Early writers on Asia do not mention it; its origin must, therefore, be sought in Africa. Loureiro[1741] had seen it on the eastern coast of this continent, and Petit Thouars in Madagascar, but they do not say that it was wild. The authors of the flora of Senegambia[1742] described it as “cultivated and probably wild” in Galam. Lastly, Schweinfurth and Ascherson[1743] found it wild on the banks of the Nile from Khartoum to Gondokoro. In spite of the possibility of naturalization from cultivation, it is extremely probable that the plant is wild in tropical Africa.
Buckwheat—Polygonum fagopyrum, Linnæus; Fagopyrum esculentum, Mœnch.
The history of this species has been completely cleared up in the last few years. It grows wild in Mantschuria, on the banks of the river Amur,[1744] in Dahuria, and near Lake Baikal.[1745] It is also indicated in China and in the mountains of the north of India,[1746] but I do not find that in these regions its wild character is certain. Roxburgh has only seen it in a cultivated state in the north of India, and Bretschneider[1747] thinks it doubtful that it is indigenous in China. Its cultivation is not ancient, for the first Chinese author who mentions it lived in the tenth or eleventh century of the Christian era.
Buckwheat is cultivated in the Himalayas under the names ogal or ogla and kouton.[1748] As there is no Sanskrit name for this species nor for the two following, I doubt the antiquity of their cultivation in the mountains of Central Asia. It was certainly unknown to the Greeks and Romans. The name fagopyrum is an invention of modern botanists from the similarity in the shape of the seed to a beech-nut, whence also the German buchweitzen[1749] (corrupted in English into buckwheat) and the Italian faggina.
The names of this plant in European languages of Aryan origin have not a common root. Thus the western Aryans did not know the species any more than the Sanskrit-speaking Orientals, a further sign of the nonexistence of the plant in the mountains of Central Asia. Even at the present day it is probably unknown in the north of Persia and in Turkey, since floras do not mention it.[1750] Bosc states, in the Dictionnaire d’Agriculture, that Olivier had seen it wild in Persia, but I do not find this in this naturalist’s published account of his travels.
The species came into Europe in the Middle Ages, through Tartary and Russia. The first mention of its cultivation in Germany occurs in a Mecklenburg register of 1436.[1751] In the sixteenth century it spread towards the centre of Europe, and in poor soil, as in Brittany, it became important. Reynier, who, as a rule, is very accurate, imagined that the French name sarrasin was Keltic;[1752] but M. le Gall wrote to me formerly that the Breton names simply mean black wheat or black corn, ed-du and gwinis-du. There is no original name in Keltic languages, which seems natural now that we know the origin of the species.[1753]
When the plant was introduced into Belgium and into France, and even when it became known in Italy, that is to say in the sixteenth century, the name blé sarrasin (Saracen wheat) or sarrasin was commonly adopted. Common names are often so absurd, and so unthinkingly bestowed, that we cannot tell in this particular case whether the name refers to the colour of the grain which was that attributed to the Saracens, or to the supposed introduction from the country of the Arabs or Moors. It was not then known that the species did not exist in the countries south of the Mediterranean, nor even in Syria and Persia. It is also possible that the idea of a southern origin was taken from the name sarrasin, which was given from the colour. This origin was admitted until the end of the last and even in the present century.[1754] Reynier was, fifty years ago, the first to oppose it.
Buckwheat sometimes escapes from cultivation and becomes quasi-wild. The nearer we approach its original country the more often this occurs, whence it results that it is hard to define the limit of the wild plant on the confines of Europe and Asia, in the Himalayas, and in China. In Japan these semi-naturalizations are not rare.[1755]
Tartary Buckwheat—Polygonum tataricum, Linnæus; Fagopyrum tataricum, Gærtner.
Less sensitive to cold than the common buckwheat, but yielding a poorer kind of seed, this species is sometimes cultivated in Europe and Asia—in the Himalayas,[1756] for instance; but its culture is recent. Authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries do not mention it, and Linnæus was one of the first to speak of it as of Tartar origin. Roxburgh and Hamilton had not seen it in Northern India in the beginning of this century, and I find no indication of it in China and Japan.