulty does de Candolle identify in distinguishing American cotton species?
The author argues that botanical distinction of American cotton species is extremely confused: authors who have seen large collections disagree on characters, Linnæus's original definitions are insufficient, and American seed introduced into African and Asiatic plantations led botanists to describe American forms under different names. Todaro admitted ten American species, Parlatore reduced them to three, and Dr. Masters united all American forms into a single species, G. barbadense.
Chapter 83
What method does de Candolle recommend for classifying cultivated cottons?
The author argues botanists should carefully seek the Gossypia that are truly wild in America and constitute species solely upon those, leaving cultivated forms their often absurd and misleading names. He states natural history should be based on natural facts, not artificial products of cultivation. Unfortunately, knowledge of indigenous American cottons remains elementary, with only one or two collectors finding wild Gossypia resembling cultivated forms.
Chapter 83
Why does de Candolle distrust early botanists' and travellers' reports of wild cotton?
Cotton grows near plantations and becomes more or less naturalized, since seed down facilitates accidental transport. Early writers' phrase that a cotton plant "grows" in a country often means a cultivated plant. Linnæus himself often said "habitat" of cultivated species, sometimes without good ground. Hernandez's wild Mexican Gossypium is doubted, Hemsley gives no proof of wild status, and Grisebach could not establish specific distinctions with certainty.
Chapter 83
What did de Candolle conclude about the origin of the pea-nut, Arachis hypogaea?
The origin was disputed for a century. Linnæus said it inhabited Surinam, Brazil, and Peru without specifying wild or cultivated. R. Brown thought it probably came from China through India to Africa, or was indigenous in both Africa and America. De Candolle's father in 1825 admitted American origin without hesitation. De Candolle in 1855 reconsidered the question with modern science, presenting new proofs that he says allow no further doubt.
Chapter 83
Section 844 cards
What evidence does de Candolle give for an American origin of Arachis hypogaea?
He argues the genus is American because six other Arachis species are Brazilian, Marcgraf and Piso describe it in Brazil as mandubi, and seeds were found in Peruvian tombs at Ancon. He also notes Greek, Latin, and Arab authors are silent about it, and Asian names are merely borrowed terms like 'earth-bean.'
Chapter 84
How does de Candolle think Arachis reached Africa and Asia?
He admits the route is hard to guess but suggests the first slave-ships carried it from Brazil to Guinea, and the Portuguese brought it from Brazil to the islands south of Asia at the end of the fifteenth century. He rejects great antiquity in Africa because Egyptian, Greek, and Arab authors never mention it.
Chapter 84
Where is Coffea arabica considered wild, and what complicates that claim?
De Candolle says it is wild in Abyssinia, the Soudan, and on the coasts of Guinea and Mozambique, though outlying spots may be naturalized from cultivation. No one had found it in Arabia, which he attributes to difficulty penetrating the interior; even if found there, wild status would be hard to prove since seeds sprout around plantations.
Chapter 84
How did coffee spread from Arabia to European botanical gardens?
Boerhave relates that Nicholas Witsen urged Governor Van Hoorn to import coffee berries from Arabia to Batavia; this was done, and in 1690 Van Hoorn sent living plants to Witsen, which fruited in the Amsterdam gardens. In 1714 the magistrates sent a fruiting plant to Louis XIV for Marly, and Jussieu had described the plant in 1713.
Chapter 84
Section 854 cards
Who introduced coffee to Surinam and in what year?
The Dutch introduced the first coffee plants grown in America into Surinam in 1718. The Governor of Cayenne, de la Motte-Aigron, secretly obtained some plants from Surinam and multiplied them in 1725. De Clieu, a naval officer, introduced the coffee plant into Martinique in 1720 according to Deleuze, or 1723 according to the Notices Statistiques.
Chapter 85
Where does de Candolle conclude sesame originated, and on what evidence?
The author argues sesame originated in the Sunda Isles, based on it growing wild in Java and on historical and philological arguments. He holds it was introduced into India and the Euphrates valley two or three thousand years ago, and into Egypt later, between 1000 and 500 B.C. The Portuguese transported it from the Guinea coast to Brazil.
Chapter 85
Why did the Chilians stop cultivating madia?
The inhabitants of Chili cultivated Madia sativa, an annual of the Composite family, before the discovery of America for the oil in its seed. After the olive was extensively planted, the Chilians despised the madia and complained of it only as a weed choking their gardens. Europeans tried cultivating it with indifferent success because of its bad smell.
Chapter 85
What did the Dutch and English each do regarding nutmeg?
The nutmeg is wild in the Moluccas, principally the Banda Islands, and was long cultivated there. The Dutch long possessed the monopoly of its cultivation. When the English owned the Moluccas at the end of the last century, they carried live nutmeg trees to Bencoolen and into Prince Edward's Islands. It later spread to Bourbon, Mauritius, Madagascar, and some tropical American colonies, with indifferent commercial success.
Chapter 85
Section 863 cards
What does de Candolle argue is the true origin of the castor-oil plant?
The author argues the true origin is tropical Africa, agreeing with Ball, rather than the south of Asia favored by most modern and highly reputed works. He cites the plant found wild with certainty in Abyssinia, Sennaar, and Kordofan, with specimens from Mount Kohn, while noting reports from Mozambique and Guinea are less clear.
Chapter 86
How many varieties of Ricinus communis exist, and what do they signify?
Dr. J. Müller's careful monograph proves sixteen varieties exist, scarcely hereditary, passing into one another by many transitions and constituting a single species. The number of varieties is a sign of very ancient cultivation. They differ in capsules, seeds, and inflorescence, and are small trees in hot countries but annuals north of the Alps, where they cannot endure frost.
Chapter 86
Why does de Candolle reject China and India as ancient homes of the castor-oil plant?
Bretschneider's remarks do not argue ancient cultivation in China. The Sanskrit name eranda has descendants in modern Indian languages, but botanists do not say from what epoch it dates; since the species belongs to hot climates, the Aryans could not have known it before arriving in India, later than the Egyptian monuments.
Chapter 86
Section 874 cards
What does archaeology suggest about the antiquity of walnuts in Europe?
The only nuts found under lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, or Italy come from a single locality near Parma, Fontinellato, in an Iron Age stratum. Iron was rare at the Trojan War and not general among Italy's agricultural population until the fifth or sixth century BC, when bronze was perhaps still unknown north of the Alps. Walnuts at Lagozza were in a much higher, non-ancient stratum.
Chapter 87
How did the walnut reach China, and when?
Chinese authors say the walnut was introduced from Thibet under the Han dynasty by Chang-kien, about 140-150 BC; the author suggests this may have been a perfected variety. He also notes that, from botanists' records, the wild walnut seems rare in north China and perhaps absent in the east. The date of cultivation in Japan is unknown.
Chapter 87
What evidence supports an African origin for Elaeis guineensis?
Sixteenth-century travellers already saw the palm on the Guinea coast, where it is indigenous and planted for palm-oil trade. Though also found wild in Brazil and perhaps Guiana, Robert Brown and palm specialists agree it was introduced to America by negroes and slave-traders. Early Brazilian botanists omit it; it occurs only on the littoral from Rio to the Amazon, never inland, and Sloane says it was introduced to Jamaica from Guinea.
Chapter 87
Why is the cocoa-nut palm's original home uncertain, and where does the author place it?
Its buoyant shell and fibrous husk let nuts float in salt water and reach distant coasts, and it has been widely planted. The author argues it dates in Brazil, the West Indies, and west Africa from introduction about three centuries ago, ruling out Africa and eastern tropical America. He leaves western tropical America, the Pacific islands, the Indian Archipelago, and south Asia as candidates.
Chapter 87
Section 883 cards
What evidence supports an American origin for the cocoa-nut palm?
The author notes that the eleven other species of the genus Cocos are American, mostly Brazilian, and that Pacific trade winds south and north of the equator drive floating bodies from America toward Asia. He adds that maritime and marsh plants commonly have wider ranges than other species of the same genus, which somewhat weakens the first argument.
Chapter 88
What Asian evidence does the author give against an American origin?
The author lists several points: currents flow from the Indian Archipelago toward Panama; Asian islanders were bolder navigators than American Indians; Asia has a far larger area and many more varieties, with Blume counting eighteen in Java and thirty-nine in the Philippines; uses are more varied in Asia; and Sanskrit names like narikela prove Asian presence three or four thousand years ago.
Chapter 88
What did the author once believe about cocoa-nut origin, and what does he now argue?
The author states he formerly thought the arguments for western America were strongest, and earlier inclined to de Martius's hypothesis of transport by currents from islands west of Central America to the Asiatic Archipelago. With more information and experience, he now argues for an origin in the Indian Archipelago, with later spread to China, Ceylon, and India.
Chapter 88
Section 894 cards
What do the letters A, B, and C mean for Old World cultivated species?
For Old World species, A means cultivated more than four thousand years, based on ancient historians, Egyptian monuments, Chinese works, and botanical or philological evidence. B means more than two thousand years, indicated by Theophrastus, lacustrine remains, or Hebrew or Sanskrit names. C means less than two thousand years, mentioned by Dioscorides but not Theophrastus, seen at Pompeii, or introduced at a known date.
Chapter 89
How are American species classified by date of cultivation in the table?
American species use D, E, and F instead of A, B, and C. D means cultivation very ancient in America, inferred from a wide area and many varieties. E means cultivated before the discovery of America without signs of great antiquity. F means cultivated only since the discovery of America.
Chapter 89
What signs in the table indicate a plant's duration and growth form?
Numbers and bracketed symbols give duration and form: (1) annual, (2) biennial, [Z] perennial, ['5] small shrub, [/5] shrub, [5] small tree, and [F5] tree. These signs appear beside each species name alongside the date letter and origin, so a single row encodes duration, antiquity of cultivation, and native region.
Chapter 89
What origin and date does the table give for the onion and the cabbage?
The table lists the onion, Allium Cepa, as biennial with date A, native to Persia, Afghanistan, Beluchistan, and possibly Palestine. The cabbage, Brassica oleracea, is listed as annual, biennial, or small shrub with date A, native to Europe. Both carry the oldest cultivation category, over four thousand years.
Chapter 89
Section 904 cards
According to de Candolle, what is the probable origin of wheat?
De Candolle lists wheat (Triticum vulgare and varieties) with the region of the Euphrates as its origin. He marks spelt (Triticum spelta) as derived from the preceding, with a query. Common and six-rowed barley are likewise marked as derived from two-rowed barley, whose origin he places in western temperate Asia.
Chapter 90
What origin does de Candolle give for the potato and maize?
In the American section, de Candolle gives the potato (Solanum tuberosum) the origin Chili, Peru, with a query. Maize (Zea mays) is listed with New Granada, also queried. Both appear among species of American origin, the potato under plants cultivated for underground parts and maize under nutritious seed plants.
Chapter 90
How does de Candolle classify plants cultivated for various uses versus nutritious seeds?
He separates the tables into groups: plants cultivated for the seeds, split into nutritious and various uses; species of American origin, divided into underground parts, stems or leaves, fruits, and seeds; and a cryptogam cultivated for the whole plant. Under various uses he places poppy, mustards, cotton, coffee, sesame, nutmeg, castor-oil, walnut, and peppers.
Chapter 90
What does de Candolle say about the state of knowledge of cultivated plant origins before Humboldt?
De Candolle states that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the origin of most cultivated species was unknown. Linnaeus made no efforts to discover it, and later authors copied his vague or erroneous indications. He cites Humboldt in 1807 calling the first home of useful plants a secret as impenetrable as the dwelling of domestic animals.
Chapter 90
Section 914 cards
How does de Candolle divide the 247 cultivated species by region of origin?
Of the 247 species studied, the old world furnished 199, America 45, and three remain uncertain. Species common to northern regions of both hemispheres, such as the hop, strawberry, currant, chestnut, and mushroom, were counted as old-world because their principal habitation and first cultivation were there.
Chapter 91
Which regions produced no indigenous cultivated plants, and why does the author argue this?
The author notes none come from Arctic or Antarctic regions, whose floras are few. The United States yielded only the Jerusalem artichoke and gourds worth cultivating; Patagonia and the Cape furnished no species; Australia and New Zealand gave only Eucalyptus globulus and Tetragonia. The author argues this distribution had no proportion to human needs or territory size.
Chapter 91
What characterized species of very ancient cultivation (category A)?
The forty-four category A species were mostly food plants with roots, seeds, or fruits, plus a few fruits, textiles, oils, or stimulants; only two were green vegetables and none fodder. Cruciferae, Leguminosae, and Graminaceae predominated. Twenty-two of forty-four, or fifty percent, were annuals, versus forty percent herbaceous perennials in nature.
Chapter 91
How do modern cultivated species (under 2,000 years) differ from ancient ones?
The sixty-seven modern species (61 old world, 6 American) include more perennials and woody plants and are chiefly fodders, bulbs, vegetables, medicinal plants like Cinchona, and fruits. The author argues none rivals maize, rice, potato, date, or banana, and that introductions were irregular, with the number of cultivated species nearly stationary around the age of discovery.
Chapter 91
Section 924 cards
How does modern plant introduction differ from earlier cultivation, according to the chapter?
The author argues that cultivation formerly began in a plant's native country, but now species are planted elsewhere first: the Australian Eucalyptus in Algeria and American Cinchonas in southern Asia. Botanical and private gardens once only spread already-cultivated species; now, led by Kew, they introduce entirely new cultures, aided by acclimatization societies and easier transport of commodities.
Chapter 92
Does the chapter claim cultivated species are ever completely abandoned?
The author states that once a species is cultivated it is rarely, perhaps never, completely abandoned. It persists here and there in backward countries or in especially favourable climates. He passes over nearly abandoned species such as dyer's woad, mallow, and medicinal plants like fennel and cummin, yet asserts they are still grown somewhere.
Chapter 92
What does the chapter predict for cultivation by the end of the nineteenth century?
The author estimates that by the end of the nineteenth century men will cultivate on a large scale about three hundred species. He notes this is a small fraction of the 120,000 to 140,000 plant species, and smaller still than the animal kingdom's millions, of which perhaps only two hundred species are domesticated.
Chapter 92
How does the chapter classify cultivated plants not found in a wild state?
The author sorts species by certainty of wild status. Of 247 species, 193 are known wild, 27 doubtful as half-wild, and 27 not found wild. He believes the last will eventually be found in allied form once tropical countries are better explored, with more attentive collectors and monographs, though a few like maize and the bean may be extinct in nature.
Chapter 92
Section 934 cards
What proportion of species cultivated for over 4,000 years still exist wild in an identical form?
Thirty-one out of forty-nine, or sixty-three per cent, still exist wild in a form identical with some one of the cultivated varieties. The author notes he had expected a priori that many would have altered beyond recognition, but found the pre-cultivation forms commonly remained side by side with cultivated ones.
Chapter 93
What three characters mark cultivated plants that are extinct or becoming extinct in a wild state?
They have not been found wild or only once or twice and often doubtfully; they cannot sow themselves and propagate indefinitely outside cultivated ground; and they cannot be supposed derived within historic times from allied species. Examples include the bean, chick-pea, lentil, tobacco, wheat, and maize.
Chapter 93
Why does the author think these seven species lose the struggle for existence?
Excepting tobacco, their seeds are full of fecula and are the food of birds, rodents, and insects, and the seeds cannot pass entire through the alimentary canal. The author argues this is probably the sole or principal cause of their inferiority in the struggle for existence.
Chapter 93
What does the author conclude about adaptation to cold in cultivated plants?
He observed no indication of adaptation to cold. When cultivation advances north (maize, flax, tobacco), it is explained by early varieties ripening before cold or by summer cultivation of species sown in winter in the south. He argues more than four or five thousand years are needed for a plant to tolerate greater cold.
Chapter 93
Section 944 cards
What does de Candolle note about the absence of agricultural traces in prehistoric remains?
De Candolle cites De Naidaillac for the absence of traces of agriculture among prehistoric remains, and states this absence is corroborated by Heer and Cartailhac, both well versed in archaeological discoveries. The point supports the argument that agriculture did not appear among the earliest human remains discussed in the chapter.
Chapter 94
Which sources does de Candolle recommend for plant-names in the Old Testament and Talmud?
He calls Rosenmüller's Handbuch der biblischen Alterkunde the best work on Old Testament plant-names, and recommends Hamilton's La Botanique de la Bible as a good short French work. For Talmud plant-names he cites Reynier, who had been in Egypt, while noting Duschak and Löw's works lack knowledge of Eastern plants and are unintelligible to botanists.
Chapter 94
Why does de Candolle distrust Sanskrit plant-names compared with Hebrew, Greek, and Chinese?
He explains that scholars find many words in Sanskrit texts but cannot sufficiently prove their meaning. Unlike Hebrew, Greek, and Chinese, Sanskrit lacks quotations of phrases concerning each word translated into a modern language. He therefore places more confidence in Roxburgh's Flora Indica and Piddington's Index than in Wilson's dictionary.
Chapter 94
How does de Candolle classify species cultivated for different parts, and where are well-known species like carrot placed?
He classes species according to their commonest use, noting some are cultivated for roots and others for leaves or seeds, with the alphabetical index showing each species' place. A certain number of species whose origin is well known, such as the carrot and sorrel, are mentioned only in the summary at the beginning of the last part.
Chapter 94
Section 954 cards
What did Sir J. Banks conclude about the plant Hawkins and Drake imported?
Sir J. Banks states that the plant imported by Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake was clearly the sweet potato, not the potato. As a result, the questions Humboldt discussed concerning the localities visited by these travellers do not apply to the potato.
Chapter 95
What does Bretschneider's Chinese evidence indicate about the sweet potato's origin?
Bretschneider wrote from Pekin that Chinese authors hold the cultivated sweet potato to be of foreign origin. The Nung-chang-tsuan-shu, whose author died in 1633, asserts this, distinguishing a wild Chinese chu from the cultivated kan-chu. The Min-shu, published in the sixteenth century, places introduction between 1573 and 1620, giving further proof of American origin.
Chapter 95
How does the sweet potato's swollen organ differ from that of other Convolvulaceae?
Several Convolvulaceae have large roots or root-stocks, but in those the swollen part is the base of the stem with part of the root, and this root-stock is always purgative, as in Jalap and Turbith. In the sweet potato, by contrast, it is the lateral roots, a different organ, which swell.
Chapter 95
Why was Solanum verrucosum abandoned after its 1855 introduction near Gex?
De Candolle mentions introducing Solanum verrucosum near Gex, close to Geneva, in 1855. It was since abandoned because its tubers are too small and because it does not, as had been hoped, withstand the potato-fungus.
Chapter 95
Section 963 cards
What does de Candolle say about the common names of manioc from Thonning?
De Candolle notes that Thonning, in Schumacher's Besk. Guin., was accustomed to quote common names but gives none for the manioc. The observation appears among the chapter's bibliographic footnotes, where de Candolle tracks which sources supply vernacular names and which do not, supporting his broader method of weighing linguistic and documentary evidence for the origin and early cultivation of plants.
Chapter 96
Why does de Candolle say he did not list more common names and etymologies?
De Candolle states that all the common names cited are found in his dictionary compiled by Moritzi from floras. He says he could have quoted a larger number and mentioned probable etymologies given by philologists such as Hehn in Kulturpflanzen aus Asien, but this is not necessary to show the plant's origin and early cultivation in several different countries.
Chapter 96
What does de Candolle say about the cabbage being indigenous in England?
De Candolle reports that Watson, careful on such points, doubts whether the cabbage is indigenous in England, citing his Compendium of the Cybele, while most authors of British floras admit it to be so. De Candolle also notes that Brassica balearica and Br. cretica are perennial, almost woody, not biennial, and that botanists agree in separating them from Br. oleracea.
Chapter 96
Section 973 cards
What did Asa Gray and Trumbull conclude about purslane's origin in America?
The author notes that in the United States purslane was once believed to be of foreign origin, citing Asa Gray's floras. However, in a recent publication Gray and Trumbull give reasons for believing it is indigenous in America as in the Old World, noting Columbus saw it at San Salvador and Cuba, Oviedo in St. Domingo, and De Lery in Brazil.
Chapter 97
What early observers does the author cite as having noticed purslane in the Americas?
The author's 1884 note states that Columbus had noticed purslane at San Salvador and at Cuba, Oviedo mentions it in St. Domingo, and De Lery in Brazil. The author concedes this is not the testimony of botanists, but adds that Nuttall and others found it wild in the upper Missouri valley, Colorado, and Texas, where it might have been introduced.
Chapter 97
How does the author characterize the evidence for purslane being wild in the American West?
The author notes that Nuttall and others found purslane wild in the upper valley of the Missouri, in Colorado, and Texas. He immediately qualifies this, however, by observing that, from the date, it might have been introduced there. The author thus presents the American wild occurrences as suggestive but not conclusive evidence of indigenous status.
Chapter 97
Section 984 cards
What naming principle does de Candolle apply to Panicum maximum and its synonyms?
The chapter states that Panicum maximum Jacq. (1786) is the oldest name among several synonyms, including P. polygamum Swartz (1788) and P. jumentorum Persoon (1805), and that 'according to the rule, the oldest name should be adopted.' Some gardens and modern authors used P. altissimum for the same plant.
Chapter 98
What does de Candolle say about Fick's Indo-European dictionary and a plant name the English call Sanskrit?
In a footnote the author remarks that, as usual, Fick's dictionary of Indo-European languages does not mention the name of this plant, 'which the English say is Sanskrit.' He thus questions the claim that the name is Sanskrit by noting its absence from that comparative dictionary.
Chapter 98
How does de Candolle explain why plants spread to islands with more difficulty?
In a note, the author says that plants which spread from one country to another introduce themselves into islands with more difficulty, and he refers readers to remarks he formerly published in his Géographie Botanique Raisonnée (p. 706). The point is offered as a general observation, not tied to one species.
Chapter 98
Which ancient authors does the chapter cite for cultivated plants such as Theophrastus, Columella, and Pliny?
The notes cite Theophrastus's Historia Plantarum (e.g. viii. c. 2, 10; viii. c. 8), Columella's De re rustica (ii. c. 10), Pliny's Natural History (xviii. c. 13, 15, 16, 32), Cato's De re rustica, and Strabo, showing de Candolle's reliance on classical sources for cultivation history.
Chapter 98
Section 994 cards
What does de Candolle conclude about the Swiss lake-dwellers' date from Lagozza peat-moss finds?
The author argues that discoveries in the peat-mosses of Lagozza and elsewhere in Italy show Hehn was mistaken in supposing the Swiss lake-dwellers were near the time of Caesar. The men of the same civilization south of the Alps were evidently more ancient than the Roman republic, perhaps than the Ligurians.
Chapter 99
How does de Candolle explain flax's absence immediately north of the Alps?
Flax is found toward the north-west of Europe but not immediately north of the Alps. The author suggests, tentatively, that the climate of Switzerland may formerly have been more equable than now, with more snow to shelter perennial plants.
Chapter 99
When and from where was the fowl introduced into Greece, according to Heer?
According to Heer, the fowl was introduced into Greece from Asia in the sixth century before Christ. De Candolle cites this in a footnote while discussing the antiquity of the lake-dwellings and their civilization relative to the Roman republic.
Chapter 99
What does de Candolle say about the name Lina and its derivation?
Fick derives the name Lina from the Latin linum, but de Candolle notes this name is of earlier date, being common to several European Aryan languages. The point is that the Latin derivation cannot explain a name already shared across those languages.
Chapter 99
Section 1004 cards
What does de Candolle say about the epithet suffruticosa applied to tobaccos?
De Candolle calls the epithet suffruticosa an exaggeration, since tobaccos are always annual. He adds that he has already stated that N. suffruticosa of different authors is in fact N. Tabacum, citing Lehmann's Historia Nicotinarum.
Chapter 100
Where does de Candolle report N. alata growing in the Argentine Republic?
Grisebach, in Symbolæ Fl. Argent., p. 243, mentions N. alata in the province of Entrerios of the Argentine republic. Sendtner, in Flora Brasil, vol. x, p. 167, describes the same plant as Sello, apparently from specimens collected by that traveller.
Chapter 100
How does de Candolle correct the claim that the hop is indigenous to the eastern United States?
In an author's note dated 1884, de Candolle says an erroneous transcription of Asa Gray's statement about hemp was wrongly attributed to the hop in the Prodromus and repeated in the French edition of this work, and should be corrected. He states Humulus Lupulus is indigenous in the east of the United States and also in the island of Yeso, according to a letter from Maximowicz.
Chapter 100
What does de Candolle say about Ritter's monograph on the geographical distribution of the sugar-cane?
De Candolle calls Ritter's monograph full of learning and judgment, worthy of the best epoch of German science, when English or French authors were quoted by all authors with as much care as Germans. He notes it exists in a 4to of 108 pages and an 8vo of 64 pages without date.
Chapter 100
Section 1014 cards
What does de Candolle note about the word 'fruit' in footnote 816?
The author notes that 'fruit' is used in the vulgar sense for any fleshy part enlarging after flowering. In the strictly botanical sense, he states, the Anonaceae, strawberries, cashews, pine-apples, and breadfruit are not fruits.
Chapter 101
Why did Linnaeus change the genus name Anona to Annona?
Footnote 848 explains that the generic name was Anona, which Linnaeus changed to Annona (meaning 'provision') because he did not wish to retain a savage name and, according to de Candolle, did not mind a pun.
Chapter 101
What does de Candolle say about Forskal's A. glabra in Egypt?
Footnote 840 states A. glabra was sometimes cultivated in Egyptian gardens when Forskal visited and was called keschta, meaning coagulated milk. De Candolle argues its rarity and the silence of ancient authors show it was a modern introduction, and he doubts Forskal's description differs from A. squamosa.
Chapter 101
What does de Candolle find extraordinary about Anona palustris?
Footnote 851 notes that Oliver admitted the identity of the American Anona palustris with that of Senegambia. De Candolle says this appears to him very extraordinary, although it is a species growing in marshes, that is, perhaps having a very wide area.
Chapter 101
Section 1023 cards
What did Regel propose about the origin of Vitis vinifera?
Regel suggested that Vitis vinifera is a hybrid between two wild species, V. vulpina and V. labrusca, modified by cultivation. De Candolle notes that Regel offers no proof and that his characters for the two wild species are unsatisfactory. De Candolle adds that comparing seeds of wild and cultivated vines of Europe and Asia would be desirable, citing Englemann's observations on American vines.
Chapter 102
Why does de Candolle say cherry stones are dispersed near plantations?
He explains that cherries ripen after the season when birds migrate, so birds disperse the stones chiefly in the neighbourhood of the plantations rather than over long distances. This timing limits the range of bird-mediated seed dispersal for the cherry.
Chapter 102
What does de Candolle note about the Theophrastus passage on this plant?
De Candolle cites Theophrastus, Historia, book 4, chapter 4, in the 1644 edition, and notes that the edition of 1613 does not contain the words referring to this particular detail. The observation is a textual one about which edition preserves the relevant passage.
Chapter 102
Section 1034 cards
What does de Candolle note about the name 'insititia'?
De Candolle remarks that _insititia_ means 'foreign,' calling it a curious name since every plant is foreign to all countries but its own. The comment appears in a footnote among his citations on _Prunus_ species, where he gathers botanical authorities and name histories rather than presenting a formal argument about the species.
Chapter 103
How does de Candolle explain the origin of apricot names like 'abricot'?
He states that the Spanish and French names (_albaricoque_, _abricot_) seem to derive from _arbor præcox_ or _præcocium_, the early-ripening tree, while the old French _armegne_ and Italian _armenilli_ come from _malon armeniacon_. He refers readers to his _Géographie Botanique Raisonnée_ for further details on the species' names.
Chapter 103
What did Capus find about the wild apricot, and what hypothesis does it weaken?
Capus found the apricot wild in Turkestan at elevations of four thousand to seven thousand feet. De Candolle says this weakens the hypothesis of a solely Chinese origin for the species. The observation is cited in a footnote, qualifying earlier assumptions that placed the apricot's wild origin exclusively in China.
Chapter 103
What Chinese beliefs about peaches does de Candolle report from Rose's manuscripts?
According to Rose's collection from Chinese manuscripts, the Chinese believe oval peaches, very red on one side, symbolize long life. Peaches appear in ornaments, painting, sculpture, and congratulatory presents. The work _Chin-noug-king_ says the peach _Yu_ prevents death and preserves the body from decay until the world's end.
Chapter 103
Section 1044 cards
Why does de Candolle insist on the spelling Pyrus rather than pirus?
He notes that Linnæus, the founder of the received botanical nomenclature, wrote Pyrus, and that this spelling occurs in Pliny's Historia. Some purist botanists write pirus, so he warns that when consulting a modern work one must check the index under both forms or risk wrongly concluding the pears are absent from it.
Chapter 104
What did Godron observe about wild pear trees in Lorraine's forests?
According to observations by Godron cited in a pamphlet of 1873 on the probable origin of cultivated pears, wild pear trees occur in the forests of Lorraine. De Candolle offers this as an example of the wild form growing in a European region.
Chapter 104
What naming confusion does de Candolle flag regarding Pyrus sinensis?
Thonin had applied the name Pyrus sinensis to the Chinese quince, and Lindley unfortunately gave the same name to a true Pyrus. Lindley's P. sinensis is also the same species as P. ussuriensis of Eastern Asia, and its leaf indentation is badly drawn in the Botanical Register plate but well drawn by Decaisne.
Chapter 104
How does de Candolle illustrate confusion between common and scientific plant names?
He notes that the English word 'gourd' is also used for Cucurbita maxima, presenting this as one example of the confusion in common names and the greater accuracy of scientific terms. Elsewhere he notes that the ancient name for pear was a common name, while the true botanical name is Linnæus's Pyrus.
Chapter 104
Section 1054 cards
What did Richard first name the plant later identified as L. vulgaris?
A. Richard first described it under the name Lagenaria idolatrica in his Tentamen Fl. Abyss. Later, Naudin and Cogniaux recognized its identity with L. vulgaris.
Chapter 105
Which authors listed the gourd in North America and the British West Indies?
Torrey and Gray listed it in Flora of N. America, and Grisebach recorded it in Flora of Brit. W. Ind. Is. The chapter also cites Asa Gray's Botany of the Northern States and Darlington's Flora Cestrica for the same plant.
Chapter 105
What did Piso say about the cultivated plant becoming native?
Piso wrote 'sativa planta et tractu temporis quasi nativa facta' — a cultivated plant that in the course of time becomes, as it were, native. The chapter cites this from Piso's 1658 edition, page 233.
Chapter 105
How large can the fruit of this gourd grow, according to the Bon Jardinier?
According to the Bon Jardinier of 1850, page 180, the fruit can reach as much as 200 lbs. The chapter cites this figure in a footnote on the gourd's size.
Chapter 105
Section 1063 cards
What does de Candolle suggest about the origin of the French name Cassis?
The author notes that Littré considered the name late and of unknown origin, and that de Candolle found no similar form among over forty common names for the species. He records Buchoz calling it Cassetier des Poitevins, notes the old French name was Poivrier or groseillier noir, and asks whether liqueurs made at Cassis in Provence could explain the name.
Chapter 106
What did Count Solms Laubach observe about fig seeds and fertilization?
In his 1882 discussion of the fig tree's origin and domestication, Solms Laubach reported his own observations of facts already indicated by other authors. He did not find embryos in the seed, which he attributed to the absence of the Blastophaga insect that normally lives in the wild fig and aids fertilization between flowers inside the fruit. It is asserted, however, that fertilization occasionally occurs without the insect.
Chapter 106
How does de Candolle treat the name Capsicum and its many vernacular forms?
The chapter cites Piddington's Index at the word Capsicum and notes that Nemnich's Lexicon gives twelve French and eight German names. These references appear among the botanical and vernacular-name sources de Candolle assembles, showing his method of tracing cultivated plants through multilingual common names as well as botanical literature.
Chapter 106
Section 1074 cards
What does de Candolle say about Gasparini's divisions of Ficus carica?
The author states that no importance should be attached to Gasparini's exaggerated divisions of Ficus carica. Botanists who have studied the fig tree since his time retain a single species and name several varieties of the wild fig, while the cultivated forms are numberless.
Chapter 107
What does de Candolle note about the date-palm in the Cape Verde and Canary Islands?
According to Schmidt, the date-palm is rare in the Cape Verde Islands and is certainly not wild there. Webb and Berthelot, on the contrary, assert that in some of the Canaries it is apparently indigenous. The author thus presents conflicting authorities rather than settling the question.
Chapter 107
What does de Candolle suggest about the word 'Indes' in Acosta's account?
The author argues 'Indes' is probably a misprint for 'Andes,' since the word 'Indes' has no sense there. He notes the work says pine-apples do not grow in Peru but are brought from the Andes, and that cacao comes from the Andes, suggesting hot regions; the word Andes was later transferred to the mountain chain.
Chapter 107
What does de Candolle say about Prescott's Conquest of Peru as a source?
The author notes Prescott consulted valuable records, including a manuscript of Montesinos of 1527, but does not quote his authorities for each fact and contents himself with vague and general indications, which the author calls very insufficient.
Chapter 107
Section 1084 cards
What does de Candolle's text suggest about the early cultivation of the broad bean (Faba)?
The chapter's notes cite Ledebour's Flora Rossica and the Prodromus article Faba, which indicates the south of the Caspian, probably on Lerche's authority. It also cites archaeological finds from Swiss lake dwellings (Heer, Perrin) and ancient Egyptian sources (Delile, Unger, Wilkinson), pointing to cultivation across Europe, Egypt, and western Asia in antiquity.
Chapter 108
How does the chapter use Herodotus, the Iliad, and the Bible as evidence for cultivated plants?
It cites Herodotus (Larcher's translation) and Iliad book 13, verse 589, alongside biblical passages such as 2 Samuel xvii. 28 and Ezekiel iv. 9. These classical and scriptural references are treated as historical testimony about which plants were grown and eaten, alongside botanical and archaeological sources like Heer and Schweinfurth.
Chapter 108
Which regions and authors does the chapter cite for the carob tree?
It cites Heldreich on Greek useful plants, Gussone's Sicilian flora, Bianca's Italian article on the carob, and Munby's Algerian catalogue, plus Hœfer and Bonné's work calling it the 'tree of the Lotophages.' Ancient testimony comes from Pliny, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Ebn Baithar, and a French-Berber dictionary gives the name.
Chapter 108
What sources does the chapter use for the soybean and other Asian legumes?
It cites Haberlandt's Die Sojabohne, Bunge's Chinese enumeration, Maximowicz on the Amur flora, Miquel and Franchet and Savatier on Japan, and Roxburgh and Piddington for India. Rumphius's Herbarium Amboinense and Loureiro's Flora Cochinchinensis supply Southeast Asian and Cochin-Chinese records, with Junghuhn covering Java.
Chapter 108
Section 1093 cards
What does Albertus Magnus's description of faseoli note about their appearance?
Albertus Magnus describes faseoli as a legume grain slightly smaller than the faba and columnar in shape like it, with a plant somewhat smaller than the faba's. He adds that faseoli come in many colors, but each grain has a black spot at the cotyledon. The passage is quoted by Jessen from the critical edition of De Vegetabilibus.
Chapter 109
Which authors does de Candolle credit with discussing the early history of cereal species?
De Candolle names four authors who treated these questions with learning and judgment: Link, in the Berlin Academy proceedings and Die Urwelt; Reynier, in Économie des Celtes et des Germains (1818); Dureau de la Malle, in Annales des Sciences Naturelles (1826); and Loiseleur Deslongchamps, in Considérations sur les Céréales (1812).
Chapter 109
What error does de Candolle attribute to Linnaeus the younger regarding Voandzeia?
De Candolle says Linnaeus the younger seems to have confused this plant with Arachis in his Decad. ii. pl. 19, and perhaps because of that error gives Voandzeia as cultivated in Surinam at his time. Modern writers on America either have not seen it or have omitted to mention it.
Chapter 109
Section 1114 cards
What evidence does Birch cite against rice cultivation in ancient Egypt?
Birch, in a note to Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (1878), states there is no proof of rice cultivation in ancient Egypt, since no grains of rice have been found. Unger mentions none either. This absence of archaeological grain evidence is used to argue against Egyptian rice cultivation.
Chapter 111
What did Ruellius and Fuchsius say about the origin of maize?
Ruellius wrote that maize was called Turcicum frumentum (Turkish grain) because in his time it came from Greece or Asia. Fuchsius repeated this phrase in 1543. The author presents this as an early European name and origin claim, showing the confusion about maize's introduction.
Chapter 111
What did de Candolle conclude about rice being wild in tropical Australia?
Von Mueller wrote to de Candolle that rice is certainly wild in tropical Australia. In his 1884 author's note, de Candolle cautions that it may have been accidentally sown and become naturalized. So the author argues the wild status there is uncertain, not proven native.
Chapter 111
What did Rein argue about the plant Siebold identified as maize on an ancient weapon?
Rein, quoted by Wittmack in Ueber Antiken Mais, argued that the plant engraved on an ancient weapon, which Siebold had taken for maize, is actually a sorghum. This corrects an earlier identification and undercuts claims of very ancient maize in the Old World.
Chapter 111
Section 1122 cards
According to the note from the Notices Statistiques, how did coffee cultivation become established at Cayenne?
The Notices Statistiques sur les Colonies Françaises states that around 1716 or 1721 fresh coffee seeds were brought secretly from Surinam, despite Dutch precautions, and the cultivation of this colonial product then became naturalized at Cayenne. De Candolle cites this as a statistical notice rather than his own finding.
Chapter 112
What does de Candolle report about de Clieu's identity and career from official sources?
From information supplied at the ministère de la guerre, de Candolle learned that de Clieu was a gentleman connected to the Comte de Maurepas, born in Normandy, who entered the navy in 1702 and retired in 1760 after a distinguished career, dying in 1775. Official reports mention that he introduced the coffee plant into the French colonies.
Chapter 112
Section 1134 cards
What does de Candolle say about the cultivation of Elæis melanocarpa?
The fruit of Elæis melanocarpa also contains oil, but de Candolle states it does not appear that the species is cultivated, noting that the number of oleaginous plants is considerable in all countries.
Chapter 113
Which genus does de Candolle say the 'Maldive' cocoa-nut belongs to?
De Candolle notes that the cocoa-nut called Maldive belongs to the genus Lodoicea, not to Cocos. He adds that Coco mamillaris, Blanco, of the Philippines is a variety of the cultivated Cocos nucifera.
Chapter 113
What did Bretschneider report to de Candolle about a species in the Ryd?
Dr. Bretschneider wrote from Pekin on December 22, 1882, that the species is mentioned in the Ryd, a work of 1100 B.C. De Candolle says he does not know whether the original habitat should be supposed to be China or western Asia.
Chapter 113
What correction does de Candolle note about quinoa after his list was printed?
De Candolle notes that since the list was printed he was informed that quinoa is wild in Chili, and that some of the figures need modification in consequence of this error.
Chapter 113
Section 1143 cards
What plant does the index identify as 'white gourd' and at what page?
The index entry 'white gourd' refers to page 268. This is the only information the chapter provides about the white gourd; it is an index pointer rather than a description. The chapter is an index of plant names, each followed by a page number locating the fuller discussion elsewhere in the volume.
Chapter 114
Which scientific name does the index give for the olive, and on what page?
The index lists 'Olea europea, 279' and, separately, 'Olive, 279.' Both the common name and the botanical name point to the same page, showing how the index cross-references vernacular and Latin names. The olive's entry sits among the O listings, between ochro and onion.
Chapter 114
How does the index distinguish the entries for the pea?
The index gives 'Pea, 327,' then subdivides it into 'field, 327' and 'garden, 328,' with the scientific names Pisum arvense and Pisum sativum respectively. A separate 'pea nut, 411' appears, which is not a pea at all but a distinct entry. The layout shows the index grouping related varieties under a main heading.
Chapter 114
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Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #45917 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.
Version: Public domain edition. Retrieved 2026-10-29. Cards reviewed 2026-10-29.
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