Chapter IV: Plants Cultivated for Their Fruits.816 (5)

The sapodilla is the most esteemed of the order Sapotaceæ, and one of the best of tropical fruits. “An over-ripe sapodilla,” says Descourtilz, in his _Flore des Antilles_, “is melting, and has the sweet perfumes of honey, jasmin, and lily of the valley.” There is a very good illustration in the _Botanical Magazine_, pls. 3111 and 3112, and in Tussac, _Flore des Antilles_, i. pl. 5. It has been introduced into gardens in Mauritius, the Malay Archipelago, and India, from the time of Rheede and Rumphius, but no one disputes its American origin. Several botanists have seen it wild in the forests of the Isthmus of Panama, of Campeachy,[1423] of Venezuela,[1424] and perhaps of Trinidad.[1425] In Jamaica, in the time of Sloane, it existed only in gardens.[1426] It is very doubtful that it is wild in the other West India Islands, although perhaps the seeds, scattered here and there, may have naturalized it to a certain degree. Tussac says that the young plants are not easy to rear in the plantations.

+Aubergine+—_Solanum melongena_, Linnæus; _Solanum esculentum_, Dunal.

The aubergine has a Sanskrit name, _vartta_, and several names, which Piddington in his _Index_ considers as both Sanskrit and Bengali, such as _bong_, _bartakon_, _mahoti_, _hingoli_. Wallich, in his edition of Roxburgh’s _Indian Flora_, gives _vartta_, _varttakou_, _varttaka bunguna_, whence the Hindustani _bungan_. Hence it cannot be doubted that the species has been known in India from a very remote epoch. Rumphius had seen it in gardens in the Sunda Islands, and Loureiro in those of Cochin-China. Thunberg does not mention it in Japan, though several varieties are now cultivated in that country. The Greeks and Romans did not know the species, and no botanist mentions it in Europe before the beginning of the seventeenth century,[1427] but its cultivation must have spread towards Africa before the Middle Ages. The Arab physician, Ebn Baithar,[1428] who wrote in the thirteenth century, speaks of it, and he quotes Rhasis, who lived in the ninth century. Rauwolf[1429] had seen the plant in the gardens of Aleppo at the end of the sixteenth century. It was called _melanzana_ and _bedengiam_. This Arabic name, which Forskal writes _badinjan_, is the same as the Hindustani _badanjan_, which Piddington gives. A sign of antiquity in Northern Africa is the existence of a name, _tabendjalts_, among the Berbers or Kabyles of the province of Algiers,[1430] which differs considerably from the Arab word. Modern travellers have found the aubergine cultivated in the whole of the Nile Valley and on the coast of Guinea.[1431] It has been transported into America.

The cultivated form of _Solanum melongena_ has not hitherto been found wild, but most botanists are agreed in regarding _Solanum insanum_, Roxburgh, and _S. incanum_, Linnæus, as belonging to the same species. Other synonyms are sometimes added, the result of a study made by Nees von Esenbeck from numerous specimens.[1432] _S. insanum_ appears to have been lately found wild in the Madras presidency and at Tong-dong in Burmah. The publication of the article on the Solanaceæ in the _Flora of British India_, will probably give more precise information on this head.

+Red Pepper+—_Capsicum._ In the best botanical works the genus Capsicum is encumbered with a number of cultivated forms, which have never been found wild, and which differ especially in their duration (which is often variable), or in the form of the fruit, a character which is of little value in plants cultivated for that special organ. I shall speak of the two species most often cultivated, but I cannot refrain from stating my opinion that no capsicum is indigenous to the old world. I believe them to be all of American origin, though I cannot absolutely prove it. These are my reasons.

Fruits so conspicuous, so easily grown in gardens, and so agreeable to the palate of the inhabitants of hot countries, would have been very quickly diffused throughout the old world, if they had existed in the south of Asia, as it has sometimes been supposed. They would have had names in several ancient languages. Yet neither Romans, Greeks, nor even Hebrews were acquainted with them. They are not mentioned in ancient Chinese books.[1433] The islanders of the Pacific did not cultivate them at the time of Cook’s voyages,[1434] in spite of their proximity to the Sunda Isles, where Rumphius mentions their very general use. The Arabian physician, Ebn Baithar, who collected in the thirteenth century all that Eastern nations knew about medicinal plants, says nothing about it. Roxburgh knew no Sanskrit name for the capsicums. Later, Piddington mentions a name for _C. frutescens_, _bran-maricha_,[1435] which he says is Sanskrit; but this name, which may be compared to that of black pepper (_muricha_, _murichung_), is probably not really ancient, for it has left no trace in the Indian languages which are derived from Sanskrit.[1436] The wild nature and ancient existence of the capsicum is always uncertain, owing to its very general cultivation; but it seems to me to be more often doubtful in Asia than in South America. The Indian specimens described by the most trustworthy authors nearly all come from the herbaria of the East India Company, in which we never know whether a plant appeared really wild, if it was found far from dwellings, in forests, etc. For the localities in the Malay Archipelago authors often give rubbish-heaps, hedges, etc. We pass to a more particular examination of the two cultivated species.

+Annual Capsicum+—_Capsicum annuum_, Linnæus.

This species has a number of different names in European languages,[1437] which all indicate a foreign origin and the resemblance of the taste to that of pepper. In French it is often called _poivre de Guinée_ (Guinea pepper), but also _poivre du Brézil_, _d’Inde_ (Indian, Brazilian pepper), etc., denominations to which no importance can be attributed. Its cultivation was introduced into Europe in the sixteenth century. It was one of the peppers that Piso and Marcgraf[1438] saw grown in Brazil under the name _quija_ or _quiya_. They say nothing as to its origin. The species appears to have been early cultivated in the West Indies, where it has several Carib names.[1439]

Botanists who have most thoroughly studied the genus Capsicum[1440] do not appear to have found in herbaria a single specimen which can be considered wild. I have not been more fortunate. The original home is probably Brazil.

_C. grossum_, Willdenow, seems to be a variety of the same species. It is cultivated in India under the name _kafree murich_, and _kafree chilly_, but Roxburgh did not consider it to be of Indian origin.[1441]

+Shrubby Capsicum+—_Capsicum frutescens_, Willdenow.

This species, taller and with a more woody stock than _C. annuum_, is generally cultivated in the warm regions of both hemispheres. The great part of our so-called Cayenne pepper is made from it, but this name is given also to the product of other peppers. Roxburgh, the author who is most attentive to the origin of Indian plants, does not consider it to be wild in India. Blume says it is naturalized in the Malay Archipelago in hedges.[1442] In America, on the contrary, where its culture is ancient, it has been several times found wild in forests, apparently indigenous. De Martius brought it from the banks of the Amazon, Pœppig from the province of Maynas in Peru, and Blanchet from the province of Bahia.[1443] So that its area extends from Bahia to Eastern Peru, which explains its diffusion over South America generally.

+Tomato+—_Lycopersicum esculentum_, Miller.

The tomato, or love apple, belongs to a genus of the Solaneæ, of which all the species are American.[1444] It has no name in the ancient languages of Asia, nor even in modern Indian languages.[1445] It was not cultivated in Japan in the time of Thunberg, that is to say a century ago, and the silence of ancient writers on China on this head shows that it is of recent introduction there. Rumphius[1446] had seen it in gardens in the Malay Archipelago. The Malays called it _tomatte_, but this is an American name, for C. Bauhin calls the species _tumatle Americanorum_. Nothing leads us to suppose it was known in Europe before the discovery of America.

The first names given to it by botanists in the sixteenth century indicate that they received the plant from Peru.[1447] It was cultivated on the continent of America before it was grown in the West India Islands, for Sloane does not mention it in Jamaica, and Hughes[1448] says it was brought to Barbados from Portugal hardly more than a century ago. Humboldt considered that the cultivation of the tomato was of ancient date in Mexico.[1449] I notice, however, that the earliest work on the plants of this country (Hernandez, _Historia_) makes no mention of it. Neither do the early writers on Brazil, Piso and Marcgraf, speak of it, although the species is now cultivated throughout tropical America. Thus by the process of exhaustion we return to the idea of a Peruvian origin, at least for its cultivation.

De Martius[1450] found the plant wild in the neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro and Para, but it had perhaps escaped from gardens. I do not know of any botanist who has found it really wild in the state in which it is familiar to us, with the fruit more or less large, lumpy, and with swelled sides; but this is not the case with the variety with small spherical fruit, called _L. cerasiforme_ in some botanical works, and considered in others (and rightly so, I think[1451]) as belonging to the same species. This variety is wild on the sea-shore of Peru,[1452] at Tarapoto, in Eastern Peru,[1453] and on the frontiers of Mexico and of the United States towards California.[1454] It is sometimes naturalized in clearings near gardens.[1455] It is probably in this manner that its area has extended north and south from Peru.

+Avocado+, or +Alligator Pear+—_Persea gratissima_, Gærtner.

The avocado pear is one of the most highly prized of tropical fruits. It belongs to the order Laurineæ. It is like a pear containing one large stone, as is well shown in Tussac’s illustrations, _Flore des Antilles_, iii. pl. 3, and in the _Botanical Magazine_, pl. 4580. The common names are absurd. The origin of that of _alligator_ is unknown; _avocado_ is a corruption of the Mexican _ahuaca_, or _aguacate_. The botanical name _Persea_ has nothing to do with the _persea_ of the Greeks, which was a _Cordia_. Clusius,[1456] writing in 1601, says that the avocado pear is an American fruit tree introduced into a garden in Spain; but as it is widely spread in the colonies of the old world, and has here and there become almost wild,[1457] it is possible to make mistakes as to its origin. This tree did not exist in the gardens of British India at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It had been introduced into the Sunda Isles[1458] in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in 1750 into Mauritius and Bourbon.[1459]

In America its actual area in a wild state is of uncommon extent. The species has been found in forests, on the banks of rivers, and on the sea-shore from Mexico and the West Indies as far as the Amazon.[1460] It has not always occupied this vast region. P. Browne says distinctly that the avocado pear was introduced from the Continent into Jamaica, and Jacquin held the same opinion as regards the West India Islands generally.[1461] Piso and Marcgraf do not mention it for Brazil, and Martius gives no Brazilian name.

At the time of the discovery of America, the species was certainly wild and cultivated in Mexico, according to Hernandez. Acosta[1462] says it was cultivated in Peru under the name of _palto_, which was that of a people of the eastern part of Peru, among whom it was abundant.[1463] I find no proof that it was wild upon the Peruvian littoral.

+Papaw+—_Carica Papaya_, Linnæus; _Papaya vulgaris_, de Candolle.

The papaw is a large herbaceous plant rather than a tree. It has a sort of juicy trunk terminated by a tuft of leaves, and the fruit, which is like a melon, hangs down under the leaves.[1464] It is now grown in all tropical countries, even as far as thirty to thirty-two degrees of latitude. It is easily naturalized outside plantations. This is one reason why it has been said, and people still say that it is a native of Asia or of Africa, whereas Robert Brown and I proved in 1848 and 1855 its American origin.[1465] I repeat the arguments against its supposed origin in the eastern hemisphere.

The species has no Sanskrit name. In modern Indian languages it bears names derived from the American word _papaya_, itself a corruption of the Carib _ababai_.[1466] Rumphius[1467] says that the inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago considered it as an exotic plant introduced by the Portuguese, and gave it names expressing its likeness to other species or its foreign extraction. Sloane,[1468] in the beginning of the eighteenth century, quotes several of his contemporaries, who mention that it was taken from the West Indies into Asia and Africa. Forster had not seen it in the plantations of the Pacific Isles at the time of Cook’s voyages. Loureiro,[1469] in the middle of the eighteenth century, had seen it in cultivation in China, Cochin-China, and Zanzibar. So useful and so striking a plant would have been spread throughout the old world for thousands of years if it had existed there. Everything leads to the belief that it was introduced on the coasts of Africa and Asia after the discovery of America.

All the species of the family are American. This one seems to have been cultivated from Brazil to the West Indies, and in Mexico before the arrival of the Europeans, since the earliest writers on the productions of the new world mention it.[1470]

Marcgraf had often seen the male plant (always commoner than the female) in the forests of Brazil, while the female plants were in gardens. Clusius, who was the first to give an illustration of the plant, says[1471] that his drawing was made in 1607, in the bay of Todos Santos (province of Bahia). I know of no modern author who has confirmed the habitation in Brazil. Martius does not mention the species in his dictionary of the names of fruits in the language of the Tupis.[1472] It is not given as wild in Guiana and Columbia. P. Browne[1473] asserts, on the other hand, that it is wild in Jamaica, and before his time Ximenes and Hernandez said the same for St. Domingo and Mexico. Oviedo[1474] seems to have seen the papaw in Central America, and he gives the common name _olocoton_ for Nicaragua. Yet Correa de Mello and Spruce, in their important article on the _Papayaceæ_, after having botanized extensively in the Amazon region, in Peru and elsewhere, consider the papaw as a native of the West Indies, and do not think it is anywhere wild upon the Continent. I have seen[1475] specimens from the mouth of the river Manatee in Florida, from Puebla in Mexico, and from Columbia, but the labels had no remark as to their wild character. The indications, it will be noticed, are numerous for the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and for the West Indies. The habitation in Brazil which lies apart is very doubtful.

+Fig+—_Ficus carica_, Linnæus.

The history of the fig presents a close analogy with that of the olive in point of origin and geographical limits. Its area as a wild species may have been extended by the dispersal of the seeds as cultivation spread. This seems probable, as the seeds pass intact through the digestive organs of men and animals. However, countries may be cited where the fig has been cultivated for a century at least, and where no such naturalization has taken place. I am not speaking of Europe north of the Alps, where the tree demands particular care and the fruit ripens with difficulty, even the first crop, but of India for instance, the Southern States of America, Mauritius, and Chili, where, to judge from the silence of compilers of floras, the instances of quasi-wildness are rare. In our own day the fig tree grows wild, or nearly wild, over a vast region of which Syria is about the centre; that is to say, from the east of Persia, or even from Afghanistan, across the whole of the Mediterranean region as far as the Canaries.[1476] From north to south this zone varies in width from the 25th to the 40th or 42nd parallel, according to local circumstances. As a rule, the fig stops like the olive at the foot of the Caucasus and the mountains of Europe which limit the Mediterranean basin, but it grows nearly wild on the south-west coast of France, where the winter is very mild.[1477]

We turn to historical and philological records to see whether the area was more limited in antiquity. The ancient Egyptians called the fig _teb_,[1478] and the earliest Hebrew books speak of the fig, whether wild or cultivated, under the name _teenah_,[1479] which leaves its trace in the Arabic _tin_.[1480] The Persian name is quite different, _unjir_; but I do not know if it dates from the Zend. Piddington’s _Index_ has a Sanskrit name, _udumvara_, which Roxburgh, who is very careful in such matters, does not give, and which has left no trace in modern Indian languages, to judge from four names quoted by authors. The antiquity of its existence east of Persia appears to me doubtful, until the Sanskrit name is verified. The Chinese received the fig tree from Persia, but only in the eighth century of our era.[1481] Herodotus[1482] says the Persians did not lack figs, and Reynier, who has made careful researches into the customs of this ancient people, does not mention the fig tree. This only proves that the species was not utilized and cultivated, but it perhaps existed in a wild state.

The Greeks called the wild fig _erineos_, and the Latins _caprificus_. Homer mentions a fig tree in the _Iliad_ which grew near Troy.[1483] Hehn asserts[1484] that the cultivated fig cannot have been developed from the wild fig, but all botanists hold a contrary opinion;[1485] and, without speaking of floral details on which they rely, I may say that Gussone obtained from the same seeds plants of the form _caprificus_, and other varieties.[1486] The remark made by several scholars as to the absence of all mention of the cultivated fig _sukai_ in the _Iliad_, does not therefore prove the absence of the fig tree in Greece at the time of the Trojan war. Homer mentions the sweet fig in the _Odyssey_, and that but vaguely. Hesiod, says Hehn, does not mention it, and Archilochus (700 B.C.) is the first to mention distinctly its cultivation by the Greeks of Paros. According to this, the species grew wild in Greece, at least in the Archipelago, before the introduction of cultivated varieties of Asiatic origin. Theophrastus and Dioscorides mention wild and cultivated figs.[1487]

Romulus and Remus, according to tradition, were nursed at the foot of a fig tree called _ruminalis_, from _rumen_, breast or udder.[1488] The Latin name, _ficus_, which Hehn derives, by an effort of erudition, from the Greek _sukai_,[1489] also argues an ancient existence in Italy, and Pliny’s opinion is positive on this head. The good cultivated varieties were of later introduction. They came from Greece, Syria, and Asia Minor. In the time of Tiberius, as now, the best figs came from the East.

We learnt at school how Cato exhibited to the assembled senators Carthaginian figs, still fresh, as a proof of the proximity of the hated country. The Phœnicians must have transported good varieties to the coast of Africa and their other colonies on the Mediterranean, even as far as the Canaries, where, however, the wild fig may have already existed.

For the Canaries we have a proof in the Guanchos words, _arahormaze_ and _achormaze_, green figs, _taharemenen_ and _tehahunemen_, dried figs. Webb and Berthelot,[1490] who quote these names, and who admit the common origin of the Guanchos and Berbers, would have noted with pleasure the existence among the Touaregs, a Berber people, of the word _tahart_, fig tree,[1491] and in the French-Berber dictionary, published since their time, the names _tabeksist_, green fig, and _tagrourt_, fig tree. These old names, of more ancient and local origin than Arabic, bear witness to a very ancient habitation in the north of Africa as far as the Canaries.

The result of our inquiry shows, then, that the prehistoric area of the fig tree covered the middle and southern part of the Mediterranean basin from Syria to the Canaries.

We may doubt the antiquity of the fig in the south of France, but a curious fact deserves mention. Planchon found in the quaternary tufa of Montpellier, and de Saporta[1492] in those of Aygalades near Marseilles, and in the quaternary strata of La Celle near Paris, leaves and even fruit of the wild _Ficus carica_, with teeth of _Elephas primigenius_, and leaves of plants of which some no longer exist, and others, like _Laurus canariensis_, have survived in the Canaries. So that the fig tree perhaps existed in its modern form in this remote epoch. It is possible that it perished in the south of France, as it certainly did at Paris, and reappeared later in a wild state in the southern region. Perhaps the fig trees which Webb and Berthelot had seen as old plants in the wildest part of the Canaries were descended from those which existed in the fourth epoch.

+Bread-Fruit+—_Artocarpus incisa_, Linnæus.

The bread-fruit tree was cultivated in all the islands of the Asiatic Archipelago, and of the great oceans near the equator, from Sumatra to the Marquesas Isles, when first Europeans began to visit them. Its fruit is constituted, like the pine-apple, of an assemblage of bracts and fruits welded into a fleshy mass, more or less spherical; and as in the pine-apple, the seeds come to nothing in the most productive cultivated varieties.[1493]

Sonnerat[1494] carried the bread-fruit tree to Mauritius, where the Intendant Poivre took care to spread it. Captain Bligh was commissioned to introduce it into the English West Indian Isles. The mutiny of his crew prevented his succeeding the first time, but a second attempt proved more fortunate. In January, 1793, he landed 153 plants at St. Vincent, whence the species has been diffused into several parts of tropical America.[1495]

Rumphius[1496] saw the species wild in several of the Sunda Isles. Modern authors, less careful, or acquainted only with cultivated species, say nothing on this head. Seemann[1497] says for the Fiji Isles, “cultivated, and to all appearance wild in some places.” On the continent of Asia it is not even cultivated, as the climate is not hot enough.

The bread-fruit is evidently a native of Java, Amboyna, and the neighbouring islands; but the antiquity of its cultivation in the whole of the archipelago, proved by the number of varieties, and the facility of propagating it by buds and suckers, prevent us from knowing its history accurately. In the islands to the extreme east, like Otahiti, certain fables and traditions point to an introduction which is not very ancient, and the absence of seeds confirms this.[1498]

+Jack-Fruit+—_Artocarpus integrifolia_, Linnæus.

The jack-fruit, larger than the bread-fruit, for it sometimes weighs as much as eighty pounds, hangs from the branches of a tree thirty to fifty feet high.[1499] The common name is derived from the Indian names _jaca_, or _tsjaka_.

The species has long been cultivated in southern Asia, from the Punjab to China, from the Himalayas to the Moluccas. It has not spread into the small islands more to the east, such as Otahiti, which leads us to suppose it has not been so long in the archipelago as upon the continent. In the north-west of India, also, its cultivation does not perhaps date from a very remote epoch, for the existence of a Sanskrit name is not absolutely certain. Roxburgh mentions one, _punusa_, but Piddington does not admit it into his _Index_. The Persians and the Arabs do not seem to have known the species. Its enormous fruit must, however, have struck them if the species had been cultivated near their frontiers. Dr. Bretschneider does not speak of any Artocarpus in his work on the plants known to the ancient Chinese, whence it may be inferred that towards China, as in other directions, the jack-fruit was not diffused at a very early epoch. The first statement as to its existence in a wild state is given by Rheede in ambiguous terms: “This tree grows everywhere in Malabar and throughout India.” He perhaps confounded the planted tree with the wild one. After him, however, Wight found the species several times in the Indian Peninsula, notably in the Western Ghauts, with every appearance of a wild and indigenous tree. It has been extensively planted in Ceylon; but Thwaites, the best authority for the flora of this island, does not recognize it as wild. Neither is it wild in the archipelago to the south of India, according to the general opinion. Lastly, Brandis found it growing in the forests of the district of Attaran, in Burmah, but, he adds, always in the neighbourhood of abandoned settlements. Kurz did not find it wild in British Burmah.[1500]

The species is, therefore, a native of the region lying at the foot of the western mountains of the Indian Peninsula, and its cultivation in the neighbourhood is probably not earlier than the Christian era. It was introduced into Jamaica by Admiral Rodney in 1782, and thence into San Domingo.[1501] It has also been introduced into Brazil, Mauritius, the Seychelles, and Rodriguez Island.[1502]

+Date-Palm+—_Phœnix dactylifera_, Linnæus.

The date-palm has existed from prehistoric times in the warm dry zone, which extends from Senegal to the basin of the Indus, principally between parallels 15 and 30. It is seen here and there further to the north, by reason of exceptional circumstances and of the aim which is proposed in its cultivation. For beyond the limit within which the fruit ripens every year, there is a zone in which they ripen ill or seldom, and a further region within which the tree can live, but without fruiting or even flowering. These limits have been traced by de Martius, Carl Ritter, and myself.[1503] It is needless to reproduce them here, the aim of the present work being to study questions of origin.

As regards the date-palm, we can hardly rely on the more or less proved existence of really wild indigenous individuals. Dates are easily transported; the stones germinate when sown in damp soil near the source of a river, and even in the fissures of rocks. The inhabitants of oases have planted or sown date-palms in favourable localities where the species perhaps existed before man, and when the traveller comes across isolated trees, at a distance from dwellings, he cannot know that they did not spring from stones thrown away by caravans. Botanists admit a variety, _sylvestris_, that is to say wild, with small and sour fruit; but it is perhaps the result of recent naturalization in an unfavourable soil. Historical and philological data are of more value here, though doubtless from the antiquity of cultivation they can only establish probabilities.

From Egyptian and Assyrian remains, as well as from tradition and the most ancient writings, we find that the date-palm grew in abundance in the region lying between the Euphrates and the Nile. Egyptian monuments contain fruits and drawings of the tree.[1504] Herodotus, in a more recent age (fifth century before Christ), mentions the wood of the date-palms of Babylonia, and still later Strabo used similar expressions about those of Arabia, whence it seems that the species was commoner than it is now, and more in the condition of a natural forest tree. On the other hand, Carl Ritter makes the ingenious observation that the earliest Hebrew books do not speak of the date-palm as producing a fruit valued as a food for man. David, about one thousand years before Christ, and about seven centuries after Moses, does not mention the date palm in his list of trees to be planted in his gardens. It is true that except at Jericho dates seldom ripen in Palestine. Later, Herodotus says of the Babylonian date-palms that only the greater part produced good fruit which was used for food. This seems to indicate the beginning of a cultivation perfected by the selection of varieties and of the transport of male flowers into the middle of the branches of female trees, but it perhaps signifies also that Herodotus was ignorant of the existence of the male plant.

To the west of Egypt the date-palm had probably existed for centuries or for thousands of years when Herodotus mentioned them. He speaks of Libya. There is no historical record with respect to the oases in the Sahara, but Pliny[1505] mentions the date-palm in the Canaries.

The names of the species bear witness to its great antiquity both in Asia and in Africa, seeing they are numerous and very different. The Hebrews called the date-palm _tamar_, and the ancient Egyptians _beq_.[1506] The complete difference between these words, both very ancient, shows that these peoples found the species indigenous and perhaps already named in Western Asia and in Egypt. The number of Persian, Arabic, and Berber names is incredible.[1507] Some are derived from the Hebrew word, others from unknown sources. They often apply to different states of the fruit, or to different cultivated varieties, which again shows ancient cultivation in different countries. Webb and Berthelot have not discovered a name for the date-palm in the language of the Guanchos, and this is much to be regretted. The Greek name, _phœnix_, refers simply to Phœnicia and the Phœnicians, possessors of the date-palm.[1508] The names _dactylus_ and _date_ are derivations of _dachel_ in a Hebrew dialect.[1509] No Sanskrit name is known, whence it may be inferred that the plantations of the date-palm in Western India are not very ancient. The Indian climate does not suit the species.[1510] The Hindustani name _khurma_ is borrowed from the Persian.

Further to the East the date-palm remained long unknown. The Chinese received it from Persia, in the third century of our era, and its cultivation was resumed at different times, but they have now abandoned it.[1511] As a rule, beyond the arid region which lies between the Euphrates and the south of the Atlas and the Canaries, the date-palm has not succeeded in similar latitudes, or at least it has not become an important culture. It might be grown with success in Australia and at the Cape, but the Europeans who have colonized these regions are not satisfied, like the Arabs, with figs and dates for their staple food. I think, in fine, that in times anterior to the earliest Egyptian dynasties the date-palm already existed, wild or sown here and there by wandering tribes, in a narrow zone extending from the Euphrates to the Canaries, and that its cultivation began later as far as the north-west of India on the one hand and the Cape de Verde Islands[1512] on the other, so that the natural area has remained very nearly the same for about five thousand years. What it was previously, palæontological discoveries may one day reveal.

+Banana+—_Musa sapientum_ and _M. paradisiaca_, Linnæus; _M. sapientum_, Brown.

The banana or bananas were generally considered to be natives of Southern Asia, and to have been carried into America by Europeans, till Humboldt threw doubts upon their purely Asiatic origin. In his work on New Spain[1513] he quoted early authors who assert that the banana was cultivated in America before the conquest.

He admits, on Oviedo’s authority,[1514] its introduction by Father Thomas of Berlangas from the Canaries into San Domingo in 1516, whence it was introduced into other islands and the mainland.[1515] He recognizes the absence of any mention of the banana in the accounts of Columbus, Alonzo Negro, Pinzon, Vespuzzi, and Cortez. The silence of Hernandez, who lived half a century after Oviedo, astonishes him and appears to him a remarkable carelessness; “for,” he says,[1516] “it is a constant tradition in Mexico and on the whole of the mainland that the _platano arton_, and the _dominico_ were cultivated long before the Spanish conquest.” The author who has most carefully noted the different epochs at which American agriculture has been enriched by foreign products, the Peruvian Garcilasso de la Vega,[1517] says distinctly that at the time of the Incas, maize, quinoa, the potato, and, in the warm and temperate regions, bananas formed the staple food of the natives. He describes the _Musa_ of the valleys in the Andes; he even distinguishes the rarer species, with a small fruit and a sweet aromatic flavour, the _dominico_, from the common banana or _arton_. Father Acosta[1518] asserts also, although less positively, that the _Musa_ was cultivated by the Americans before the arrival of the Spaniards. Lastly, Humboldt adds from his own observation, “On the banks of the Orinoco, of the Cassiquaire or of the Beni, between the mountains of Esmeralda and the banks of the river Carony, in the midst of the thickest forests, almost everywhere that Indian tribes are found who have had no relations with European settlements, we meet with plantations of Manioc and bananas.” Humboldt suggests the hypothesis that several species or constant varieties of the Banana have been confounded, some of which are indigenous to the new world.

Desvaux studied the specific question, and in a really remarkable work, published in 1814,[1519] he gives it as his opinion that all the bananas cultivated for their fruits are of the same species. In this species he distinguishes forty-four varieties, which he arranges in two groups; the large-fruited bananas (seven to fifteen inches long), and the small-fruited bananas (one to six inches), commonly called fig bananas. R. Brown, in 1818, in his work on the _Plants of the Congo_, p. 51, maintains also that no structural difference in the bananas cultivated in Asia and those in America prevents us from considering them as belonging to the same species. He adopts the name _Musa sapientum_, which appears to me preferable to that of _M. paradisiaca_ adopted by Desvaux, because the varieties with small fertile fruit appear to be nearer the condition of the wild _Musæ_ found in Asia.

Brown remarks on the question of origin that all the other species of the genus _Musa_ belong to the old world; that no one pretends to have found in America, in a wild state, varieties with fertile fruit, as has happened in Asia; lastly, that Piso and Marcgraf considered that the banana was introduced into Brazil from Congo. In spite of the force of these three arguments, Humboldt, in his second edition of his essay upon New Spain (ii. p. 397), does not entirely renounce his opinion. He says that the traveller Caldcleugh[1520] found among the Puris the tradition that a small species of banana was cultivated on the borders of the Prato long before they had any communications with the Portuguese. He adds that words which are not borrowed ones are found in American languages to distinguish the fruit of the _Musa_; for instance, _paruru_ in Tamanac, etc., _arata_ in Maypur. I have also read in Stevenson’s travels[1521] that beds of the leaves of the two bananas commonly cultivated in America have been found in the _huacas_ or Peruvian tombs anterior to the conquest; but as this traveller also says that he saw beans[1522] in these _huacas_, a plant which undoubtedly belongs to the old world, his assertions are not very trustworthy.

Boussingault[1523] thought that the _platano arton_ at least was of American origin, but he gives no proof. Meyen, who had also been in America, adds no argument to those which were already known;[1524] nor does the geographer Ritter,[1525] who simply reproduces the facts about America, given by Humboldt.

On the other hand, the botanists who have more recently visited America have no hesitation as to the Asiatic origin. I may name Seemann for the Isthmus of Panama, Ernst for Venezuela, and Sagot for Guiana.[1526] The two first insist upon the absence of names for the banana in the languages of Peru and Mexico. Piso knew no Brazilian name. Martius[1527] has since indicated, in the Tupi language of Brazil, the names _pacoba_ or _bacoba_. This same word _bacove_ is used, according to Sagot, by the French in Guiana. It is perhaps derived from the name _bala_, or _palan_, of Malabar, from an introduction by the Portuguese, subsequent to Piso’s voyage.

The antiquity and wild character of the banana in Asia are incontestable facts. There are several Sanskrit names.[1528] The Greeks, Latins, and Arabs have mentioned it as a remarkable Indian fruit tree. Pliny[1529] speaks of it distinctly. He says that the Greeks of the expedition of Alexander saw it in India, and he quotes the name _pala_ which still persists in Malabar. Sages reposed beneath its shade and ate of its fruit. Hence the botanical name _Musa sapientum_. _Musa_ is from the Arabic _mouz_ or _mauwz_, which we find as early as the thirteenth century in Ebn Baithar. The specific name _paradisiaca_ comes from the ridiculous hypothesis which made the banana figure in the story of Eve and of Paradise.

It is a curious fact that the Hebrews and the ancient Egyptians[1530] did not know this Indian plant. It is a sign that it did not exist in India from a very remote epoch, but was first a native of the Malay Archipelago.

There is an immense number of varieties of the banana in the south of Asia, both on the islands and on the continent; the cultivation of these varieties dates in India, in China, and in the archipelago, from an epoch impossible to realize; it even spread formerly into the islands of the Pacific[1531] and to the west coast of Africa;[1532] lastly, the varieties bore distinct names in the most separate Asiatic languages, such as Chinese, Sanskrit, and Malay. All this indicates great antiquity of culture, consequently a primitive existence in Asia, and a diffusion contemporary with or even anterior to that of the human races.

The banana is said to have been found wild in several places. This is the more worthy of attention since the cultivated varieties seldom produce seed, and are multiplied by division, so that the species can hardly have become naturalized from cultivation by sowing itself. Roxburgh had seen it in the forests of Chittagong,[1533] in the form of _Musa sapientum_. Rumphius[1534] describes a wild variety with small fruits in the Philippine Isles. Loureiro[1535][1536] probably speaks of the same form by the name _M. seminifera agrestis_, which he contrasts with _M. seminifera domestica_, which is wild in Cochin-China. Blanco also mentions a wild banana in the Philippines,[1537] but his description is vague. Finlayson[1538] found the banana wild in abundance in the little island of Pulo Ubi at the southern extremity of Siam. Thwaites[1539] saw the variety _M. sapientum_ in the rocky forests of the centre of Ceylon, and does not hesitate to pronounce it the original stock of the cultivated bananas. Sir Joseph Hooker and Thomson[1540] found it wild at Khasia.

The facts are quite different in America. The wild banana has been seen nowhere except in Barbados,[1541] but here it is a tree of which the fruit does not ripen, and which is, consequently, in all probability the result of cultivated varieties of which the seed is not abundant. Sloane’s _wild plantain_[1542] appears to be a plant very different to the _musa_. The varieties which are supposed to be possibly indigenous in America are only two, and as a rule far fewer varieties are grown than in Asia. The culture of the banana may be said to be recent in the greater part of America, for it dates from but little more than three centuries. Piso[1543] says positively that it was imported into Brazil, and has no Brazilian name. He does not say whence it came. We have seen that, according to Oviedo, the species was brought to San Domingo from the Canaries. This fact and the silence of Hernandez, generally so accurate about the useful plants, wild or cultivated, in Mexico, convince me that at the time of the discovery of America the banana did not exist in the whole of the eastern part of the continent.

Did it exist, then, in the western part on the shores of the Pacific? This seems very unlikely when we reflect that communication was easy between the two coasts towards the isthmus of Panama, and that before the arrival of the Europeans the natives had been active in diffusing throughout America useful plants like the manioc, maize, and the potato. The banana, which they have prized so highly for three centuries, which is so easily multiplied by suckers, and whose appearance must strike the least observant, would not have been forgotten in a few villages in the depths of the forest or upon the littoral.

I admit that the opinion of Garcilasso, descendant of the Incas, an author who lived from 1530 to 1568, has a certain importance when he says that the natives knew the banana before the conquest. However, the expressions of another writer, extremely worthy of attention, Joseph Acosta, who had been in Peru, and whom Humboldt quotes in support of Garcilasso, incline me to adopt the contrary opinion.[1544] He says,[1545] “The reason the Spaniards called it _plane_ (for the natives had no such name) was that, as in the case of their trees, they found some resemblance between them.” He goes on to show how different was the _plane_ (_Platanus_) of the ancients. He describes the banana very well, and adds that the tree is very common in the Indies (_i.e._ America), “although they (the Indians) say that its origin is Ethiopia.... There is a small white species of plantain (banana), very delicate, which is called in Espagnolle[1546] _dominico_. There are others coarser and larger, and of a red colour. There are none in Peru, but they are imported thither from the Indies,[1547] as into Mexico from Cuernavaca and the other valleys. On the continent and in some of the islands there are great plantations of them which form dense thickets.” Surely it is not thus that the author would express himself were he writing of a fruit tree of American origin. He would quote American names and customs; above all, he would not say that the natives regarded it as a plant of foreign origin. Its diffusion in the warm regions of Mexico may well have taken place between the epoch of the conquest and the time when Acosta wrote, since Hernandez, whose conscientious researches go back to the earliest times of the Spanish dominion in Mexico (though published later in Rome), says not a word of the banana.[1548] Prescott the historian saw ancient books and manuscripts which assert that the inhabitants of Tumbez brought bananas to Pizarro when he disembarked upon the Peruvian coast, and he believes that its leaves were found in the _huacas_, but he does not give his proofs.[1549]

As regards the argument of the modern native plantations in regions of America, remote from European settlements, I find it hard to believe that tribes have remained absolutely isolated, and have not received so useful a tree from colonized districts.

Briefly, then, it appears to me most probable that the species was early introduced by the Spanish and Portuguese into San Domingo and Brazil, and I confess that this implies that Garcilasso was in error with regard to Peruvian traditions. If, however, later research should prove that the banana existed in some parts of America before the advent of the Europeans, I should be inclined to attribute it to a chance introduction, not very ancient, the effect of some unknown communication with the islands of the Pacific, or with the coast of Guinea, rather than to believe in the primitive and simultaneous existence of the species in both hemispheres. The whole of geographical botany renders the latter hypothesis improbable, I might almost say impossible, to admit, especially in a genus which is not divided between the two worlds.

In conclusion, I would call attention to the remarkable way in which the distribution of varieties favours the opinion of a single species—an opinion adopted, purely from the botanical point of view, by Roxburgh, Desvaux, and R. Brown. If there were two or three species, one would probably be represented by the varieties suspected to be of American origin, the other would belong, for instance, to the Malay Archipelago or to China, and the third to India. On the contrary all the varieties are geographically intermixed, and the two which are most widely diffused in America differ sensibly the one from the other, and each is confounded with or approaches very nearly to Asiatic varieties.

+Pine-Apple+—_Ananassa sativa_, Lindley; _Bromelia Ananas_, Linnæus.

In spite of the doubts of a few writers, the pine-apple must be an American plant, early introduced by Europeans into Asia and Africa.

_Nana_ was the Brazilian name,[1550] which the Portuguese turned into _ananas_. The Spanish called it _pinas_, because the shape resembles the fruit of a species of pine.[1551] All early writers on America mention it.[1552] Hernandez says that the pine-apple grows in the warm regions of Haiti and Mexico. He mentions a Mexican name, _matzatli_. A pine-apple was brought to Charles V., who mistrusted it, and would not taste it.

The works of the Greeks, Romans, and Arabs make no allusion to this species, which was evidently introduced into the old world after the discovery of America. Rheede[1553] in the seventeenth century was persuaded of this; but Rumphius[1554] disputed it later, because he said the pine-apple was cultivated in his time in every part of India, and was found wild in Celebes and elsewhere. He notices, however, the absence of an Asiatic name. That given by Rheede for Malabar is evidently taken from a comparison with the jack-fruit, and is in no sense original. It is doubtless a mistake on the part of Piddington to attribute a Sanskrit name to the pine-apple, as the name _anarush_ seems to be a corruption of _ananas_. Roxburgh knew of none, and Wilson’s dictionary does not mention the word _anarush_. Royle[1555] says that the pine-apple was introduced into Bengal in 1594. Kircher[1556] says that the Chinese cultivated it in the seventeenth century, but it was believed to have been brought to them from Peru.

Clusius[1557] in 1599 had seen leaves of the pine-apple brought from the coast of Guinea. This may be explained by an introduction there subsequent to the discovery of America. Robert Brown speaks of the pine-apple among the plants cultivated in Congo; but he considers the species to be an American one.

Although the cultivated pine-apple bears few seeds or none at all, it occasionally becomes naturalized in hot countries. Examples are quoted in Mauritius, the Seychelles, and Rodriguez Island,[1558] in India,[1559] in the Malay Archipelago, and in some parts of America, where it was probably not indigenous—the West Indies, for instance.

It has been found wild in the warm regions of Mexico (if we may trust the phrase used by Hernandez), in the province of Veraguas[1560] near Panama, in the upper Orinoco valley,[1561] in Guiana[1562] and the province of Bahia.[1563]