Origin of Cultivated Plants The International Scientific Series Volume XLVIII

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THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES.

VOLUME XLVIII.


   THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES.

   ORIGIN OF
   CULTIVATED PLANTS.

   BY

   ALPHONSE DE CANDOLLE,

   FOREIGN ASSOCIATE OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE;
   FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETIES OF LONDON, EDINBURGH,
   AND DUBLIN; OF THE ACADEMIES OF ST. PETERSBURG,
   STOCKHOLM, BERLIN, MUNICH, BRUSSELS, COPENHAGEN, AMSTERDAM,
   ROME, TURIN, MADRID, BOSTON, ETC.

   NEW YORK:
   D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
   1908.




AUTHOR’S PREFACE.


THE knowledge of the origin of cultivated plants is interesting to
agriculturists, to botanists, and even to historians and philosophers
concerned with the dawnings of civilization.

I went into this question of origin in a chapter in my work on
geographical botany; but the book has become scarce, and, moreover,
since 1855 important facts have been discovered by travellers,
botanists, and archæologists. Instead of publishing a second edition, I
have drawn up an entirely new and more extended work, which treats of
the origin of almost double the number of species belonging to the
tropics and the temperate zones. It includes almost all plants which are
cultivated, either on a large scale for economic purposes, or in
orchards and kitchen gardens.

I have always aimed at discovering the condition and the habitat of each
species before it was cultivated. It was needful to this end to
distinguish from among innumerable varieties that which should be
regarded as the most ancient, and to find out from what quarter of the
globe it came. The problem is more difficult than it appears at first
sight. In the last century and up to the middle of the present authors
made little account of it, and the most able have contributed to the
propagation of erroneous ideas. I believe that three out of four of
Linnæus’ indications of the original home of cultivated plants are
incomplete or incorrect. His statements have since been repeated, and in
spite of what modern writers have proved touching several species, they
are still repeated in periodicals and popular works. It is time that
mistakes, which date in some cases from the Greeks and Romans, should be
corrected. The actual condition of science allows of such correction,
provided we rely upon evidence of varied character, of which some
portion is quite recent, and even unpublished; and this evidence should
be sifted as we sift evidence in historical research. It is one of the
rare cases in which a science founded on observation should make use of
testimonial proof. It will be seen that this method leads to
satisfactory results, since I have been able to determine the origin of
almost all the species, sometimes with absolute certainty, and sometimes
with a high degree of probability.

I have also endeavoured to establish the number of centuries or
thousands of years during which each species has been in cultivation,
and how its culture spread in different directions at successive epochs.

A few plants cultivated for more than two thousand years, and even some
others, are not now known in a spontaneous, that is, wild condition, or
at any rate this condition is not proved. Questions of this nature are
subtle. They, like the distinction of species, require much research in
books and in herbaria. I have even been obliged to appeal to the
courtesy of travellers or botanists in all parts of the world to obtain
recent information. I shall mention these in each case with the
expression of my grateful thanks.

In spite of these records, and of all my researches, there still remain
several species which are unknown wild. In the cases where these come
from regions not completely explored by botanists, or where they belong
to genera as yet insufficiently studied, there is hope that the wild
plant may be one day discovered. But this hope is fallacious in the case
of well-known species and countries. We are here led to form one of two
hypotheses; either these plants have since history began so changed in
form in their wild as well as in their cultivated condition that they
are no longer recognized as belonging to the same species, or they are
extinct species. The lentil, the chick-pea, probably no longer exist in
nature; and other species, as wheat, maize, the broad bean, carthamine,
very rarely found wild, appear to be in course of extinction. The number
of cultivated plants with which I am here concerned being two hundred
and forty-nine, the three, four, or five species, extinct or nearly
extinct, is a large proportion, representing a thousand species, out of
the whole number of phanerogams. This destruction of forms must have
taken place during the short period of a few hundred centuries, on
continents where they might have spread, and under circumstances which
are commonly considered unvarying.