Cochlearia Armoracia is a plant belonging to the temperate, and especially to the eastern regions of Europe. It is diffused from Finland to Astrakhan, and to the desert of Cuman.[51] Grisebach mentions also several localities in Turkey in Europe, near Enos, for instance, where it abounds on the sea-shore.[52]
The further we advance towards the west of Europe, the less the authors of floras appear sure that the plant is indigenous, and the localities assigned to it are more scattered and doubtful. The species is rarer in Norway than in Sweden,[53] in the British Isles than in Holland, where a foreign origin is not attributed to it.[54]
The specific names confirm the impression of its origin in the east rather than in the west of Europe; thus the name chren[55] in Russia recurs in all the Sclavonic languages, krenai in Lithuanian, chren in Illyrian,[56] etc. It has introduced itself into a few German dialects, round Vienna,[57] for instance, where it persists, in spite of the spread of the German tongue. We owe to it also the French names cran or cranson. The word used in Germany, Meerretig, and in Holland, meer-radys, whence the Italian Swiss dialect has taken the name méridi, or mérédi, means sea-radish, and is not primitive like the word chren. It comes probably from the fact that the plant grows well near the sea, a circumstance common to many of the Cruciferæ, and which should be the case with this species, for it is wild in the east of Russia where there is a good deal of salt soil. The Swedish name peppar-rot[58] suggests the idea that the species came into Sweden later than the introduction of pepper by commerce into the north of Europe. However, the name may have taken the place of an older one, which has remained unknown to us. The English name of horse-radish is not of such an original nature as to lead to a belief in the existence of the species in the country before the Saxon conquest. It means a very strong radish. The Welsh name rhuddygl maurth[59] is only the translation of the English word, whence we may infer that the Kelts of Great Britain had no special name, and were not acquainted with the species. In the west of France, the name raifort, which is the commonest, merely means strong root. Formerly it bore in France the names of German, or Capuchin mustard, which shows a foreign and recent origin. On the contrary, the word chren is in all the Sclavonic languages, a word which has penetrated into some German and French dialects under the forms of kreen, cran, and cranson, and which is certainly of a primitive nature, and shows the antiquity of the species in temperate Eastern Europe. It is therefore most probable that cultivation has propagated and naturalized the plant westward from the east for about a thousand years.
Turnips—Brassica species et varietates radice in crassata.
The innumerable varieties and subvarieties of the turnip known as swedes, Kohl-rabi, etc., may be all attributed to one of the four species of Linnæus—Brassica napus, Br. oleracea, Br. rapa, Br. campestris—of which the two last should, according to modern authors, be fused into one. Other varieties of the species are cultivated for the leaves (cabbages), for the inflorescence (cauliflowers), or for the oil which is extracted from the seed (colza, rape, etc.). When the root or the lower part of the stem[60] is fleshy, the seed is not abundant, nor worth the trouble of extracting the oil; when those organs are slender, the production of the seed, on the contrary, becomes more important, and decides the economic use of the plant. In other words, the store of nutritious matter is placed sometimes in the lower, sometimes in the upper part of the plant, although the organization of the flower and fruit is similar, or nearly so.
Touching the question of origin, we need not occupy ourselves with the botanical limits of the species, and with the classification of the races, varieties, and sub-varieties,[61] since all the Brassicæ are of European and Siberian origin, and are still to be seen in these regions wild, or half wild, in some form or other.
Plants so commonly cultivated and whose germination is so easy often spread round cultivated places; hence some uncertainty regarding the really wild nature of the plants found in the open country. Nevertheless, Linnæus mentions that Brassica napus grows in the sand on the sea-coast in Sweden (Gothland), Holland, and England, which is confirmed, as far as Sweden is concerned, by Fries,[62] who, with his usual attention to questions of this nature, mentions Br. Campestris, L. (type of the Rapa with slender roots), as really wild in the whole Scandinavian peninsula, in Finland and Denmark. Ledebour[63] indicates it in the whole of Russia, Siberia, and the Caspian Sea.
The floras of temperate and southern Asia mention rapes and turnips as cultivated plants, never as escaped from cultivation.[64] This is already an indication of foreign origin. The evidence of philology is no less significant.
There is no Sanskrit name for these plants, but only modern Hindu and Bengalee names, and those only for Brassica rapa and B. oleracea.[65] Kæmpfer[66] gives Japanese names for the turnip—busei, or more commonly aona—but there is nothing to show that these names are ancient. Bretschneider, who has made a careful study of Chinese authors, mentions no Brassica. Apparently they do not occur in any of the ancient works on botany and agriculture, although several varieties are now cultivated in China.
It is just the reverse in Europe. The old languages have a number of names which seem to be original. Brassica rapa is called meipen or erfinen[67] in Wales; repa and rippa in several Slav tongues,[68] which answers to the Latin rapa, and is allied to the neipa of the Anglo-Saxons. The Brassica napus is in Welsh bresych yr yd; in Erse braisscagh buigh, according to Threlkeld,[69] who sees in braisscagh the root of the Latin Brassica. A Polish name, karpiele, a Lithuanian, jellazoji,[70] are also given, without speaking of a host of other names, transferred sometimes in popular speech from one species to another. I shall speak of the names of Brassica oleracea when I come to vegetables.