Arnotto, or Anatto—Bisca orellana, Linnæus.
The dye, called rocou in French, arnotto in English, is extracted from the pulp which encases the seed. The inhabitants of the West India Islands, of the Isthmus of Darien, and of Brazil, used it at the time of the discovery of America to stain their bodies red, and the Mexicans in painting.[2018] The arnotto, a small tree of the order Bixaceæ, grows wild in the West Indies,[2019] and over a great part of the continent of America between the tropics. Herbaria and floras abound in indications of locality, but do not generally specify whether the species is cultivated, wild, or naturalized. I note, however, that it is said to be indigenous by Seemann on the north-west coast of Mexico and Panama, by Triana in New Granada, by Meyer in Dutch Guiana, and by Piso and Claussen in Brazil.[2020] With such a vast area, it is not surprising that the species has many names in American languages; that of the Brazilians, urucu, is the origin of rocou.
It was not very necessary to plant this tree in order to obtain its product; nevertheless Piso relates that the Brazilians, in the sixteenth century, were not content with the wild plant, and in Jamaica, in the seventeenth century, the plantations of Bixa were common. It was one of the first species transported from America to the south of Asia and to Africa. It has become so entirely naturalized, that Roxburgh[2021] believed it to be indigenous in India.
Cotton—Gossypium herbaceum, Linnæus.
When, in 1855, I sought the origin of the cultivated cottons,[2022] there was still great uncertainty as to the distinction of the species. Since then two excellent works have appeared in Italy, upon which we can rely; one by Parlatore,[2023] formerly director of the botanical gardens at Florence, the other by Todaro,[2024] of Palermo. These two works are illustrated with magnificent coloured plates. Nothing better can be desired for the cultivated cottons. On the other hand, our knowledge of the true species, I mean of those which exist naturally in a wild state, has not increased as much as it might. However, the definition of species seems fairly accurate in the works of Dr. Masters,[2025] whom I shall therefore follow. This author agrees with Parlatore in admitting seven well-known species and two doubtful, while Todaro counts fifty-four, of which only two are doubtful, reckoning as species forms with some distinguishing character, but which originated and are preserved by cultivation.
The common names of the cottons give no assistance; they are even calculated to lead us completely astray as to the origin of the species. A cotton called Siamese comes from America; another is called Brazilian or Ava cotton, according to the fancy or the error of cultivators.
We will first consider Gossypium herbaceum, an ancient species in Asiatic plantations, and now the commonest in Europe and in the United States. In the hot countries whence it came, its stem lasts several years, but out of the tropics it becomes annual from the effect of the winter’s cold. The flower is generally yellow, with a red centre; the cotton yellow or white, according to the variety. Parlatore examined in herbaria several wild specimens, and cultivated others derived from wild plants of the Indian Peninsula. He also admits it to be indigenous in Burmah and in the Indian Archipelago, from the specimens of collectors, who have not perhaps been sufficiently careful to verify its wild character.
Masters regards as undoubtedly wild in Sindh a form which he calls Gossypium Stocksii, which he says is probably the wild condition of Gossypium herbaceum, and of other cottons cultivated in India for a long time. Todaro, who is not given to uniting many forms in a single species, nevertheless admits the identity of this variety with the common G. herbaceum. The yellow colour of the cotton is then the natural condition of the species. The seed has not the short down which exists between the longer hairs in the cultivated G. herbaceum.
Cultivation has probably extended the area of the species beyond the limits of the primitive habitation. This is, I imagine, the case in the Sunda Islands and the Malay Peninsula, where certain individuals appear more or less wild. Kurz,[2026] in his Burmese flora, mentions G. herbaceum, with yellow or white cotton, as cultivated and also as wild in desert places and waste ground.
The herbaceous cotton is called kapase in Bengali, kapas in Hindustani, which shows that the Sanskrit word karpassi undoubtedly refers to this species.[2027] It was early cultivated in Bactriana, where the Greeks had noticed it at the time of the expedition of Alexander. Theophrastus speaks of it[2028] in such a manner as to leave no doubt. The tree-cotton of the Isle of Tylos, in the Persian Gulf, of which he makes mention further on,[2029] was probably also G. herbaceum; for Tylos is not far from India, and in such a hot climate the herbaceous cotton becomes a shrub. The introduction of a cotton plant into China took place only in the ninth or tenth century of our era, which shows that probably the area of G. herbaceum was originally limited to the south and east of India. The knowledge and perhaps the cultivation of the Asiatic cotton was propagated in the Græco-Roman world after the expedition of Alexander, but before the first centuries of the Christian era.[2030] If the byssos of the Greeks was the cotton plant, as most scholars think, it was cultivated at Elis, according to Pausanias and Pliny;[2031] but Curtius and C. Ritter[2032] consider the word byssos as a general term for threads, and that it was probably applied in this case to fine linen. It is evident that the cotton was never, or very rarely, cultivated by the ancients. It is so useful that it would have become common if it had been introduced into a single locality—in Greece, for instance. It was afterwards propagated on the shores of the Mediterranean by the Arabs, as we see from the name qutn or kutn,[2033] which has passed into the modern languages of the south of Europe as cotone, coton, algodon. Eben el Awan, of Seville, who lived in the twelfth century, describes its cultivation as it was practised in his time in Sicily, Spain, and the East.[2034]