Origin of Cultivated Plants. Alphonse de Candolle

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СКАЧАТЬ declare that I do not attach more belief to the wild nature of other plants found scattered on the Andes outside Chili, hitherto considered as indigenous.”

      On the other hand. M. Ed. André133 collected with great care, in two elevated and wild districts of Columbia, and in another near Lima, specimens which he believed he might attribute to S. tuberosum. M. André has been kind enough to lend them to me. I have compared them attentively with the types of Dunal’s species in my herbarium and in that of M. Boissier. None of these Solanaceæ belong, in my opinion, to S. tuberosum, although that of La Union, near the river Cauca, comes nearer than the rest. None – and this is yet more certain – answers to S. immite of Dunal. They are nearer to S. columbianum of the same author than to S. tuberosum or S. immite. The specimen from Mount Quindio presents a singular characteristic – it has pointed ovoid berries.134

      In Mexico the tuberous Solanums attributed to S. tuberosum, or, according to Hemsley,135 to allied forms, do not appear to be identical with the cultivated plant. They belong to S. Fendleri, which Dr. Asa Gray considered at first as a separate species, and afterwards136 as a variety of S. tuberosum or of S. verrucosum.

      We may sum up as follows: —

      1. The potato is wild in Chili, in a form which is still seen in our cultivated plants.

      2. It is very doubtful whether its natural home extends to Peru and New Granada.

      3. Its cultivation was diffused before the discovery of America from Chili to New Granada.

      4. It was introduced, probably in the latter half of the sixteenth century, into that part of the United States now known as Virginia and North Carolina.

      5. It was imported into Europe between 1580 and 1585, first by the Spaniards, and afterwards by the English, at the time of Raleigh’s voyages to Virginia.137

      Batata, or Sweet Potato—Convolvulus batatas, Linnæus; Batatas edulis, Choisy.

      The roots of this plant, swelled into tubers, resemble potatoes, whence it arose that sixteenth-century navigators applied the same name to these two very different species. The sweet potato belongs to the Convolvulus family, the potato to the Solanum family; the fleshy parts of the former are roots, those of the latter subterranean branches.138 The sweet potato is sugary as well as farinaceous. It is cultivated in all countries within or near the tropics, and perhaps more in the new than in the old world.139

      Its origin is, according to a great number of authors, doubtful. Humboldt,140 Meyen,141 and Boissier142 hold to its American, Boyer,143 Choisy,144 etc., to its Asiatic origin. The same diversity is observed in earlier works. The question is the more difficult since the Convolvulaceæ is one of the most widely diffused families, either from a very early epoch or in consequence of modern transportation.

      There are powerful arguments in favour of an American origin. The fifteen known species of the genus Batatas are all found in America; eleven in that continent alone, four both in America and the old world, with possibility or probability of transportation. The cultivation of the common sweet potato is widely diffused in America. It dates from a very early epoch. Marcgraff145 mentions it in Brazil under the name of jetica. Humboldt says that the name camote comes from a Mexican word. The word Batatas (whence comes by a mistaken transfer the word potato) is given as American. Sloane and Hughes146 speak of the sweet potato as of a plant much cultivated, and having several varieties in the West Indies. They do not appear to suspect that it had a foreign origin. Clusius, who was one of the first to mention the sweet potato, says he had eaten some in the south of Spain, where it was supposed to have come from the new world.147 He quotes the names Batatas, camotes, amotes, ajes,148 which were foreign to the languages of the old world. The date of his book is 1601. Humboldt149 says that, according to Gomara, Christopher Columbus, when he appeared for the first time before Queen Isabella, offered her various productions from the new world, sweet potatoes among others. Thus, he adds, the cultivation of this plant was already common in Spain from the beginning of the sixteenth century. Oviedo,150 writing in 1526, had seen the sweet potato freely cultivated by the natives of St. Domingo, and had introduced it himself at Avila, in Spain. Rumphius151 says positively that, according to the general opinion, sweet potatoes were brought by the Spanish Americans to Manilla and the Moluccas, whence the Portuguese diffused it throughout the Malay Archipelago. He quotes the popular names, which are not Malay, and which indicate an introduction by the Castillians. Lastly, it is certain that the sweet potato was unknown to the Greeks, Romans, and Arabs; that it was not cultivated in Egypt even eighty years ago,152 a fact which it would be hard to explain if we supposed its origin to be in the old world.

      On the other hand, there are arguments in favour of an Asiatic origin. The Chinese Encyclopædia of Agriculture speaks of the sweet potato, and mentions different varieties;153 but Bretschneider154 has proved that the species is described for the first time in a book of the second or third century of our era. According to Thunberg,155 the sweet potato was brought to Japan by the Portuguese. Lastly, the plant cultivated at Tahiti, in the neighbouring islands, and in New Zealand, under the names umara, gumarra, and gumalla, described by Forster156 under the name of Convolvulus chrysorhizus, is, according to Sir Joseph Hooker, the sweet potato.157 Seemann158 remarks that these names resemble the Quichuen name of the sweet potato in America, which is, he says, cumar. The cultivation of the sweet potato became general in Hindustan in the eighteenth century.159 Several popular names are attributed to it, and even, according to Piddington,160 a Sanskrit name, ruktalu, which has no analogy with any name known to me, and is not in Wilson’s Sanskrit Dictionary. According to a note given me by Adolphe Pictet, ruktalu seems a Bengalee name composed from the Sanskrit alu (Rukta plus âlu, the name of Arum campanulatum). This name in modern dialects designates the yam and the potato. However, Wallich161 gives several names omitted by Piddington. Roxburgh162 mentions no Sanskrit name. Rheede163 says the plant was cultivated in Malabar, and mentions common Indian names.

      The arguments in favour of an American origin seem to me much stronger. If the sweet potato had been known in Hindustan at the epoch of the Sanskrit language it would have become diffused in the old world, since its propagation is easy and its utility evident. It seems, on the contrary, that this cultivation remained long unknown in the Sunda Isles, Egypt, СКАЧАТЬ