The carob has two names in ancient languages—the one Greek, keraunia or kerateia;[1692] the other Arabic, chirnub or charûb. The first alludes to the form of the pod, which is like a slightly curved horn; the other means merely pod, for we find in Ebn Baithar’s[1693] work that four other leguminous plants bear the same name, with a qualifying epithet. The Latins had no special name; they used the Greek word, or the expression siliqua, siliqua græca (Greek pod).[1694] This dearth of names is the sign of a once restricted area, and of a culture which probably does not date from prehistoric time. The Greek name is still retained in Greece. The Arab name persists among the Kabyles, who call the fruit kharroub, the tree takharrout,[1695] and the Spaniards algarrobo. Curiously enough, the Italians also took the Arab name currabo, carubio, whence the French caroubier. It seems that it must have been introduced after the Roman epoch by the Arabs of the Middle Ages, when there was another name for it. These details are all in favour of Bianca’s theory of a more southern origin than Sicily. Pliny says the species belonged to Syria, Ionia, Cnidos, and Rhodes, but he does not say whether it was wild or cultivated in these places. Pliny also says that the carob tree did not exist in Egypt. Yet it has been recognized in monuments belonging to a much earlier epoch than that of Pliny, and Egyptologists even attribute two Egyptian names to it, kontrates or jiri.[1696] Lepsius gives a drawing of a pod which appears to him to be certainly a carob, and the botanist Kotschy made certain by microscopic investigation that a stick taken from a sarcophagus was made from the wood of the carob tree.[1697] There is no known Hebrew name for the species, which is not mentioned in the Old Testament. The New Testament speaks of it by the Greek name in the parable of the prodigal son. It is a tradition of the Christians in the East that St. John Baptist fed upon the fruit of the carob in the desert, and hence came the names given to it in the Middle Ages—bread of St. John, and Johannis brodbaum.
Evidently this tree became important at the beginning of the Christian era, and it spread, especially through the agency of the Arabs, towards the West. If it had previously existed in Algeria, among the Berbers, and in Spain, older names would have persisted, and the species would probably have been introduced into the Canaries by the Phœnicians.
The information gained on the subject may be summed up as follows:—
The carob grew wild in the Levant, probably on the southern coast of Anatolia and in Syria, perhaps also in Cyrenaica. Its cultivation began within historic time. The Greeks diffused it in Greece and Italy; but it was afterwards more highly esteemed by the Arabs, who propagated it as far as Marocco and Spain. In all these countries the tree has become naturalized here and there in a less productive form, which it is needful to graft to obtain good fruit.
The carob has not been found in the tufa and quaternary deposits of Southern Europe. It is the only one of its kind in the genus Ceratonia, which is somewhat exceptional among the Leguminosæ, especially in Europe. Nothing shows that it existed in the ancient tertiary or quaternary flora of the south-west of Europe.
Common Haricot Kidney Bean—Phaseolus vulgaris, Savi.
When, in 1855, I wished to investigate the origin of the genera Phaseolus and Dolichos,[1698] the distinction of species was so little defined, and the floras of tropical countries so rare, that I was obliged to leave several questions on one side. Now, thanks to the works of Bentham and Georg von Martens,[1699] completing the previous labours of Savi,[1700] the Leguminæ of hot countries are better known; lastly, the seeds discovered quite recently in the Peruvian tombs of Ancon, examined by Wittmack, have completely modified the question of origin.
I will speak first of the common haricot bean, afterwards of some other species, without, however, enumerating all those which are cultivated, for several of these are still ill defined.
Botanists held for a long time that the common haricot was of Indian origin. No one had found it wild, nor has it yet been found, but it was supposed to be of Indian origin, although the species was also cultivated in Africa and America, in temperate and hot regions, at least in those where the heat and humidity are not excessive. I called attention to the fact that there is no Sanskrit name, and that sixteenth-century gardeners often called the species Turkish bean. Convinced, moreover, that the Greeks cultivated this plant under the names fasiolos and dolichos, I suggested that it came originally from Western Asia, and not from India. Georg von Martens adopted this hypothesis.
However, the meaning of the words dolichos of Theophrastus, fasiolos of Dioscorides, faseolus and phaseolus of the Romans,[1701] is far from being sufficiently defined to allow them to be attributed with certainty to Phaseolus vulgaris. Several cultivated Leguminosæ are supported by the trellises mentioned by authors, and have pods and seeds of a similar kind. The best argument for translating these names by Phaseolus vulgaris is that the modern Greeks and Italians have names derived from fasiolus for the common haricot. In modern Greek it is fasoulia, Albanian (Pelasgic?) fasulé, in Italian fagiolo. It is possible, however, that the name has been transferred from a species of pea or vetch, or from a haricot formerly cultivated, to our modern haricot. 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. I can only say it may be so.