Origin of Cultivated Plants. Alphonse de Candolle

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       Arrowroot—Maranta arundinacea, Linnæus. A plant of the family of the Scitamineæ, allied to the genus Canna, of which the underground suckers315 produce the excellent fecula called arrowroot. It is cultivated in the West India Islands and in several tropical countries of continental America. It has also been introduced into the old world – on the coast of Guinea, for instance.316

       Maranta arundinacea is certainly American. According to Sloane,317 it was brought from Dominica to Barbados, and thence to Jamaica, which leads us to suppose that it was not indigenous in the West Indies. Körnicke, the last author who studied the genus Maranta,318 saw several specimens which were gathered in Guadaloupe, in St. Thomas, in Mexico, in Central America, in Guiana, and in Brazil; but he did not concern himself to discover whether they were taken from wild, cultivated, or naturalized plants. Collectors hardly ever indicate this; and for the study of the American continent (excepting the United States) we are unprovided with local floras, and especially with floras made by botanists residing in the country. In published works I find the species mentioned as cultivated319 or growing in plantations,320 or without any explanation. A locality in Brazil, in the thinly peopled province of Matto Grosso, mentioned by Körnicke, supposes an absence of cultivation. Seemann321 mentions that the species is found in sunny spots near Panama.

      A species is also cultivated in the West Indies, Marantaindica, which, Tussac says, was brought from the East Indies. Körnicke believes that M. ramosissima of Wallich found at Sillet, in India, is the same species, and thinks it is a variety of M. arundinacea. Out of thirty-six more or less known species of the genus Maranta, thirty at least are of American origin. It is therefore unlikely that two or three others should be Asiatic. Until Sir Joseph Hooker’s Flora of British India is completed, these questions on the species of the Scitamineæ and their origin will be very obscure.

      Anglo-Indians obtain arrowroot from another plant of the same family, Curcuma angustifolia, Roxburgh, which grows in the forests of the Deccan and in Malabar.322 I do not know whether it is cultivated.

      CHAPTER II.

      PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES

Article I.—Vegetables

      Common Cabbage—Brassica oleracea, Linnæus.

      The cabbage in its wild state, as it is represented in Eng. Bot., t. 637, the Flora Danica, t. 2056, and elsewhere, is found on the rocks by the sea-shore: (1) in the Isle of Laland, in Denmark, the island of Heligoland, the south of England and Ireland, the Channel Isles, and the islands off the coast of Charente Inférieure;323 (2) on the north coast of the Mediterranean, near Nice, Genoa, and Lucca.324 A traveller of the last century, Sibthorp, said that he found it at Mount Athos, but this has not been confirmed by any modern botanist, and the species appears to be foreign in Greece, on the shores of the Caspian, as also in Siberia, where Pallas formerly said he had seen it, and in Persia.325 Not only the numerous travellers who have explored these countries have not found the cabbage, but the winters of the east of Europe and of Siberia appear to be too severe for it. Its distribution into somewhat isolated places, and in two different regions of Europe, suggests the suspicion either that plants apparently indigenous may in several cases be the result of self-sowing from cultivation,326 or that the species was formerly common, and is tending to disappear. Its presence in the western islands of Europe favours the latter hypothesis, but its absence in the islands of the Mediterranean is opposed to it.327

      Let us see whether historical and philological data add anything to the facts of geographical botany.

      In the first place, it is in Europe that the countless varieties of cabbage have been formed,328 principally since the days of the ancient Greeks. Theophrastus distinguished three, Pliny double that number, Tournefort twenty, De Candolle more than thirty. These modifications did not come from the East – another sign of an ancient cultivation in Europe and of a European origin.

      The common names are also numerous in European languages, and rare or modern in those of Asia. Without repeating a number of names I have given elsewhere,329 I shall mention the five or six distinct and ancient roots from which the European names are derived.

      Kap or kab in several Keltic and Slav names. The French name cabus comes from it. Its origin is clearly the same as that of caput, because of the head-shaped form of the cabbage.

       Caul, kohl, in several Latin (caulis, stem or cabbage), German (Chôli in Old German, Kohl in modern German, kaal in Danish), and Keltic languages (kaol and kol in Breton, cal in Irish).330

       Bresic, bresych, brassic, of the Keltic and Latin (brassica) languages, whence, probably, berza and verza of the Spaniards and Portuguese, varza of the Roumanians.331

       Aza of the Basques (Iberians), considered by de Charencey332 as proper to the Euskarian tongue, but which differs little from the preceding.

      Krambai, crambe, of the Greeks and Latins.

      The variety of names in Keltic languages tends to show the existence of the species on the west coast of Europe. If the Aryan Kelts had brought the plant from Asia, they would probably not have invented names taken from three different sources. It is easy to admit, on the contrary, that the Aryan nations, seeing the cabbage wild, and perhaps already used in Europe by the Iberians or the Ligurians, either invented names or adopted those of the earlier inhabitants.

      Philologists have connected the krambai of the Greeks with the Persian name karamb, karam, kalam, the Kurdish kalam, the Armenian gaghamb;333 others with a root of the supposed mother-tongue of the Aryans; but they do not agree in matters of detail. According to Fick,334 karambha, in the primitive Indo-Germanic tongue, signifies “Gemüsepflanze (vegetable), Kohl (cabbage), karambha meaning stalk, like caulis.” He adds that karambha, in Sanskrit, is the name of two vegetables. Anglo-Indian writers do not mention this supposed Sanskrit name, but only a name from a modern Hindu dialect, kopee.335 Pictet, on his side, speaks of the Sanskrit word kalamba, “vegetable stalk, applied to the cabbage.”

      I have considerable difficulty, I must own, in admitting these Eastern etymologies for the Greco-Latin word crambe. The meaning of the Sanskrit word (if it exists) is very doubtful, and as to the Persian word, we ought to know if it is ancient. I doubt it, for if the cabbage had existed in ancient Persia, the Hebrews would have known it.336

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