Origin of Cultivated Plants. Alphonse de Candolle

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      This species is cultivated in the damp districts of the tropics, for the swelled lower portion of the stem, which forms an edible rhizome similar to the subterraneous part of the iris. The petioles and the young leaves are also utilized as a vegetable. Since the different forms of the species have been properly classed, and since we have possessed more certain information about the floras of the south of Asia, we cannot doubt that this plant is wild in India, as Roxburgh265 formerly, and Wight266 and others have more recently asserted; likewise in Ceylon,267 Sumatra,268 and several islands of the Malay Archipelago.269

      Chinese books make no mention of it before a work of the year 100 B.C.270 The first European navigators saw it cultivated in Japan and as far as the north of New Zealand,271 in consequence probably of an early introduction, and without the certain co-existence of wild stocks. When portions of the stem or of the tuber are thrown away by the side of streams, they naturalize themselves easily. This was perhaps the case in Japan and the Fiji Islands,272 judging from the localities indicated. The colocasia is cultivated here and there in the West Indies, and elsewhere in tropical America, but much less than in Asia or Africa, and without the least indication of an American origin.

      In the countries where the species is wild there are common names, sometimes very ancient, totally different from each other, which confirms their local origin. Thus the Sanskrit name is kuchoo, which persists in modern Hindu languages – in Bengali, for instance.273 In Ceylon the wild plant is styled gahala, the cultivated plant kandalla.274 The Malay names are kelady,275 tallus, tallas, tales, or taloes,276 from which perhaps comes the well-known name of the Otahitans and New Zealanders —tallo or tarro,277 dalo278 in the Fiji Islands. The Japanese have a totally distinct name, imo,279 which shows an existence of long duration either indigenous or cultivated.

      European botanists first knew the colocasia in Egypt, where it has perhaps not been very long cultivated. The monuments of ancient Egypt furnish no indication of it, but Pliny280 spoke of it as the Arum Ægyptium. Prosper Alpin saw it in the sixteenth century, and speaks of it at length.281 He says that its name in its country is culcas, which Delile282 writes qolkas, and koulkas. It is clear that this Arab name of the Egyptian arum has some analogy with the Sanskrit kuchoo, which is a confirmation of the hypothesis, sufficiently probable, of an introduction from India or Ceylon. De l’Ecluse283 had seen the plant cultivated in Portugal, as introduced from Africa, under the name alcoleaz, evidently of Arab origin. In some parts of the south of Italy, where the plant has become naturalized, it is, according to Parlatore, called aro di Egitto.284

      The name colocasia, given by the Greeks to a plant of which the root was used by the Egyptians, may evidently come from colcas, but it has been transferred to a plant differing from the true colcas. Indeed, Dioscorides applies it to the Egyptian bean, or nelumbo,285 which has a large root, or rather rhizome, rather stringy and not good to eat. The two plants are very different, especially in the flower. The one belongs to the Araceæ, the other to the Nymphæaceæ; the one belongs to the class of Monocotyledons, the other to that of the Dicotyledons. The nelumbo of Indian origin has ceased to grow in Egypt, while the colocasia of modern botanists has persisted there. If there is any confusion, as seems probable in the Greek authors, it must be explained by the fact that the colcas rarely flowers, at least in Egypt. From the point of view of botanical nomenclature, it matters little that mistakes were formerly made about the plants to which the name colocasia should be applied. Fortunately, modern scientific names are not based upon the doubtful definitions of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and it is sufficient to say now, if the etymology is insisted upon, that colocasia comes from colcas in consequence of an error.

      Apé, or Large-rooted Alocasia—Alocasia macrorrhiza, Schott; Arum macrorrhizum, Linnæus.

      This araceous plant, which Schott places now in the genus Colocasia, now in the Alocasia, and whose names are far more complicated than might be supposed from those indicated above,286 is less frequently cultivated than the common colocasia, but in the same manner and nearly in the same countries. Its rhizomes attain the length of a man’s arm. They have a distinctly bitter taste, which it is indispensable to remove by cooking.

      The aborigines of Otahiti call it apé, and those of the Friendly Isles kappe.287 In Ceylon, the common name is habara, according to Thwaites.288 It has other names in the Malay Archipelago, which argues an existence prior to that of the more recent peoples of these regions.

      The plant appears to be wild, especially in Otahiti.289 It is also wild in Ceylon, according to Thwaites, who has studied botany for a long time in that island. It is mentioned also in India290 and in Australia,291 but its wild condition is not affirmed – a fact always difficult to establish in the case of a species cultivated on the banks of streams, and which is propagated by bulbs. Moreover, it is sometimes confounded with the Colocasia indica of Kunth, which grows in the same manner, and is found here and there in cultivated ground; and this species grows wild, or is naturalized in the ditches and streams of Southern Asia, although its history is not yet well known.

       Konjak—Amorphophallus Konjak, Koch; Amorphophallus Rivieri, du Rieu, var. Konjak, Engler.292

      The konjak is a tuberous plant of the family Araceæ, extensively cultivated by the Japanese, a culture of which Vidal has given full details in the Bulletin de la Société d’Acclimatation of July, 1877. It is considered by Engler as a variety of Amorphophallus Rivieri, of Cochin-China, of which horticultural periodicals have given several illustrations in the last few years.293 It can be cultivated in the south of Europe, like the dahlia, as a curiosity; but to estimate the value of the bulbs as food, they should be prepared with lime-water, in Japanese fashion, so as to ascertain the amount of fecula which a given area will produce.

      Dr. Vidal gives no proof that the Japanese plant is wild in that country. He supposes it to be so from the meaning of the common name, which is, he says, konniyakou or yamagonniyakou, yama meaning “mountain.” Franchet and Savatier294 have only seen the plant in gardens. The Cochin-China variety, believed to belong to the same species, grows in gardens, and there is no proof of its being wild in the country.

      Yams—Dioscorea sativa, D. batatas, D. japonica and D. alata.

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