Alphonse de Candolle

“ If modern, civilized peoples, who have great facilities for comparing species, learning their origin and verifying their names in books, have made such mistakes, it is probable that ancient nations have made many and more grave errors. Scholars display vast learning in explaining the philological origin of a name, or its modifications in derived languages, but they cannot discover popular errors or absurdities. It is left for botanists to discover and point them out. ”

“ I have not observed the slightest indication of an adaptation to cold. When the cultivation of a species advances towards the north (maize, flax, tobacco, etc.) , it is explained by the production of early varieties, which can ripen before the cold season, or by the custom of cultivating in the north, in summer, the species which in the south are sown in winter. The study of the northern limits of wild species had formerly led me to the same conclusion, for they have not changed within historic times although the seeds are carried frequently and continually to the north of each limit. ”

“ When once a cultivated plant has been reduced to such a condition as permits of its being reasonably compared with analogous spontaneous forms, we have still to decide what group of nearly similar plants it is proper to designate as constituting a species. Botanists alone are competent to pronounce an opinion on this question, since they are accustomed to appreciate differences and resemblances, and know the confusion of certain works in the matter of nomenclature. This is not the place to discuss what may reasonably be termed a species. ”

“ We may expect, therefore, to find the fruit of a wild fruit tree small and of a doubtfully agreeable flavour, the grain of a cereal in its wild state small, the tubercles of a wild potato small, the leaves of indigenous tobacco narrow, etc., without, however, going so far as to imagine that the species developed rapidly under cultivation, for man would not have begun to cultivate it if it had not from the beginning presented some useful or agreeable qualities. ”

“ When we desire to make use of the common names to gather from them certain probabilities regarding the origin of species, it is necessary to consult dictionaries and the dissertations of philologists; but we must take into account the chances of error in these learned men, who, since they are neither cultivators nor botanists, may have made mistakes in the application of a name to a species. ”

“ We know, however, that a plant may have sprung from others cultivated in the neighbourhood; that birds, winds, etc., may have borne the seeds to great distances; that they are sometimes brought in the ballast of vessels or mixed with their cargoes. Such cases present themselves with respect to common species, much more so with respect to cultivated plants which abound near human dwellings. A collector or traveller had need be a keen observer to judge if a plant has sprung from a wild stock belonging to the flora of the country, or if it is of foreign origin. ”

“ The plants which most nearly resemble the lentil are classed by authors now in the genus Ervum, now in a distinct genus Lens, and sometimes in the genus Cicer; but the species of these ill-defined groups all belong to the Mediterranean basin or to Western Asia. This throws some light on the origin of the cultivated plant. Unfortunately, the lentil is no longer to be found in a wild state, at least with certainty. The floras of the south of Europe, of Northern Africa, of the East, and of India always mention it as cultivated, or as growing in fields after or with other cultivated species. ”

“ The designation which should be adopted for allied species, or, to speak scientifically, allied forms, is a problem often presented in natural history, and more often in the category of cultivated species than in others. These plants are changed by cultivation. Man adopts new and convenient forms, and propagates them by artificial means, such as budding, grafting, the choice of seeds, etc. It is clear that, in order to discover the origin of one of these species, we must eliminate as far as possible the forms which appear to be artificial, and concentrate our attention on the others. ”

“ I state this opinion because with regard to no other genus of cultivated plants have I felt so strongly that natural history should be based upon natural facts, and not upon the artificial products of cultivation. If we start from this point of view, which has the merit of being a truly scientific method, we find unfortunately that our knowledge of the cottons indigenous in America is still in a very elementary state. At most we can name only one or two collectors who have found Gossypia really identical with or very similar to certain cultivated forms. ”

“ It is rather bold to determine a species of Phaseolus from one or two epithets in an ancient author, when we see how difficult is the distinction of species to modern botanists with the plants under their eyes. Nevertheless, the dolichos of Theophrastus has been definitely referred to the scarlet runner, and the fasiolos to the dwarf haricot of our gardens, which are the two principal modern varieties of the common haricot, with an immense number of sub-varieties in the form of the pods and seed. ”

“ Naturalizations produced in this manner often confound the wild plants with the cultivated ones, and the more easily that they fertilize each other since they belong to the same species. This fact is clearly demonstrated in the case of a plant of the old world cultivated in America, in gardens, and which, later, becomes naturalized on a large scale in the open country or the woods, like the cardoon at Buenos Ayres, and the oranges in several American countries. Cultivation widens areas, and supplements the deficits which the natural reproduction of the species may present. ”

“ No doubt the researches of a philologist into etymologies are more profound and valuable, but this is rarely necessary when our researches have to do with cultivated plants. Other sciences are more useful, especially that of botany; and philologists are more often deficient in these than naturalists are deficient in philology, for the very evident reason that more place is given to languages than to natural history in general education. ”

“ War and the chase often interrupt attempts at cultivation. Rivalry and mistrust cause the imitation of one tribe by another to make but slow progress. If some great personage command the cultivation of a plant, and institute some ceremonial to show its utility, it is probably because obscure and unknown men have previously spoken of it, and that successful experiments have been already made. ”

“ At the same time, the indigenous species are very poor. It is not merely the want of intelligence or of security which has prevented the inhabitants from cultivating them. The nature of the indigenous flora has so much to do with it, that the Europeans, established in these countries for a hundred years, have only cultivated a single species, the Tetragonia, an insignificant green vegetable. ”

“ It appears to me, moreover, that philologists, notably those who are occupied with Sanskrit, are always too eager to find the etymology of every name. They do not allow sufficiently for human stupidity, which has in all time given rise to absurd words, without any real basis, and derived only from error or superstition.
The filiation of modern European tongues is known to every one. That of ancient languages has, for more than half a century, been the object of important labours. ”

“ No one has found the species wild in North or South America. I cannot find in works on Brazil, Guiana, or the West Indies any sign of an ancient cultivation or of wild growth, either from names, or from traditions or more or less distinct belief. In the United States those men of science who best know the languages and customs of the natives, Dr. Harris for instance, and more recently Trumbull,1260 maintain that the Cucurbitaceæ called squash by the Anglo-Americans, and macock, or cashaw, cushaw, by early travellers in Virginia, are pumpkins. ”

“ Where there is such confusion it would be the best course for botanists to seek with care the Gossypia, which are wild in America, to constitute the one or more species solely upon these, leaving to the cultivated species their strange and often absurd and misleading names. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The identity of a common name for a given species in several languages may have two very different explanations. It may be because a plant has been spread by a people which has been dispersed and scattered. It may also result from the transmission of a plant from one people to another with the name it bore in its original home. The first case is that of the hemp, of which the name is similar, at least as to the root, in all the tongues derived from the primitive Aryan stock. ”

“ Settled populations can only have been formed where nutritious species existed naturally in soil easy of cultivation. The potato, the sweet potato, and maize doubtless fulfilled these conditions in America, and as the great populations of this part of the world existed first in the high grounds of Chili and Mexico, it is there probably that wild maize existed. We must not look for it in the low-lying regions such as Paraguay and the banks of the Amazon, or the hot districts of Guiana, Panama, and Mexico, since their inhabitants were formerly less numerous. ”

“ I have, however, one objection to make, founded on geographical botany. Raphanus raphanistrum is a European plant which does not exist in Asia.45 It cannot, therefore, be this species that has furnished the inhabitants of India, China, and Japan with the radishes which they have cultivated for centuries. On the other hand, how could R. raphanistrum, which is supposed to have been modified in Europe, have been transmitted in ancient times across the whole of Asia? The transport of cultivated plants has commonly proceeded from Asia into Europe. ”

“ In the progress of civilization the beginnings are usually feeble, obscure, and limited. There are reasons why this should be the case with the first attempts at agriculture or horticulture. Between the custom of gathering wild fruits, grain, and roots, and that of the regular cultivation of the plants which produce them, there are several steps. A family may scatter seeds around its dwelling, and provide itself the next year with the same product in the forest. ”

“ We must say it frankly, the works which repeat and commentate on the ancient authors of Greece and Rome without giving the first place to botanical and archæological facts, are no longer on a level with the science of the day. Nevertheless, I could name several German works which have attained to the honour of a third edition. It would have been better to reprint the earlier publications of Fraas and Lenz, of Targioni and Heldreich, which have always given more weight to the modern data of botany, than to the vague descriptions of classic authors ”

“ Geographical botany teaches us what countries have genera and even species in common, in spite of a certain distance, and what, on the contrary, are very different, in spite of similarity of climate or inconsiderable distance. It also teaches us what species, genera, and families are scattered over a wide area, and the more limited extent of others. These data are of great assistance in determining the probable origin of a given species. Naturalized plants spread rapidly. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ The question is not clearly stated when we ask if such and such olive trees of a given locality are really wild. In a woody species which lives so long and shoots again from the same stock when cut off by accident, it is impossible to know the origin of the individuals observed. They may have been sown by man or birds at a very early epoch, for olive trees of more than a thousand years old are known. The effect of such sowing is a naturalization, which is equivalent to an extension of area. ”