Origin of Cultivated Plants. Alphonse de Candolle

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СКАЧАТЬ names. In support of his hypothesis I may add that the Berber name, tiskert, is quite different, and that consequently the Iberians seem to have received the plant and its name rather from the Aryans than from their probable ancestors of Northern Africa. The Lettons call it kiplohks, the Esthonians krunslauk, whence probably the German Knoblauch. The ancient Greek name appears to have been scorodon, in modern Greek scordon. The names given by the Slavs of Illyria are bili and cesan. The Bretons say quinen,211 the Welsh craf, cenhinnen, or garlleg, whence the English garlic. The Latin allium has passed into the languages of Latin origin.212 This great diversity of names intimates a long acquaintance with the plant, and even an ancient cultivation in Western Asia and in Europe. On the other hand, if the species has existed only in the land of the Kirghis, where it is now found, the Aryans might have cultivated it and carried it into India and Europe; but this does not explain the existence of so many Keltic, Slav, Greek, and Latin names which differ from the Sanskrit. To explain this diversity, we must suppose that its original abode extended farther to the west than that known at the present day, an extension anterior to the migrations of the Aryans.

      If the genus Allium were once made, as a whole, the object of such a serious study as that of Gay on some of its species,213 perhaps it might be found that certain wild European forms, included by authors under A. arenarium, L., A. arenarium, Sm., or A. scorodoprasum, L., are only varieties of A. sativum. In that case everything would agree to show that the earliest peoples of Europe and Western Asia cultivated such form of the species just as they found it from Tartary to Spain, giving it names more or less different.

      Onion —Allium Cepa, Linnæus.

      I will state first what was known in 1855;214 I will then add the recent botanical observations which confirm the inferences from philological data.

      The onion is one of the earliest of cultivated species. Its original country is, according to Kunth, unknown.215 Let us see if it is possible to discover it. The modern Greeks call Allium Cepa, which they cultivate in abundance, krommunda.216 This is a good reason for believing that the krommuon of Theophrastus217 is the same species, as sixteenth-century writers already supposed.218 Pliny219 translated the word by cœpa. The ancient Greeks and Romans knew several varieties, which they distinguished by the names of countries: Cyprium, Cretense, Samothraciae, etc. One variety cultivated in Egypt220 was held to be so excellent that it received divine honours, to the great amusement of the Romans.221 Modern Egyptians designate A. Cepa by the name of basal222 or bussul,223 whence it is probable that the bezalim of the Hebrews is the same species, as commentators have said.224 There are several distinct names —palandu, latarka, sakandaka,225 and a number of modern Indian names. The species is commonly cultivated in India, Cochin-China, China,226 and even in Japan.227 It was largely consumed by the ancient Egyptians. The drawings on their monuments often represent this species.228 Thus its cultivation in Southern Asia and the eastern region of the Mediterranean dates from a very early epoch. Moreover, the Chinese, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin names have no apparent connection. From this last fact we may deduce the hypothesis that its cultivation was begun after the separation of the Indo-European nations, the species being found ready to hand in different countries at once. This, however, is not the present state of things, for we hardly find even vague indications of the wild state of A. Cepa. I have not discovered it in European or Caucasian floras; but Hasselquist229 says, “It grows in the plains near the sea in the environs of Jericho.” Dr. Wallich mentioned in his list of Indian plants, No. 5072, specimens which he saw in districts of Bengal, without mentioning whether they were cultivated. This indication, however insufficient, together with the antiquity of the Sanskrit and Hebrew names, and the communication which is known to have existed between the peoples of India and of Egypt, lead me to suppose that this plant occupied a vast area in Western Asia, extending perhaps from Palestine to India. Allied species, sometimes mistaken for A. Cepa, exist in Siberia.230

      The specimens collected by Anglo-Indian botanists, of which Wallich gave the first idea, are now better known. Stokes discovered Allium Cepa wild in Beluchistan. He says, “wild on the Chehil Tun.” Griffith brought it from Afghanistan and Thomson from Lahore, to say nothing of other collectors, who are not explicit as to the wild or cultivated nature of their specimens.231 Boissier possesses a wild specimen found in the mountainous regions of the Khorassan. The umbels are smaller than in the cultivated plant, but there is no other difference. Dr. Regel, jun., found it to the south of Kuldscha, in Western Siberia.232 Thus my former conjectures are completely justified; and it is not unlikely that its habitation extends even as far as Palestine, as Hasselquist said.

      The onion is designated in China by a single sign (pronounced tsung), which may suggest a long existence there as an indigenous plant.233 I very much doubt, however, that the area extends so far to the east.

      Humboldt234 says that the Americans have always been acquainted with onions, in Mexican xonacatl. “Cortes,” he says, “speaking of the comestibles sold at the market of the ancient Tenochtillan, mentions onions, leeks, and garlic.” I cannot believe, however, that these names applied to the species cultivated in Europe. Sloane, in the seventeenth century, had only seen one Allium cultivated in Jamaica (A. Cepa), and that was in a garden with other European vegetables.235 The word xonacatl is not in Hernandez, and Acosta236 says distinctly that the onions and garlics of Peru are of European origin. The species of the genus Allium are rare in America.

      Spring, or Welsh Onion—Allium fistulosum, Linnæus.

      This species was for a long time mentioned in floras and works on horticulture as of unknown origin; but Russian botanists have found it wild in Siberia towards the Altaï mountains, on the Lake Baïkal in the land of the Kirghis.237 The ancients did not know the plant.238 It must have come into Europe through Russia in the Middle Ages, or a little later. Dodoens,239 an author of the sixteenth century, has given a figure of it, hardly recognizable, under the name of Cepa oblonga.

      Shallot—Allium ascalonicum, Linnæus.

      It was believed, according to Pliny,240 that this plant took its name from Ascalon, in Judæa; but Dr. Fournier241 thinks that the Latin author mistook the meaning of the word Askalônion of Theophrastus. However this may be, the word has been retained in modern languages under the form СКАЧАТЬ