Plants of this species have for some years been sent from the Botanical Gardens at Kew into the English colonies. It grows wild in Liberia, Angola, Golungo Alto,[2093] and probably in several other parts of western tropical Africa.
It is of stronger growth than the common coffee, and the berries, which are larger, yield an excellent product. The official reports of Kew Gardens by the learned director, Sir Joseph Hooker, show the progress of this introduction, which is very favourably received, especially in Dominica.
Madia—Madia sativa, Molina.
The inhabitants of Chili before the discovery of America cultivated this annual species of the Composite family, for the sake of the oil contained in the seed. Since the olive has been extensively planted, the madia is despised by the Chilians, who only complain of the plant as a weed which chokes their gardens.[2094] The Europeans began to cultivate it with indifferent success, owing to its bad smell.
The madia is indigenous in Chili and also in California.[2095] There are other examples of this disjunction of habitation between the two countries.[2096]
Nutmeg—Myristica fragrans, Houttuyn.
The nutmeg, a little tree of the order Myristiceœ, is wild in the Moluccas, principally in the Banda Islands.[2097] It has long been cultivated there, to judge from the considerable number of its varieties. Europeans have received the nutmeg by the Asiatic trade since the Middle Ages, but the Dutch long possessed the monopoly of its cultivation. When the English owned the Moluccas at the end of the last century, they carried live nutmeg trees to Bencoolen and into Prince Edward’s Islands.[2098] It afterwards spread to Bourbon, Mauritius, Madagascar, and into some of the colonies of tropical America, but with indifferent success from a commercial point of view.
Sesame—Sesamum indicum, de Candolle; S. indicum and S. orientale, Linnæus.
Sesame has long been cultivated in the hot regions of the old world for the sake of the oil extracted from the seeds.