The lucern was known to the Greeks and Romans. They called it in Greek medicai, in Latin medica, or herba medica, because it had been brought from Media at the time of the Persian war, about 470 years before the Christian era.[447] The Romans often cultivated it, at any rate from the beginning of the first or second century. Cato does not speak of it,[448] but it is mentioned by Varro, Columella, and Virgil. De Gasparin[449] notices that Crescenz, in 1478, does not mention it in Italy, and that in 1711 Tull had not seen it beyond the Alps. Targioni, however, who could not be mistaken on this head, says that the cultivation of lucern was maintained in Italy, especially in Tuscany, from ancient times.[450] It is rare in modern Greece.[451] French cultivators have often given to the lucern the name of sainfoin, which belongs properly to Onobrychis sativa; and this transposition still exists, for instance in the neighbourhood of Geneva. The name lucern has been supposed to come from the valley of Luzerne, in Piedmont; but there is another and more probable origin. The Spaniards had an old name, eruye, mentioned by J. Bauhin,[452] and the Catalans call it userdas[453] whence perhaps the patois name in the south of France, laouzerdo, nearly akin to luzerne. It was so commonly cultivated in Spain that the Italians have sometimes called it herba spagna.[454] The Spaniards have, besides the names already given, mielga, or melga, which appears to come from Medica, but they principally used names derived from the Arabic—alfafa, alfasafat, alfalfa. In the thirteenth century, the famous physician Ebn Baithar, who wrote at Malaga, uses the Arab word fisfisat, which he derives from the Persian isfist.[455] It will be seen that, if we are to trust to the common names, the origin of the plant would be either in Spain, Piedmont, or Persia. Fortunately botanists can furnish direct and possible proofs of the original home of the species.
It has been found wild, with every appearance of an indigenous plant, in several provinces of Anatolia, to the south of the Caucasus, in several parts of Persia, in Afghanistan, in Beluchistan,[456] and in Kashmir.[457] In the south of Russia, a locality mentioned by some authors, it is perhaps the result of cultivation as well as in the south of Europe. The Greeks may, therefore, have introduced the plant from Asia Minor as well as from India, which extended from the north of Persia.
This origin of the lucern, which is well established, makes me note as a singular fact that no Sanskrit name is known.[458] Clover and sainfoin have none either, which leads us to suppose that the Aryans had no artificial meadows.
Sainfoin—Hedysarum Onobrychis, Linnæus; Onobrychis sativa, Lamarck.
This leguminous plant, of which the usefulness in the dry and chalky soils of temperate regions is incontestable, has not been long in cultivation. The Greeks did not grow it, and their descendants have not introduced it into their agriculture to this day.[459] The plant called Onobrychis by Dioscorides and Pliny, is Onobrychis Caput-Galli of modern botanists,[460] a species wild in Greece and elsewhere, which is not cultivated. The sainfoin, or lupinella of the Italians, was highly esteemed as fodder in the south of France in the time of Olivier de Serres,[461] that is to say, in the sixteenth century; but in Italy it was only in the eighteenth century that this cultivation spread, particularly in Tuscany.[462]
Sainfoin is a herbaceous plant, which grows wild in the temperate parts of Europe, to the south of the Caucasus, round the Caspian Sea,[463] and even beyond Lake Baikal.[464] In the south of Europe it grows only on the hills. Gussone does not reckon it among the wild species of Sicily, nor Moris among those of Sardinia, nor Munby among those of Algeria.
No Sanskrit, Persian, or Arabic names are known. Everything tends to show that the cultivation of this plant originated in the south of France as late perhaps as the fifteenth century.
French Honeysuckle, or Spanish Sainfoin—Hedysarum coronarium, Linnæus.
The cultivation of this leguminous plant, akin to the sainfoin, and of which a good illustration may be found in the Flora des Serres et des Jardins, vol. xiii. pl. 1382, has been diffused in modern times through Italy, Sicily, Malta, and the Balearic Isles.[465] Marquis Grimaldi, who first pointed it out to cultivators in 1766, had seen it at Seminara, in Lower Calabria; De Gasparin[466] recommends it for Algeria, and it is probable that cultivators under similar conditions in Australia, at the Cape, in South America or Mexico, would do well to try it. In the neighbourhood of Orange, in Algeria, the plant did not survive the cold of 6° centigrade.
Hedysarum coronarium grows in Italy from Genoa to Sicily and Sardinia,[467] in the south of Spain[468] and in Algeria,[469] where it is rare. It is, therefore, a species of limited geographical area.