PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FLOWERS, OR FOR THE ORGANS WHICH ENVELOP THEM.
Clove—Caryophyllus aromaticus, LinnÆus.
The clove used for domestic purposes is the calix and flower-bud of a plant belonging to the order of MyrtaceÆ. Although the plant has been often described and very well drawn from cultivated specimens, some doubt remains as to its nature when wild. I spoke of it in my Geographical Botany in 1855, but it does not appear that the question has made any further progress since then, which induces me to repeat here what I said then.
“The clove must have come originally from the Moluccas,” as Rumphius asserts,777 for its cultivation was limited two centuries ago to a few little islands in this archipelago. I cannot, however, find any proof that the true clove tree, with peduncles and aromatic buds, has been found in a wild state. Rumphius778 considers that a plant of which he gives a description, and a drawing under the name Caryophyllum sylvestre, belongs to the same species, and this plant is wild throughout the Moluccas. A native told him that the cultivated clove trees degenerate into this form, and Rumphius himself found a plant of C. sylvestre in a deserted plantation of cultivated cloves. Nevertheless plate 3 differs from plate 1 of the cultivated clove in the shape of the leaves and of the teeth of the calix. I do not speak of plate 2, which appears to be an abnormal form of the cultivated clove. Rumphius says that C. sylvestre has no aromatic properties; now, as a rule, the aromatic properties are more developed in the wild plants of a species than in the cultivated plants. Sonnerat779 also publishes figures of the true clove and of a spurious clove found in a small island near the country of the Papuans. It is easy to see that his false clove differs completely by its blunt leaves from the true clove, and also from the two species of Rumphius. I cannot make up my mind to class all these different plants, wild and cultivated, together, as all authors have done.780 It is especially necessary to exclude plate 120 of Sonnerat, which is admitted in the Botanical Magazine. An historical account of the cultivation of the clove, and of its introduction into different countries, will be found in the last-named work, in the Dictionnaire d’Agriculture, and in the dictionaries of natural history.
If it be true, as Roxburgh says,781 that the Sanskrit language had a name, luvunga, for the clove, the trade in this spice must date from a very early epoch, even supposing the name to be more modern than the true Sanskrit. But I doubt its genuine character, for the Romans would have known of a substance so easily transported, and it does not appear that it was introduced into Europe before the discovery of the Moluccas by the Portuguese.
Hop—Humulus Lupulus, LinnÆus.
The hop is wild in Europe from England and Sweden as far south as the mountains of the Mediterranean basin, and in Asia as far as Damascus, as the south of the Caspian Sea, and of Eastern Siberia,782 but it is not found in India, the north of China, or the basin of the river Amur.783 In spite of the entirely wild appearance of the hop in Europe in districts far from cultivation, it has been sometimes asked if it is not of Asiatic origin.784 I do not think this can be proved, nor even that it is likely. The fact that the Greeks and Latins have not spoken of the use of the hop in making beer is easily explained, as they were almost entirely unacquainted with this drink. If the Greeks have not mentioned the plant, it is simply perhaps because it is rare in their country. From the Italian name lupulo it seems likely that Pliny speaks of it with other vegetables under the name lupus salictarius.785 That the custom of brewing with hops only became general in the Middle Ages proves nothing, except that other plants were formerly employed, as is still the case in some districts. The Kelts, the Germans, other peoples of the north and even of the south who had the vine, made beer786 either of barley or of other fermented grain, adding in certain cases different vegetable substances—the bark of the oak or of the tamarisk, for instance, or the fruits of Myrica gale.787 It is very possible that they did not soon discover the advantages of the hop, and that even after these were recognized, they employed wild hops before beginning to cultivate them. The first mention of hop-gardens occurs in an act of donation made by Pepin, father of Charlemagne, in 768.788 In the fourteenth century it was an important object of culture in Germany, but it began in England only under Henry VIII.789
The common names of the hop only furnish negative indications as to its origin. There is no Sanskrit name,790 and this agrees with the absence of the species in the region of the Himalayas, and shows that the early Aryan peoples had not noticed and employed it. I have quoted before791 some of the European names, showing their diversity, although some few of them may be derived from a common stock. Hehn, the philologist, has treated of their etymology, and shown how obscure it is, but he has not mentioned the names totally distinct from humle, hopf or hop, and chmeli of the Scandinavian, Gothic, and Slav races; for example, Apini in Lette, Apwynis in Lithuanian, tap in Esthonian, blust in Illyrian,792 which have evidently other roots. This variety tends to confirm the theory that the species existed in Europe before the arrival of the Aryan nations. Several different peoples must have distinguished, known, and used this plant successively, which confirms its extension in Europe and in Asia before it was used in brewing.
Carthamine—Carthamus tinctorius, LinnÆus.
The composite annual which produces the dye called carthamine is one of the most ancient cultivated species. Its flowers are used for dyeing in red or yellow, and the seeds yield oil.
The grave-cloths which wrap the ancient Egyptian mummies are dyed with carthamine,793 and quite recently fragments of the plant have been found in the tombs discovered at Deir el Bahari.794 Its cultivation must also be ancient in India, since there are two Sanskrit names for it, cusumbha and kamalottara, of which the first has several derivatives in the modern languages of the peninsula.795 The Chinese only received carthamine in the second century B.C., when Chang-kien brought it back from Bactriana.796 The Greeks and Latins were probably not acquainted with it, for it is very doubtful whether this is the plant which they knew as cnikos or cnicus.797 At a later period the Arabs contributed largely to diffuse the cultivation of carthamine, which they named qorton, kurtum, whence carthamine, or usfur, or ihridh, or morabu,798 a diversity indicating an ancient existence in several countries of Western Asia or of Africa. The progress of chemistry threatens to do away with the cultivation of this plant as of many others, but it still subsists in the south of Europe, in the East, and throughout the valley of the Nile.799
No botanist has found the carthamine in a really wild state. Authors doubtfully assign to it an origin in India or Africa, in Abyssinia in particular, but they have never seen it except in a cultivated state, or with every appearance of having escaped from cultivation.800
Mr. Clarke,801 formerly director of the Botanical Gardens in Calcutta, who has lately studied the CompositÆ of India, includes the species only as a cultivated one. The summary of our modern knowledge of the plants of the Nile region, including Abyssinia, by Schweinfurth and Ascherson,802 only indicates it as a cultivated species, nor does the list of the plants observed by Rohlfs on his recent journey mention a wild carthamine.803
As the species has not been found wild either in India or in Africa, and as it has been cultivated for thousands of years in both countries, the idea occurred to me of seeking its origin in the intermediate region; a method which had been successful in other cases.
Unfortunately, the interior of Arabia is almost unknown. Forskal, who has visited the coasts of Yemen has learnt nothing about the carthamine; nor is it mentioned among the plants of Botta and of BovÉ. But an Arab, Abu Anifa, quoted by Ebn Baithar, a thirteenth-century writer, expressed himself as follows:804—“Usfur, this plant furnishes a substance used as a dye; there are two kinds, one cultivated and one wild, which both grow in Arabia, of which the seeds are called elkurthum.” Abu Anifa was very likely right.
Saffron—Crocus sativus, LinnÆus.
The saffron was cultivated in very early times in the west of Asia. The Romans praised the saffron of Cilicia, which they preferred to that grown in Italy.805 Asia Minor, Persia, and Kashmir have been for a long time the countries which export the most. India gets it from Kashmir806 at the present day. Roxburgh and Wallich do not mention it in their works. The two Sanskrit names mentioned by Piddington807 probably applied to the substance saffron brought from the West, for the name kasmirajamma appears to indicate its origin in Kashmir. The other name is kunkuma. The Hebrew word karkom is commonly translated saffron, but it more probably applies to carthamine, to judge from the name of the latter in Arabic.808 Besides, the saffron is not cultivated in Egypt or in Arabia. The Greek name is krokos.809 Saffron, which recurs in all modern European languages, comes from the Arabic sahafaran,810 zafran.811 The Spaniards, nearer to the Arabs, call it azafran. The Arabic name itself comes from assfar, yellow.
Trustworthy authors say that C. sativus is wild in Greece812 and in the Abruzzi mountains in Italy.813 Maw, who is preparing a monograph of the genus Crocus, based on a long series of observations in gardens and in herbaria, connects with C. sativus six forms which are found wild in mountainous districts from Italy to Kurdistan. None of these, he says,814 are identical with the cultivated variety; but certain forms described under other names (C. Orisnii, C. Cartwrightianus, C. Thomasii), hardly differ from it. These are from Italy and Greece. The cultivation of saffron, of which the conditions are given in the Cours d’Agriculture by Gasparin, and in the Bulletin de la SociÉtÉ d’Acclimatation for 1870, is becoming more and more rare in Europe and Asia.815 It has sometimes had the effect of naturalizing the species for a few years at least in localities where it appears to be wild.