Origin of Cultivated Plants

Cardoon—Cynara cardunculus, Linnæus.

Artichoke—Cynara scolymus, Linnæus; C. cardunculus, var. sativa, Moris.

For a long time botanists have held the opinion that the artichoke is probably a form obtained by cultivation from the wild cardoon.[380 - Dodoens, Hist. Plant., p. 724; Linnæus, Species, p. 1159; De Candolle, Prodr., vi. p. 620.] Careful observations have lately proved this hypothesis. Moris,[381 - Moris, Flora Sardoa, ii. p. 61.] for instance, having cultivated, in the garden at Turin, the wild Sardinian plant side by side with the artichoke, affirmed that true characteristic distinctions no longer existed.

Willkomm and Lange,[382 - Willkomm and Lange, Prodr. Fl. Hisp., ii. p. 180.] who have carefully observed the plant in Spain, both wild and cultivated, share the same opinion. Moreover, the artichoke has not been found out of gardens; and since the Mediterranean region, the home of all the Cynaræ, has been thoroughly explored, it may safely be asserted that it exists nowhere wild.

The cardoon, in which we must also include C. horrida of Sibthorp, is indigenous in Madeira and in the Canary Isles, in the mountains of Marocco near Mogador, in the south and east of the Iberian peninsula, the south of France, of Italy, of Greece, and in the islands of the Mediterranean Sea as far as Cyprus.[383 - Webb, Phyt. Canar., iii. sect. 2, p. 384; Ball, Spicilegium Fl. Maroc., p. 524; Willkomm and Lange, Pr. Fl. Hisp.; Bertoloni, Fl. Ital., ix. p. 86; Boissier, Fl. Orient., iii. p. 357; Unger and Kotschy, Inseln Cypern., p. 246.] Munby[384 - Munby, Catal., edit. 2.] does not allow C. cardunculus to be wild in Algeria, but he does admit Cynara humilis of Linnæus, which is considered by a few authors as a variety.

The cultivated cardoon varies a good deal with regard to the division of the leaves, the number of spines, and the size – diversities which indicate long cultivation. The Romans eat the receptacle which bears the flowers, and the Italians also eat it, under the name of girello. Modern nations cultivate the cardoon for the fleshy part of the leaves, a custom which is not yet introduced into Greece.[385 - Heldreich, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 27.]

The artichoke offers fewer varieties, which bears out the opinion that it is a form derived from the cardoon. Targioni,[386 - Targioni, Cenni Storici, p. 52.] in an excellent article upon this plant, relates that the artichoke was brought from Naples to Florence in 1466, and he proves that ancient writers, even Athenæus, were not acquainted with the artichoke, but only with the wild and cultivated cardoons. I must mention, however, as a sign of its antiquity in the north of Africa, that the Berbers have two entirely distinct names for the two plants: addad for the cardoon, taga for the artichoke.[387 - Dictionnaire Français-Berbère, published by the Government, 1 vol. in 8vo.]

It is believed that the kactos, kinara, and scolimos of the Greeks, and the carduus of Roman horticulturists, were Cynara cardunculus,[388 - Theophrastus, Hist., l. 6, c. 4; Pliny, Hist., l. 19, c. 8; Lenz, Bot. der Alten Griechen and Römer, p. 480.] although the most detailed description, that of Theophrastus, is sufficiently confused. “The plant,” he said, “grows in Sicily” – as it does to this day – “and,” he added, “not in Greece.” It is, therefore, possible that the plants observed in our day in that country may have been naturalized from cultivation. According to Athenæus,[389 - Athenæus, Deipn., ii. 84.] the Egyptian king Ptolemy Energetes, of the second century before Christ, had found in Libya a great quantity of wild kinara, by which his soldiers had profited.

Although the indigenous species was to be found at such a little distance, I am very doubtful whether the ancient Egyptians cultivated the cardoon or the artichoke. Pickering and Unger[390 - Pickering, Chron. Arrangement, p. 71; Unger, Pflanzen der Alten Ægyptens, p. 46, figs. 27 and 28.] believed they recognized it in some of the drawings on the monuments; but the two figures which Unger considers the most admissible seem to me extremely doubtful. Moreover, no Hebrew name is known, and the Jews would probably have spoken of this vegetable had they seen it in Egypt. The diffusion of the species in Asia must have taken place somewhat late. There is an Arab name, hirschuff or kerschouff, and a Persian name, kunghir,[391 - Ainslie, Mat. Med. Ind., i. p. 22.] but no Sanskrit name, and the Hindus have taken the Persian word kunjir,[392 - Piddington, Index.] which shows that it was introduced at a late epoch. Chinese authors do not mention any Cynara.[393 - Bretschneider, Study, etc., and Letters of 1881.] The cultivation of the artichoke was only introduced into England in 1548.[394 - Phillips, Companion to the Kitchen Garden, p. 22.] One of the most curious facts in the history of Cynara cardanculus is its naturalization in the present century over a vast extent of the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, where its abundance is a hindrance to travellers.[395 - Aug. de Saint Hilary, Plantes Remarkables du Bresil, Introd., p. 58; Darwin, Animals and Plants under Domestication, ii. p. 34.] It is becoming equally troublesome in Chili.[396 - Cl. Gay, Flora Chilena, iv. p. 317.] It is not asserted that the artichoke has anywhere been naturalized in this manner, and this is another sign of its artificial origin.

Lettuce—Latuca Scariola, var. sativa.

Botanists are agreed in considering the cultivated lettuce as a modification of the wild species called Latuca Scariola.[397 - The author who has gone into this question most carefully is Bischoff, in his Beiträge zur Flora Deutschlands und der Schweitz, p. 184. See also Moris, Flora Sardoa, ii. p. 530.] The latter grows in temperate and southern Europe, in the Canary Isles, Madeira,[398 - Webb, Phytogr. Canariensis, iii. p. 422; Lowe, Flora of Madeira, p. 544.] Algeria,[399 - Munby, Catal., edit. 2, p. 22, under the name of L. sylvestris.] Abyssinia,[400 - Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Aufzählung, p. 285.] and in the temperate regions of Eastern Asia. Boissier speaks of specimens from Arabia Petrea to Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.[401 - Boissier, Fl. Orient., iii. p. 809.] He mentions a variety with crinkled leaves, similar therefore to some of our garden lettuces, which the traveller Hausknecht brought with him from the mountains of Kurdistan. I have a specimen from Siberia, found near the river Irtysch, and it is now known with certainty that the species grows in the north of India, in Kashmir, and in Nepal.[402 - Clarke, Compos. Indicæ, p. 263.] In all these countries it is often near cultivated ground or among rubbish, but often also in rocky ground, clearings, or meadows, as a really wild plant.

The cultivated lettuce often spreads from gardens, and sows itself in the open country. No one, as far as I know, has observed it in such a case for several generations, or has tried to cultivate the wild L. Scariola, to see whether the transition is easy from the one form to the other. It is possible that the original habitat of the species has been enlarged by the diffusion of cultivated lettuces reverting to the wild form. It is known that there has been a great increase in the number of cultivated varieties in the course of the last two thousand years. Theophrastus indicated three;[403 - Theophrastus, l. 7, c. 4.]le Bon Jardinier of 1880 gives forty varieties existing in France.

The ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated the lettuce, especially as a salad. In the East its cultivation possibly dates from an earlier epoch. Nevertheless it does not appear, from the original common names both in Asia and Europe, that this plant was generally or very anciently cultivated. There is no Sanskrit nor Hebrew name known, nor any in the reconstructed Aryan tongue. A Greek name exists, tridax; Latin, latuca; Persian and Hindu, kahn; and the analogous Arabic form chuss or chass. The Latin form exists also, slightly modified, in the Slav and Germanic languages,[404 - Nemnich, Polygl. Lexicon.] which may indicate either that the Western Aryans diffused the plant, or that its cultivation spread with its name at a later date from the south to the north of Europe.

Dr. Bretschneider has confirmed my supposition[405 - A. de Candolle, Géogr. Bot. Raisonnée, p. 843.] that the lettuce is not very ancient in China, and that it was introduced there from the West. He says that the first work in which it is mentioned dates from A.D. 600 to A.D. 900.[406 - Bretschneider, Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Works, p. 17.]

Wild Chicory—Cichorium Intybus, Linnæus.

The wild perennial chicory, which is cultivated as a salad, as a vegetable, as fodder, and for its roots, which are used to mix with coffee, grows throughout Europe, except in Lapland, in Marocco, and Algeria,[407 - Ball, Spicilegium Fl. Marocc., p. 534; Munby, Catal., edit. 2, p. 21.] from Eastern Europe to Afghanistan and Beluchistan,[408 - Boissier, Fl. Orient., iii. p. 715.] in the Punjab and Kashmir,[409 - Clarke, Compos. Ind., p. 250.] and from Russia to Lake Baikal in Siberia.[410 - Ledebour, Fl. Ross., ii. p. 774.] The plant is certainly wild in most of these countries; but as it often grows by the side of roads and fields, it is probable that it has been transported by man from its original home. This must be the case in India, for there is no known Sanskrit name.

The Greeks and Romans employed this species wild and cultivated,[411 - Dioscorides, ii. c. 160; Pliny, xix. c. 8; Palladius, xi. c. 11. See other authors quoted by Lenz, Bot. d. Alten, p. 483.] but their notices of it are too brief to be clear. According to Heldreich, the modern Greeks apply the general name of lachana, a vegetable or salad, to seventeen different chicories, of which he gives a list.[412 - Heldreich, Die Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, pp. 28, 76.] He says that the species commonly cultivated is Cichorium divaricatum, Schousboe (C. pumilum, Jacquin); but it is an annual, and the chicory of which Theophrastus speaks was perennial.

Endive—Cichorium Endivia, Linnæus.

The white chicories or endives of our gardens are distinguished from Cichorium Intybus, in that they are annuals, and less bitter to the taste. Moreover, the hairs of the pappus which crowns the seed are four times longer, and unequal instead of being equal. As long as this plant was compared with C. Intybus, it was difficult not to admit two species. The origin of C. Endivia is uncertain. When we received, forty years ago, specimens of an Indian Cichorium, which Hamilton named C. cosmia, they seemed to us so like the endive that we supposed the latter to have an Indian origin, as has been sometimes suggested;[413 - Aug. Pyr. de Candolle, Prodr., vii. p. 84; Alph. de Candolle, Géogr. Bot., p. 845.] but Anglo-Indian botanists said, and continue to assert, that in India the plant only grows under cultivation.[414 - Clarke, Compos. Ind., p. 250.] The uncertainty persisted as to the geographical origin. After this, several botanists[415 - De Viviani, Flora Dalmat., ii. p. 97; Schultz in Webb, Phyt. Canar., sect. ii. p. 391; Boissier, Fl. Orient., iii. p. 716.] conceived the idea of comparing the endive with an annual species, wild in the region of the Mediterranean, Cichorium pumilum, Jacquin (C. divaricatum, Schousboe), and the differences were found to be so slight that some have suspected, and others have affirmed, their specific identity. For my part, after having seen wild specimens from Sicily, and compared the good illustrations published by Reichenbach (Icones, vol. xix., pls. 1357, 1358), I am disposed to take the cultivated endives for varieties of the same species as C. pumilum. In this case the oldest name being C. Endivia, it is the one which ought to be retained, as has been done by Schultz. It resembles, moreover, a popular name common to several languages.

The wild plant exists in the whole region, of which the Mediterranean is the centre, from Madeira,[416 - Lowe, Flora of Madeira, p. 521.] Marocco,[417 - Ball, Spicilegium, p. 534.] and Algeria,[418 - Munby, Catal., edit. 2, p. 21.] as far as Palestine,[419 - Boissier, Fl. Orient., iii. p. 716.] the Caucasus, and Turkestan.[420 - Bunge, Beiträge zur Flora Russlands und Central Asiens, p. 197.] It is very common in the islands of the Mediterranean and in Greece. Towards the west, in Spain and Madeira, for instance, it is probable that it has become naturalized from cultivation, judging from the positions it occupies in the fields and by the wayside.

No positive proof is found in ancient authors of the use of this plant by the Greeks and Romans;[421 - Lenz, Bot. der Alten, p. 483; Heldreich, Die Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 74.] but it is probable that they made use of it and several other Cichoria. The common names tell us nothing, since they may have been applied to two different species. These names vary little,[422 - Nemnich, Polygl. Lex., at the word Cichorium Endivia.] and suggest a cultivation of Græco-Roman origin. A Hindu name, kasni, and a Tamul one, koschi,[423 - Royle, Ill. Himal., p. 247; Piddington, Index.] are mentioned, but no Sanskrit name, and this indicates that the cultivation of this plant was of late origin in the east.

Spinach—Spinacia oleracea, Linnæus.

This vegetable was unknown to the Greeks and Romans.[424 - J. Bauhin, Hist., ii. p. 964; Fraas, Syn. Fl. Class.; Lenz, Bot. der Alten.] It was new to Europe in the sixteenth century,[425 - Brassavola, p. 176.] and it has been a matter of dispute whether it should be called spanacha, as coming from Spain, or spinacia, from its prickly fruit.[426 - Mathioli, ed Valgr., p. 343.] It was afterwards shown that the name comes from the Arabic isfânâdsch, esbanach, or sepanach, according to different authors.[427 - Ebn Baithar, ueberitz von Sondtheimer, i. p. 34; Forskal, Egypt, p. 77; Delile, Ill. Ægypt., p. 29.] The Persian name is ispany, or ispanaj,[428 - Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., ed. 1832, v. iii. p. 771, applied to Spinacia tetandra, which seems to be the same species.] and the Hindu isfany, or palak, according to Piddington, and also pinnis, according to the same and to Roxburgh. The absence of any Sanskrit name shows a cultivation of no great antiquity in these regions. Loureiro saw the spinach cultivated at Canton, and Maximowicz in Mantschuria;[429 - Maximowicz, Primitiæ Fl. Amur., p. 222.] but Bretschneider tells us that the Chinese name signifies herb of Persia, and that Western vegetables were commonly introduced into China a century before the Christian era.[430 - Bretschneider, Study and Value of Chin. Bot. Works, pp. 15, 17.] It is therefore probable that the cultivation of this plant began in Persia from the time of the Græco-Roman civilization, or that it did not quickly spread either to the east or to the west of its Persian origin. No Hebrew name is known, so that the Arabs must have received both plant and name from the Persians. Nothing leads us to suppose that they carried this vegetable into Spain. Ebn Baithar, who was living in 1235, was of Malaga; but the Arabic works he quotes do not say where the plant was cultivated, except one of them, which says that its cultivation was common at Nineveh and Babylon. Herrera’s work on Spanish agriculture does not mention the species, although it is inserted in a supplement of recent date, whence it is probable that the edition of 1513 did not speak of it; so that the European cultivation must have come from the East about the fifteenth century.

Some popular works repeat that spinach is a native of Northern Asia, but there is nothing to confirm this supposition. It evidently comes from the empire of the ancient Medes and Persians. According to Bosc,[431 - Dict. d’Agric., v. p. 906.] the traveller, Olivier brought back some seeds of it, found in the East in the open country. This would be a positive proof, if the produce of these seeds had been examined by a botanist in order to ascertain the species and the variety. In the present state of our knowledge it must be owned that spinach has not yet been found in a wild state, unless it be a cultivated modification of Spinacia tetandra, Steven, which is wild to the south of the Caucasus, in Turkestan, in Persia, and in Afghanistan, and which is used as a vegetable under the name of schamum.[432 - Boissier, Fl. Orient., vi. p. 234.]

Without entering here into a purely botanical discussion, I may say that, after reading the descriptions quoted by Boissier, and looking at Wight’s[433 - Wight, Icones, t. 818.] plate of Spinacia tetandra, Roxb., cultivated in India, and the specimens of several herbaria, I see no decided difference between this plant and the cultivated spinach with prickly fruit. The term tetandra implies that one of the plants has five and the other four stamens, but the number varies in our cultivated spinaches.[434 - Nees, Gen. Plant. Fl. Germ., 1. 7, pl. 15.]

If, as seems probable, the two plants are two varieties, the one cultivated, the other sometimes wild and sometimes cultivated, the oldest name, S. oleracea, ought to persist, especially as the two plants are found in the cultivated grounds of their original country.

The Dutch or great spinach, of which the fruit has no spines, is evidently a garden product. Tragus, or Bock was the first to mention it in the sixteenth century.[435 - Bauhin, Hist., ii. p. 965.]

Amaranth—Amarantus gangeticus, Linnæus.

Several annual amaranths are cultivated as a green vegetable in Mauritius, Bourbon, and the Seychelles Isles, under the name of brède de Malabar.[436 - A. gangeticus, A. tristis, and A. hybridis of Linnæus, according to Baker, Flora of Mauritius, p. 266.] This appears to be the principal species. It is much cultivated in India. Anglo-Indian botanists mistook it for a time for Amarantus oleraceus of Linnæus, and Wight gives an illustration of it under this name,[437 - Wight, Icones, p. 715.] but it is now acknowledged to be a different species, and belongs to A. gangeticus. Its numerous varieties, differing in size, colour, etc., are called in the Telinga dialect tota kura, with the occasional addition of an adjective for each. There are other names in Bengali and Hindustani. The young shoots sometimes take the place of asparagus at the table of the English.[438 - Roxburgh, Flora Indica, edit. 2, vol. iii. p. 606.]A. melancholicus, often grown as an ornamental plant in European gardens, is considered one of the forms of this species.

Its original home is perhaps India, but I cannot discover that the plant has ever been found there in a wild state; at least, this is not asserted by any author. All the species of the genus Amarantus spread themselves in cultivated ground, on rubbish-heaps by the wayside, and thus become half-naturalized in hot countries as well as in Europe. Hence the extreme difficulty in distinguishing the species, and above all in guessing or proving their origin. The species most nearly akin to A. gangeticus appear to be Asiatic.

A. gangeticus is said by trustworthy authorities to be wild in Egypt and Abyssinia;[439 - Boissier, Flora Orientalis, iv. p. 990; Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Aufzählung, etc., p. 289.] but this is perhaps only the result of such naturalization as I spoke of just now. The existence of numerous varieties and of different names in India, render its Indian origin most probable.

The Japanese cultivate as vegetables A. caudatus, A. mangostanus, and A. melancholicus (or gangeticus) of Linnæus,[440 - Franchet and Savatier, Enum. Plant. Japoniæ, i. p. 390.] but there is no proof that any of them are indigenous. In Java A. polystachyus, Blume, is cultivated; it is very common among rubbish, by the wayside, etc.[441 - Hasskarl, Plant. Javan. Rariores, p. 431.]

I shall speak presently of the species grown for the seed.

Leek—Allium ampeloprasum, var. Porrum.

According to the careful monograph by J. Gay,[442 - Gay, Ann. des Sc. Nat., 3rd series, vol. viii.] the leek, as early writers[443 - Linnæus, Species Pl.; De Candolle, Fl. Franç., iii. p. 219.] suspected, is only a cultivated variety of Allium ampeloprasum of Linnæus, so common in the East, and in the Mediterranean region, especially in Algeria, which in Central Europe sometimes becomes naturalized in vineyards and round ancient cultivations.[444 - Koch, Synopsis Fl. Germ.; Babington, Man. of Brit. Bot.; English Bot., etc.] Gay seems to have mistrusted the indications of the floras of the south of Europe, for, contrary to his method with other species of which he gives the localities out of Algeria, he only quotes in the present case the Algerian localities; admitting, however, the identity of name in the authors for other countries.

The cultivated variety of Porrum has not been found wild. It is only mentioned in doubtful localities, such as vineyards, gardens, etc. Ledebour[445 - Ledebour, Flora Ross., iv. p. 163.] indicates for A. ampeloprasum the borders of the Crimea, and the provinces to the south of the Caucasus. Wallich brought a specimen from Kamaon, in India,[446 - Baker, Journal of Bot., 1874, p. 295.] but we cannot be sure that it was wild. The works on Cochin-China (Loureiro), China (Bretschneider), and Japan (Franchet and Savatier) make no mention of it.

Article II.—Fodder

Lucern—Medicago sativa, Linnæus.

The lucern was known to the Greeks and Romans. They called it in Greek medicai, in Latin medica, or herba medica, because it had been brought from Media at the time of the Persian war, about 470 years before the Christian era.[447 - Strabo, xii. p. 560; Pliny, bk. xviii. c. 16.] The Romans often cultivated it, at any rate from the beginning of the first or second century. Cato does not speak of it,[448 - Hehn, Culturpflanzen, etc., p. 355.] but it is mentioned by Varro, Columella, and Virgil. De Gasparin[449 - Gasparin, Cours d’Agric., iv. p. 424.] notices that Crescenz, in 1478, does not mention it in Italy, and that in 1711 Tull had not seen it beyond the Alps. Targioni, however, who could not be mistaken on this head, says that the cultivation of lucern was maintained in Italy, especially in Tuscany, from ancient times.[450 - Targioni-Tozzetti, Cenni Storici, p. 34.] It is rare in modern Greece.[451 - Fraas, Synopsis Fl. Class., p. 63; Heldreich, Die Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 70.] French cultivators have often given to the lucern the name of sainfoin, which belongs properly to Onobrychis sativa; and this transposition still exists, for instance in the neighbourhood of Geneva. The name lucern has been supposed to come from the valley of Luzerne, in Piedmont; but there is another and more probable origin. The Spaniards had an old name, eruye, mentioned by J. Bauhin,[452 - Bauhin, Hist. Plant., ii. p. 381.] and the Catalans call it userdas[453 - Colmeiro, Catal.] whence perhaps the patois name in the south of France, laouzerdo, nearly akin to luzerne. It was so commonly cultivated in Spain that the Italians have sometimes called it herba spagna.[454 - Tozzetti, Dizion. Bot.] The Spaniards have, besides the names already given, mielga, or melga, which appears to come from Medica, but they principally used names derived from the Arabic —alfafa, alfasafat, alfalfa. In the thirteenth century, the famous physician Ebn Baithar, who wrote at Malaga, uses the Arab word fisfisat, which he derives from the Persian isfist.[455 - Ebn Baithar, Heil und Nahrungsmittel, translated from Arabic by Sontheimer, vol. ii. p. 257.] It will be seen that, if we are to trust to the common names, the origin of the plant would be either in Spain, Piedmont, or Persia. Fortunately botanists can furnish direct and possible proofs of the original home of the species.

It has been found wild, with every appearance of an indigenous plant, in several provinces of Anatolia, to the south of the Caucasus, in several parts of Persia, in Afghanistan, in Beluchistan,[456 - Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 94.] and in Kashmir.[457 - Royle, Ill. Himal., p. 197.] In the south of Russia, a locality mentioned by some authors, it is perhaps the result of cultivation as well as in the south of Europe. The Greeks may, therefore, have introduced the plant from Asia Minor as well as from India, which extended from the north of Persia.

This origin of the lucern, which is well established, makes me note as a singular fact that no Sanskrit name is known.[458 - Piddington, Index.] Clover and sainfoin have none either, which leads us to suppose that the Aryans had no artificial meadows.

Sainfoin—Hedysarum Onobrychis, Linnæus; Onobrychis sativa, Lamarck.

This leguminous plant, of which the usefulness in the dry and chalky soils of temperate regions is incontestable, has not been long in cultivation. The Greeks did not grow it, and their descendants have not introduced it into their agriculture to this day.[459 - Heldreich, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 72.] The plant called Onobrychis by Dioscorides and Pliny, is Onobrychis Caput-Galli of modern botanists,[460 - Fraas, Synopsis Fl. Class., p. 58; Lenz, Bot. der Alten Gr. und Röm., p. 731.] a species wild in Greece and elsewhere, which is not cultivated. The sainfoin, or lupinella of the Italians, was highly esteemed as fodder in the south of France in the time of Olivier de Serres,[461 - O. de Serres, Théâtre de l’Agric., p. 242.] that is to say, in the sixteenth century; but in Italy it was only in the eighteenth century that this cultivation spread, particularly in Tuscany.[462 - Targioni-Tozzetti, Cenni Storici, p. 34.]

Sainfoin is a herbaceous plant, which grows wild in the temperate parts of Europe, to the south of the Caucasus, round the Caspian Sea,[463 - Ledebour, Fl. Ross., i. p. 708; Boissier, Fl. Or., p. 532.] and even beyond Lake Baikal.[464 - Turczaninow, Flora Baical. Dahur., i. p. 340.] In the south of Europe it grows only on the hills. Gussone does not reckon it among the wild species of Sicily, nor Moris among those of Sardinia, nor Munby among those of Algeria.

No Sanskrit, Persian, or Arabic names are known. Everything tends to show that the cultivation of this plant originated in the south of France as late perhaps as the fifteenth century.

French Honeysuckle, or Spanish Sainfoin—Hedysarum coronarium, Linnæus.

The cultivation of this leguminous plant, akin to the sainfoin, and of which a good illustration may be found in the Flora des Serres et des Jardins, vol. xiii. pl. 1382, has been diffused in modern times through Italy, Sicily, Malta, and the Balearic Isles.[465 - Targioni-Tozzetti, Cenni Storici, p. 35; Marès and Virgineix, Catal. des Baléares, p. 100.] Marquis Grimaldi, who first pointed it out to cultivators in 1766, had seen it at Seminara, in Lower Calabria; De Gasparin[466 - De Gasparin, Cours d’Agric., iv. p. 472.] recommends it for Algeria, and it is probable that cultivators under similar conditions in Australia, at the Cape, in South America or Mexico, would do well to try it. In the neighbourhood of Orange, in Algeria, the plant did not survive the cold of 6° centigrade.

Hedysarum coronarium grows in Italy from Genoa to Sicily and Sardinia,[467 - Bertoloni, Flora Ital., viii. p. 6.] in the south of Spain[468 - Willkomm and Lange, Prodr. Fl. Hisp., iii. p. 262.] and in Algeria,[469 - Munby, Catal., edit. 2, p. 12.] where it is rare. It is, therefore, a species of limited geographical area.

Purple Clover—Trifolium pratense, Linnæus.

Clover was not cultivated in ancient times, although the plant was doubtless known to nearly all the peoples of Europe and of temperate Western Asia. Its use was first introduced into Flanders in the sixteenth century, perhaps even earlier, and, according to Schwerz, the Protestants expelled by the Spaniards carried it into Germany, where they established themselves under the protection of the Elector Palatine. It was also from Flanders that the English received it in 1633, through the influence of Weston, Earl of Portland, then Lord Chancellor.[470 - De Gasparin, Cours d’Agric., iv. p. 445, according to Schwerz and A. Young.]