THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES.
VOLUME XLVIII
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 isinteresting to agriculturists, to botanists, and even tohistorians and philosophers concerned with the dawningsof civilization.
I went into this question of origin in a chapter in mywork on geographical botany; but the book has becomescarce, and, moreover, since 1855 important facts havebeen discovered by travellers, botanists, and archæologists.Instead of publishing a second edition, I havedrawn up an entirely new and more extended work,which treats of the origin of almost double the number ofspecies belonging to the tropics and the temperate zones.It includes almost all plants which are cultivated, eitheron a large scale for economic purposes, or in orchards andkitchen gardens.
I have always aimed at discovering the condition andthe habitat of each species before it was cultivated. Itwas needful to this end to distinguish from amonginnumerable varieties that which should be regarded asthe most ancient, and to find out from what quarter of[Pg vi]the globe it came. The problem is more difficult than itappears at first sight. In the last century and up tothe middle of the present authors made little accountof it, and the most able have contributed to the propagationof erroneous ideas. I believe that three outof four of Linnæus’ indications of the original home ofcultivated plants are incomplete or incorrect. His statementshave since been repeated, and in spite of whatmodern 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 fromthe Greeks and Romans, should be corrected. The actualcondition of science allows of such correction, providedwe rely upon evidence of varied character, of whichsome portion is quite recent, and even unpublished; andthis evidence should be sifted as we sift evidence in historicalresearch. It is one of the rare cases in whicha science founded on observation should make use oftestimonial proof. It will be seen that this methodleads to satisfactory results, since I have been able todetermine the origin of almost all the species, sometimeswith absolute certainty, and sometimes with a highdegree of probability.
I have also endeavoured to establish the number ofcenturies or thousands of years during which eachspecies has been in cultivation, and how its culturespread in different directions at successive epochs.
A few plants cultivated for more than two thousandyears, and even some others, are not now known in a[Pg vii]spontaneous, that is, wild condition, or at any rate thiscondition is not proved. Questions of this nature aresubtle. They, like the distinction of species, requiremuch research in books and in herbaria. I have evenbeen obliged to appeal to the courtesy of travellers orbotanists in all parts of the world to obtain recentinformation. I shall mention these in each case withthe expression of my grateful thanks.
In spite of these records, and of a