Origin of Cultivated Plants

Orange—Citrus Aurantium, Linnæus (excl. var. γ); Citrus Aurantium, Risso.

Oranges are distinguished from shaddocks (C. decumana) by the complete absence of down on the young shoots and leaves, by their smaller fruit, always spherical, and by a thinner rind. They differ from lemons and citrons in their pure white flowers; in the fruit, which is never elongated, and without a nipple on the summit; in the rind, smooth or nearly so, and adhering but lightly to the pulp.

Neither Risso, in his excellent monograph of Citrus, nor modern authors, as Brandis and Sir Joseph Hooker, have been able to discover any other character than the taste to distinguish the sweet orange from more or less bitter fruits. This difference appeared to me of such slight importance from the botanical point of view, when I studied the question of origin in 1855, that I was inclined, with Risso, to consider these two sorts of orange as simple varieties. Modern Anglo-Indian authors do the same. They add a third variety, which they call Bergamia, for the bergamot orange, of which the flower is smaller, and the fruit spherical or pyriform, and smaller than the common orange, aromatic and slightly acid. This last form has not been found wild, and appears to me to be rather a product of cultivation.

It is often asked whether the seeds of sweet oranges yield sweet oranges, and of bitter, bitter oranges. It matters little from the point of view of the distinction into species or varieties, for we know that both in the animal and vegetable kingdoms all characters are more or less hereditary, that certain varieties are habitually so, to such a degree that they should be called races, and that the distinction into species must consequently be founded upon other considerations, such as the absence of intermediate forms, or the failure of crossed fertilization to produce fertile hybrids. However, the question is not devoid of interest in the present case, and I must answer that experiments have given results which are at times contradictory.

Gallesio, an excellent observer, expresses himself as follows: – “I have during a long series of years sown pips of sweet oranges, taken sometimes from the natural tree, sometimes from oranges grafted on bitter orange trees or lemon trees. The result has always been trees bearing sweet fruit; and the same has been observed for more than sixty years by all the gardeners of Finale. There is no instance of a bitter orange tree from seed of sweet oranges, nor of a sweet orange tree from the seed of bitter oranges… In 1709, the orange trees of Finale having been killed by frost, the practice of raising sweet orange trees from seed was introduced, and every one of these plants produced the sweet-juiced fruit.”[897 - Gallesio, Traité du Citrus, pp. 32, 67, 355, 357.]

Macfadyen,[898 - Macfadyen, Flora of Jamaica, p. 129.] on the contrary, in his Flora of Jamaica, says, “It is a well-established fact, familiar to every one who has been any length of time in this island, that the seed of the sweet orange very frequently grows up into a tree bearing the bitter fruit, numerous well-attested instances of which have come to my own knowledge. I am not aware, however, that the seed of the bitter orange has ever grown up into the sweet-fruited variety… We may therefore conclude,” the author judiciously goes on to say, “that the bitter orange was the original stock.” He asserts that in calcareous soil the sweet orange may be raised from seed, but that in other soils it produces fruits more or less sour or bitter. Duchassaing says that in Guadeloupe the seeds of sweet oranges often yield bitter fruit,[899 - Quoted in Grisebach’s Veget. Karaiben, p. 34.] while, according to Dr. Ernst, at Caracas they sometimes yield sour but not bitter fruit.[900 - Ernst, in Seemann, Journ. of Bot., 1867, p. 272.] Brandis relates that at Khasia, in India, as far as he can verify the fact, the extensive plantations of sweet oranges are from seed. These differences show the variable degree of heredity, and confirm the opinion that these two kinds of orange should be considered as two varieties, not two species.

I am, however, obliged to take them in succession, to explain their origin and the extent of their cultivation at different epochs.

Bitter Orange—Arancio forte in Italian, bigaradier in French, pomeranze in German. Citrus vulgaris, Risso; C. aurantium (var. bigaradia), Brandis and Hooker.

It was unknown to the Greeks and Romans, as well as the sweet orange. As they had had communication with India and Ceylon, Gallesio supposed that these trees were not cultivated in their time in the west of India. He had studied from this point of view, ancient travellers and geographers, such as Diodorus Siculus, Nearchus, Arianus, and he finds no mention of the orange in them. However, there was a Sanskrit name for the orange —nagarunga, nagrunga.[901 - Roxburgh, Fl. Indica, edit. 1832, vol. ii. p. 392; Piddington, Index.] It is from this that the word orange came, for the Hindus turned it into narungee (pron. naroudji), according to Royle, nerunga according to Piddington; the Arabs into narunj, according to Gallesio, the Italians into naranzi, arangi, and in the mediæval Latin it was arancium, arangium, afterwards aurantium.[902 - Gallesio, p. 122.] But did the Sanskrit name apply to the bitter or to the sweet orange? The philologist Adolphe Pictet formerly gave me some curious information on this head. He had sought in Sanskrit works the descriptive names given to the orange or to the tree, and had found seventeen, which all allude to the colour, the odour, its acid nature (danta catha, harmful to the teeth), the place of growth, etc., never to a sweet or agreeable taste. This multitude of names similar to epithets show that the fruit had long been known, but that its taste was very different to that of the sweet orange. Besides, the Arabs, who carried the orange tree with them towards the West, were first acquainted with the bitter orange, and gave it the name narunj,[903 - In the modern languages of India the Sanskrit name has been applied to the sweet orange, so says Brandis, by one of those transpositions which are so common in popular language.] and their physicians from the tenth century prescribed the bitter juice of this fruit.[904 - Gallesio, pp. 122, 247, 248.] The exhaustive researches of Gallesio show that after the fall of the Empire the species advanced from the coast of the Persian Gulf, and by the end of the ninth century had reached Arabia, through Oman, Bassora, Irak, and Syria, according to the Arabian author Massoudi. The Crusaders saw the bitter orange tree in Palestine. It was cultivated in Sicily from the year 1002, probably a result of the incursions of the Arabs. It was they who introduced it into Spain, and most likely also into the east of Africa. The Portuguese found it on that coast when they doubled the Cape in 1498.[905 - Gallesio, p. 240. Goeze, Beitrag zur Kenntniss der Orangengewächse, 1874, p. 13, quotes early Portuguese travellers on this head.] There is no ground for supposing that either the bitter or the sweet orange existed in Africa before the Middle Ages, for the myth of the garden of Hesperides may refer to any species of the order Aurantiaceæ, and its site is altogether arbitrary, since the imagination of the ancients was wonderfully fertile.

The early Anglo-Indian botanists, such as Roxburgh, Royle, Griffith, Wight, had not come across the bitter orange wild; but there is every probability that the eastern region of India was its original country. Wallich mentions Silhet,[906 - Wallich, Catalogue, No. 6384.] but without asserting that the species was wild in this locality. Later, Sir Joseph Hooker[907 - Hooker, Fl. of Brit. Ind., i. p. 515.] saw the bitter orange certainly wild in several districts to the south of the Himalayas, from Garwal and Sikkim as far as Khasia. The fruit was spherical or slightly flattened, two inches in diameter, bright in colour, and uneatable, of mawkish and bitter taste (“if I remember right,” says the author). Citrus fusca, Loureiro,[908 - Loureiro, Fl. Cochin., p. 571.] similar, he says, to pl. 23 of Rumphius, and wild in Cochin-China and China, may very likely be the bitter orange whose area extends to the east.

Sweet Orange– Italian, Arancio dolce; German, Apfelsine. Citrus Aurantium sinense, Gallesio.

Royle[909 - Royle, Illustr. of Himal., p. 129. He quotes Turner, Journey to Thibet, pp. 20, 387.] says that sweet oranges grow wild at Silhet and in the Nilgherry Hills, but his assertion is not accompanied with sufficient detail to give it importance. According to the same author, Turner’s expedition gathered “delicious” wild oranges at Buxedwar, a locality to the north-east of Rungpoor, in the province of Bengal. On the other hand, Brandis and Sir Joseph Hooker do not mention the sweet orange as wild in British India; they only give it as cultivated. Kurz does not mention it in his forest flora of British Burmah. Further east, in Cochin-China, Loureiro[910 - Loureiro, Fl. Cochin., p. 569.] describes a C. Aurantium, with bitter-sweet (acido-dulcis) pulp, which appears to be the sweet orange, and which is found both wild and cultivated in China and Cochin-China. Chinese authors consider orange trees in general as natives of their country, but precise information about each species and variety is wanting on this head.

From the collected facts, it seems that the sweet orange is a native of Southern China and of Cochin-China, with a doubtful and accidental extension of area by seed into India.

By seeking in what country it was first cultivated, and how it was propagated, some light may be thrown upon the origin, and upon the distinction between the bitter and sweet orange. So large a fruit, and one so agreeable to the palate as the sweet orange, can hardly have existed in any district, without some attempts having been made to cultivate it. It is easily raised from seed, and nearly always produces the wished-for quality. Neither can ancient travellers and historians have neglected to notice the introduction of so remarkable a fruit tree. On this historical point Gallesio’s study of ancient authors has produced extremely interesting results.

He first proves that the orange trees brought from India by the Arabs into Palestine, Egypt, the south of Europe, and the east coast of Africa, were not the sweet-fruited tree. Up to the fifteenth century, Arab books and chronicles only mention bitter, or sour oranges. However, when the Portuguese arrived in the islands of Southern Asia, they found the sweet orange, and apparently it had not previously been unknown to them. The Florentine who accompanied Vasco de Gama, and who published an account of the voyage, says, “Sonvi melarancie assai, ma tutte dolci” (there are plenty of oranges, but all sweet.) Neither this writer nor subsequent travellers expressed surprise at the pleasant taste of the fruit. Hence Gallesio infers that the Portuguese were not the first to bring the sweet orange from India, which they reached in 1498, nor from China, which they reached in 1518. Besides, a number of writers in the beginning of the sixteenth century speak of the sweet orange as a fruit already cultivated in Spain and Italy. There are several testimonies for the years 1523, and 1525. Gallesio goes no further than the idea that the sweet orange was introduced into Europe towards the beginning of the fifteenth century;[911 - Gallesio, p. 321.] but Targioni quotes from Valeriani a statute of Fermo, of the fourteenth century, referring to citrons, sweet oranges, etc.;[912 - The date of this statuto is given by Targioni, on p. 205 of the Cenni Storici, as 1379, and on p. 213 as 1309. The errata do not notice this discrepancy.] and the information recently collected from early authors by Goeze,[913 - Goeze, Ein Beitrag zur Kenntniss der Orangengewächse. Hamburg, 1874, p. 26.] about the introduction into Spain and Portugal, agrees with this date. It therefore appears to me probable that the oranges imported later from China by the Portuguese were only of better quality than those already known in Europe, and that the common expressions, Portugal and Lisbon oranges, are due to this circumstance.

If the sweet orange had been cultivated at a very early date in India, it would have had a special name in Sanskrit; the Greeks would have known it after Alexander’s expedition, and the Hebrews would have early received it through Mesopotamia. This fruit would certainly have been valued, cultivated, and propagated in the Roman empire, in preference to the lemon, citron, and bitter orange. Its existence in India must, therefore, be less ancient.

In the Malay Archipelago the sweet orange was believed to come from China.[914 - Rumphius, Amboin., ii. c. 42.] It was but little diffused in the Pacific Isles at the time of Cook’s voyages.[915 - Forster, Plantis Esculentis, p. 35.]

We come back thus by all sorts of ways to the idea that the sweet variety of the orange came from China and Cochin-China, and that it spread into India perhaps towards the beginning of the Christian era. It may have become naturalized from cultivation in many parts of India and in all tropical countries, but we have seen that the seed does not always yield trees bearing sweet fruit. This defect in heredity in certain cases is in support of the theory that the sweet orange was derived from the bitter, at some remote epoch, in China or Cochin-China, and has since been carefully propagated on account of its horticultural value.

Mandarin—Citrus nobilis, Loureiro.

This species, characterized by its smaller fruit, uneven on the surface, spherical, but flattened at the top, and of a peculiar flavour, is now prized in Europe as it has been from the earliest times in China and Cochin-China. The Chinese call it kan.[916 - Bretschneider, On the Study and Value, etc., p. 11.] Rumphius had seen it cultivated in all the Sunda Islands,[917 - Rumphius, Amboin., ii. pls. 34, 35, where, however, the form of the fruit is not that of our mandarin.] and says that it was introduced thither from China, but it had not spread into India. Roxburgh and Sir Joseph Hooker do not mention it, but Clarke informs me that its culture has been greatly extended in the district of Khasia. It was new to European gardens at the beginning of the present century, when Andrews published a good illustration of it in the Botanist’s Repository (pl. 608).

According to Loureiro,[918 - Loureiro, Fl. Cochin., p. 570.] this tree, of average size, grows in Cochin-China, and also, he adds, in China, although he had not seen it in Canton. This is not very precise information as to its wild character, but no other origin can be supposed. According to Kurz,[919 - Kurz, Forest Fl. of Brit. Bur.] the species is only cultivated in British Burmah. If this is confirmed, its area would be restricted to Cochin-China and a few provinces in China.

Mangosteen—Garcinia mangostana, Linnæus.

There is a good illustration in the Botanical Magazine, pl. 4847, of this tree, belonging to the order Guttiferæ, of which the fruit is considered one of the best in existence. It demands a very hot climate, for Roxburgh could not make it grow north of twenty-three and a half degrees of latitude in India,[920 - Royle, Ill. Himal., p. 133, and Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., ii. p. 618.] and, transported to Jamaica, it bears but poor fruit.[921 - Macfadyen, Flora of Jamaica, p. 134.] It is cultivated in the Sunda Islands, in the Malay Peninsula, and in Ceylon.

The species is certainly wild in the forests of the Sunda Islands[922 - Rumphius, Amboin., i. p. 133; Miquel, Plantæ Junghun., i. p. 290; Flora Indo-Batava, i. pt. 2, p. 506.] and of the Malay Peninsula.[923 - Hooker, Flora of Brit. Ind., i. p. 260.] Among cultivated plants it is one of the most local, both in its origin, habitation, and in cultivation. It belongs, it is true, to one of those families in which the mean area of the species is most restricted.

Mamey, or Mammee Apple—Mammea Americana, Jacquin.

This tree, of the order Guttiferæ, requires, like the mangosteen, great heat. Although much cultivated in the West Indies and in the hottest parts of Venezuela,[924 - Ernst in Seemann, Journal of Botany, 1867, p. 273; Triana and Planchon, Prodr. Fl. Novo-Granat., p. 285.] its culture has seldom been attempted, or has met with but little success, in Asia and Africa, if we are to judge by the silence of most authors.

It is certainly indigenous in the forests of most of the West Indies.[925 - Sloane, Jamaica, i. p. 123; Jacquin, Amer., p. 268; Grisebach, Fl. of Brit. W. Ind. Isles, p. 118.] Jacquin mentions it also for the neighbouring continent, but I do not find this confirmed by modern authors. The best illustration is that in Tussac’s Flore des Antilles, iii. pl. 7, and this author gives a number of details respecting the use of the fruit.

Ochro, or Gombo—Hibiscus esculentus, Linnæus.

The young fruits of this annual, of the order of Malvaceæ, form one of the most delicate of tropical vegetables. Tussac’s Flore des Antilles contains a fine plate of the species, and gives all the details a gourmet could desire on the manner of preparing the caloulou, so much esteemed by the creoles of the French colonies.

When I formerly[926 - A. de Candolle, Géogr. Bot. Rais., p. 768.] tried to discover whence this plant, cultivated in the old and new worlds, came originally, the absence of a Sanskrit name, and the fact that the first writers on the Indian flora had not seen it wild, led me to put aside the hypothesis of an Asiatic origin. However, as the modern flora of British India[927 - Flora of Brit. Ind., i. p. 343.] mentions it as “probably of native origin,” I was constrained to make further researches.

Although Southern Asia has been thoroughly explored during the last thirty years, no locality is mentioned where the Gombo is wild or half wild. There is no indication, even, of an ancient cultivation in Asia. The doubt, therefore, lies between Africa and America. The plant has been seen wild in the West Indies by a good observer,[928 - Jacquin, Observationes, iii. p. 11.] but I can discover no similar assertion on the part of any other botanist, either with respect to the islands or to the American continent. The earliest writer on Jamaica, Sloane, had only seen the species in a state of cultivation. Marcgraf[929 - Marcgraf, Hist. Plant., p. 32, with illustrations.] had observed it in Brazilian plantations, and as he mentions a name from the Congo and Angola country, quillobo, which the Portuguese corrupted into quingombo, the African origin is hereby indicated.

Schweinfurth and Ascherson[930 - Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Aufzählung, p. 265, under the name abelmoschus.] saw the plant wild in the Nile Valley in Nubia, Kordofan, Senaar, Abyssinia, and in the Baar-el-Abiad, where, indeed, it is cultivated. Other travellers are mentioned as having gathered specimens in Africa, but it is not specified whether these plants were cultivated or wild at a distance from habitations. We should still be in doubt if Flückiger and Hanbury[931 - Flückiger and Hanbury, Pharmacographia, p. 86. The description is in Ebn Baithar, Sondtheimer’s trans., i. p. 118.] had not made a bibliographical discovery which settles the question. The Arabs call the fruit bamyah, or bâmiat, and Abul-Abas-Elnabati, who visited Egypt long before the discovery of America, in 1216, has distinctly described the gombo then cultivated by the Egyptians.

In spite of its undoubtedly African origin, it does not appear that the species was cultivated in Lower Egypt before the Arab rule. No proof has been found in ancient monuments, although Rosellini thought he recognized the plant in a drawing, which differs widely from it according to Unger.[932 - Unger, Die Pflanzen des Alten Ægyptens, p. 50.] The existence of one name in modern Indian languages, according to Piddington, confirms the idea of its propagation towards the East after the beginning of the Christian era.

Vine—Vitis vinifera, Linnæus.

The vine grows wild in the temperate regions of Western Asia, Southern Europe, Algeria, and Marocco.[933 - Grisebach, Végét. du Globe, French trans. by Tchihatcheff, i. pp. 162, 163, 442; Munby, Catal. Alger; Ball, Fl. Maroc. Spicel, p. 392.] It is especially in the Pontus, in Armenia, to the south of the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea, that it grows with the luxuriant wildness of a tropical creeper, clinging to tall trees and producing abundant fruit without pruning or cultivation. Its vigorous growth is mentioned in ancient Bactriana, Cabul, Kashmir, and even in Badakkhan to the north of the Hindu Koosh.[934 - Adolphe Pictet, Origines Indo-Europ. edit. 2, vol. 1, p. 295. quotes several travellers for these regions, among others Wood’s Journey to the Sources of the Oxus.] Of course, it is a question whether the plants found there, as elsewhere, are not sprung from seeds carried from vineyards by birds. I notice, however, that the most trustworthy botanists, those who have most thoroughly explored the Transcaucasian provinces of Russia, do not hesitate to say that the plant is wild and indigenous in this region. It is as we advance towards India and Arabia, Europe and the north of Africa, that we frequently find in floras the expression that the vine is “subspontaneous,” perhaps wild, or become wild (verwildert is the expressive German term).

The dissemination by birds must have begun very early, as soon as the fruit existed, before cultivation, before the migration of the most ancient Asiatic peoples, perhaps before the existence of man in Europe or even in Asia. Nevertheless, the frequency of cultivation, and the multitude of forms of the cultivated grape, may have extended naturalization and introduced among wild vines varieties which originated in cultivation. In fact, natural agents, such as birds, winds, and currents, have always widened the area of species, independently of man, as far as the limits imposed in each age by geographical and physical conditions, together with the hostile action of other plants and animals, allow. An absolutely primitive habitation is more or less mythical, but habitations successively extended or restricted are in accordance with the nature of things. They constitute areas more or less ancient and real, provided that the species has maintained itself wild without the constant addition of fresh seed.

Concerning the vine, we have proofs of its great antiquity in Europe as in Asia. Seeds of the grape have been found in the lake-dwellings of Castione, near Parma, which date from the age of bronze,[935 - These are figured in Heer’s Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten, p. 24, fig. 11.] in a prehistoric settlement of Lake Varese,[936 - Ragazzoni, Rivista Arch. della Prov. di Como, 1880, fasc. 17, p. 30.] and in the lake-dwellings of Wangen, Switzerland, but in the latter instance at an uncertain depth.[937 - Heer, ibid.] And, what is more, vine-leaves have been found in the tufa round Montpellier, where they were probably deposited before the historical epoch, and in the tufa of Meyrargue in Provence, which is certainly prehistoric,[938 - Planchon, Étude sur les Tufs de Montpellier, 1864, p. 63.] though later than the tertiary epoch of geologists.[939 - De Saporta, La Flore des Tufs Quaternaires de Provence, 1867, pp. 15, 27.]

A Russian botanist, Kolenati,[940 - Kolenati, Bulletin de la Société Impériale des Naturalistes de Moscou, 1846, p. 279.] has made some very interesting observations on the different varieties of the vine, both wild and cultivated, in the country which may be called the central, and perhaps the most ancient home of the species, the south of the Caucasus. I consider his opinion the more important that the author has based his classification of varieties with reference to the downy character and veining of the leaves, points absolutely indifferent to cultivators, and which consequently must far better represent the natural conditions of the plant. He says that the wild vines, of which he had seen an immense quantity between the Black and Caspian Seas, may be grouped into two subspecies which he describes, and declares are recognizable at a distance, and which are the point of departure of cultivated vines, at least in Armenia and the neighbourhood. He recognized them near Mount Ararat, at an altitude where the vine is not cultivated, where, indeed, it could not be cultivated. Other characters – for instance, the shape and colour of the grapes – vary in each of the subspecies. We cannot enter here into the purely botanical details of Kolenati’s paper, any more than into those of Regel’s more recent work on the genus Vitis;[941 - Regel, Acta Horti Imp. Petrop., 1873. In this short review of the genus, M. Regel gives it as his opinion that Vitis vinifera is a hybrid between two wild species, V. vulpina and V. labrusca, modified by cultivation; but he gives no proof, and his characters of the two wild species are altogether unsatisfactory. It is much to be desired that the wild and cultivated vines of Europe and Asia should be compared with regard to their seeds, which furnish excellent distinctions, according to Englemann’s observations on the American vines.] but it is well to note that a species cultivated from a very remote epoch, and which has perhaps two thousand described varieties, presents in the district where it is most ancient, and probably presented before all cultivation, at least two principal forms, with others of minor importance. If the wild vines of Persia and Kashmir, of Lebanon and Greece, were observed with the same care, perhaps other sub-species of prehistoric antiquity might be found. The idea of collecting the juice of the grape and of allowing it to ferment may have occurred to different peoples, principally in Western Asia, where the vine abounds and thrives. Adolphe Pictet,[942 - Ad. Pictet, Origines Indo-Eur., 2nd edit., vol. i. pp. 298-321.] who has, in common with numerous authors, but in a more scientific manner, considered the historical, philological, and even mythological questions relating to the vine among ancient peoples, admits that both Semitic and Aryan nations knew the use of wine, so that they may have introduced it into all the countries into which they migrated, into India and Egypt and Europe. This they were the better able to do, since they found the vine wild in several of these regions.

The records of the cultivation of the grape and of the making of wine in Egypt go back five or six thousand years.[943 - M. Delchevalerie, in l’Illustration Horticole, 1881, p. 28. He mentions in particular the tomb of Phtah-Hotep, who lived at Memphis 4000 B.C.] In the West the propagation of its culture by the Phœnicians, Greeks, and Romans is pretty well known, but to the east of Asia it took place at a late period. The Chinese who now cultivate the vine in their northern provinces did not possess it earlier than the year 122 B.C.[944 - Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., p. 16.]

It is known that several wild vines exist in the north of China, but I cannot agree with M. Regel in considering Vitis Amurensis, Ruprecht, the one most analogous to our vine, as identical in species. The seeds drawn in the Gartenflora, 1861, pl. 33, differ too widely. If the fruit of these vines of Eastern Asia had any value, the Chinese would certainly have turned them to account.

Common Jujube—Zizyphus vulgaris, Lamarck.

According to Pliny,[945 - Pliny, Hist., lib. 15, c. 14.] the jujube tree was brought from Syria to Rome by the consul Sextus Papinius, towards the end of the reign of Augustus. Botanists, however, have observed that the species is common in rocky places in Italy,[946 - Bertoloni, Fl. Ital., ii. p. 665; Gussone, Syn. Fl. Sicul., ii. p. 276.] and that, moreover, it has not yet been found wild in Syria, although it is cultivated there, as in the whole region extending from the Mediterranean to China and Japan.[947 - Willkomm and Lange, Prod. Fl. Hisp., iii. p. 480; Desfontaines, Fl. Atlant., i. p. 200; Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 12; J. Hooker, Fl. Brit. Ind., i. p. 633; Bunge, Enum. Pl. Chin., p. 14; Franchet and Savatier, Enum. Pl. Jap., i. p. 81.]

The result of the search for the origin of the jujube tree as a wild plant bears out Pliny’s assertion, in spite of the objections I have just mentioned. According to plant collectors and authors of floras, the species appears to be more wild and more anciently cultivated in the east than in the west of its present wide area. Thus, in the north of China, de Bunge says it is “very common and very troublesome (on account of its thorns) in mountainous places.” He had seen the thornless variety in gardens. Bretschneider[948 - Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., p. 11.] mentions the jujube as one of the fruits most prized by the Chinese, who give it the simple name tsao. He also mentions the two varieties, with and without thorns, the former wild.[949 - Zizyphus chinensis of some authors is the same species.] The species does not grow in the south of China and in India proper, because of the heat and moisture of the climate. It is found again wild in the Punjab, in Persia, and Armenia.

Brandis[950 - Brandis, Forest Flora of British India, p. 84.] gives seven different names for the jujube tree (or for its varieties) in modern Indian languages, but no Sanskrit name is known. The species was therefore probably introduced into India from China, at no very distant epoch, and it must have escaped from cultivation and have become wild in the dry provinces of the west. The Persian name is anob, the Arabic unab. No Hebrew name is known, a further sign that the species is not very ancient in the west of Asia,

The ancient Greeks do not mention the common jujube, but only another species, Zizyphus lotus. At least, such is the opinion of the critic and modern botanist, Lenz.[951 - Lenz, Botanik der Alten, p. 651.] It must be confessed that the modern Greek name pritzuphuia has no connection with the names formerly attributed in Theophrastus and Dioscorides to some Zizyphus, but is allied to the Latin name zizyphus (fruit zizyphum) of Pliny, which does not occur in earlier authors, and seems to be rather of an Oriental than of a Latin character. Heldreich[952 - Heldreich, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 57.] does not admit that the jujube tree is wild in Greece, and others say “naturalized, half-wild,” which confirms the hypothesis of a recent introduction. The same arguments apply to Italy. The species may have become naturalized there after the introduction into gardens mentioned by Pliny.

In Algeria the jujube is only cultivated or half-wild.[953 - Munby, Catal., edit. 2, p. 9.] So also in Spain. It is not mentioned in Marocco, nor in the Canary Isles, which argues no very ancient existence in the Mediterranean basin.

It appears to me probable, therefore, that the species is a native of the north of China; that it was introduced and became naturalized in the west of Asia after the epoch of the Sanskrit language, perhaps two thousand five hundred or three thousand years ago; that the Greeks and Romans became acquainted with it at the beginning of our era, and that the latter carried it into Barbary and Spain, where it became partially naturalized by the effect of cultivation.

Lotus Jujube—Zizyphus lotus, Desfontaines.

The fruit of this jujube is not worthy of attention except from an historical point of view. It is said to have been the food of the lotus-eater, a people of the Lybian coast, of whom Herod and Herodotos[954 - Odyssey, bk. l, v. 84; Herodotos, l. 4, p. 177, trans. in Lenz, Bot. der Alt., p. 653.] have given a more or less accurate account. The inhabitants of this country must have been very poor or very temperate, for a berry the size of a small cherry, tasteless, or slightly sweet, would not satisfy ordinary men. There is no proof that the lotus-eaters cultivated this little tree or shrub. They doubtless gathered the fruit in the open country, for the species is common in the north of Africa. One edition of Theophrastus[955 - Theophrastus, Hist., l. 4, c. 4, edit. 1644. The edition of 1613 does not contain the words which refer to this detail.] asserts, however, that there were some species of lotus without stones, which would imply cultivation. They were planted in gardens, as is still done in modern Egypt,[956 - Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Beitr. zur Fl. Æthiop., p. 263.] but it does not seem to have been a common custom even among the ancients.

For the rest, widely different opinions have been held touching the lotus of the lotus-eaters,[957 - See the article on the carob tree.] and it is needless to insist upon a point so obscure, in which so much must be allowed for the imagination of a poet and for popular ignorance.