The white chicories or endives of our gardens are distinguished from Cichorium Intybus, in that they are annuals, and less bitter to the taste. Moreover, the hairs of the pappus which crowns the seed are four times longer, and unequal instead of being equal. As long as this plant was compared with C. Intybus, it was difficult not to admit two species. The origin of C. Endivia is uncertain. When we received, forty years ago, specimens of an Indian Cichorium, which Hamilton named C. cosmia, they seemed to us so like the endive that we supposed the latter to have an Indian origin, as has been sometimes suggested;[413] but Anglo-Indian botanists said, and continue to assert, that in India the plant only grows under cultivation.[414] The uncertainty persisted as to the geographical origin. After this, several botanists[415] conceived the idea of comparing the endive with an annual species, wild in the region of the Mediterranean, Cichorium pumilum, Jacquin (C. divaricatum, Schousboe), and the differences were found to be so slight that some have suspected, and others have affirmed, their specific identity. For my part, after having seen wild specimens from Sicily, and compared the good illustrations published by Reichenbach (Icones, vol. xix., pls. 1357, 1358), I am disposed to take the cultivated endives for varieties of the same species as C. pumilum. In this case the oldest name being C. Endivia, it is the one which ought to be retained, as has been done by Schultz. It resembles, moreover, a popular name common to several languages.
The wild plant exists in the whole region, of which the Mediterranean is the centre, from Madeira,[416] Marocco,[417] and Algeria,[418] as far as Palestine,[419] the Caucasus, and Turkestan.[420] It is very common in the islands of the Mediterranean and in Greece. Towards the west, in Spain and Madeira, for instance, it is probable that it has become naturalized from cultivation, judging from the positions it occupies in the fields and by the wayside.
No positive proof is found in ancient authors of the use of this plant by the Greeks and Romans;[421] but it is probable that they made use of it and several other Cichoria. The common names tell us nothing, since they may have been applied to two different species. These names vary little,[422] and suggest a cultivation of Græco-Roman origin. A Hindu name, kasni, and a Tamul one, koschi,[423] are mentioned, but no Sanskrit name, and this indicates that the cultivation of this plant was of late origin in the east.
Spinach—Spinacia oleracea, Linnæus.
This vegetable was unknown to the Greeks and Romans.[424] It was new to Europe in the sixteenth century,[425] and it has been a matter of dispute whether it should be called spanacha, as coming from Spain, or spinacia, from its prickly fruit.[426] It was afterwards shown that the name comes from the Arabic isfânâdsch, esbanach, or sepanach, according to different authors.[427] The Persian name is ispany, or ispanaj,[428] and the Hindu isfany, or palak, according to Piddington, and also pinnis, according to the same and to Roxburgh. The absence of any Sanskrit name shows a cultivation of no great antiquity in these regions. Loureiro saw the spinach cultivated at Canton, and Maximowicz in Mantschuria;[429] but Bretschneider tells us that the Chinese name signifies herb of Persia, and that Western vegetables were commonly introduced into China a century before the Christian era.[430] It is therefore probable that the cultivation of this plant began in Persia from the time of the Græco-Roman civilization, or that it did not quickly spread either to the east or to the west of its Persian origin. No Hebrew name is known, so that the Arabs must have received both plant and name from the Persians. Nothing leads us to suppose that they carried this vegetable into Spain. Ebn Baithar, who was living in 1235, was of Malaga; but the Arabic works he quotes do not say where the plant was cultivated, except one of them, which says that its cultivation was common at Nineveh and Babylon. Herrera’s work on Spanish agriculture does not mention the species, although it is inserted in a supplement of recent date, whence it is probable that the edition of 1513 did not speak of it; so that the European cultivation must have come from the East about the fifteenth century.
Some popular works repeat that spinach is a native of Northern Asia, but there is nothing to confirm this supposition. It evidently comes from the empire of the ancient Medes and Persians. According to Bosc,[431] the traveller, Olivier brought back some seeds of it, found in the East in the open country. This would be a positive proof, if the produce of these seeds had been examined by a botanist in order to ascertain the species and the variety. In the present state of our knowledge it must be owned that spinach has not yet been found in a wild state, unless it be a cultivated modification of Spinacia tetandra, Steven, which is wild to the south of the Caucasus, in Turkestan, in Persia, and in Afghanistan, and which is used as a vegetable under the name of schamum.[432]
Without entering here into a purely botanical discussion, I may say that, after reading the descriptions quoted by Boissier, and looking at Wight’s[433] plate of Spinacia tetandra, Roxb., cultivated in India, and the specimens of several herbaria, I see no decided difference between this plant and the cultivated spinach with prickly fruit. The term tetandra implies that one of the plants has five and the other four stamens, but the number varies in our cultivated spinaches.[434]
If, as seems probable, the two plants are two varieties, the one cultivated, the other sometimes wild and sometimes cultivated, the oldest name, S. oleracea, ought to persist, especially as the two plants are found in the cultivated grounds of their original country.
The Dutch or great spinach, of which the fruit has no spines, is evidently a garden product. Tragus, or Bock was the first to mention it in the sixteenth century.[435]
Amaranth—Amarantus gangeticus, Linnæus.