Origin of Cultivated Plants / The International Scientific Series Volume XLVIII

by Alphonse de Candolle

Hop—Humulus Lupulus, Linnæus.

The hop is wild in Europe from England and Sweden as far south as the mountains of the Mediterranean basin, and in Asia as far as Damascus, as the south of the Caspian Sea, and of Eastern Siberia,[782] but it is not found in India, the north of China, or the basin of the river Amur.[783]

In spite of the entirely wild appearance of the hop in Europe in districts far from cultivation, it has been sometimes asked if it is not of Asiatic origin.[784] I do not think this can be proved, nor even that it is likely. The fact that the Greeks and Latins have not spoken of the use of the hop in making beer is easily explained, as they were almost entirely unacquainted with this drink. If the Greeks have not mentioned the plant, it is simply perhaps because it is rare in their country. From the Italian name lupulo it seems likely that Pliny speaks of it with other vegetables under the name lupus salictarius.[785] That the custom of brewing with hops only became general in the Middle Ages proves nothing, except that other plants were formerly employed, as is still the case in some districts. The Kelts, the Germans, other peoples of the north and even of the south who had the vine, made beer[786] either of barley or of other fermented grain, adding in certain cases different vegetable substances—the bark of the oak or of the tamarisk, for instance, or the fruits of Myrica gale.[787] It is very possible that they did not soon discover the advantages of the hop, and that even after these were recognized, they employed wild hops before beginning to cultivate them. The first mention of hop-gardens occurs in an act of donation made by Pepin, father of Charlemagne, in 768.[788] In the fourteenth century it was an important object of culture in Germany, but it began in England only under Henry VIII.[789]

The common names of the hop only furnish negative indications as to its origin. There is no Sanskrit name,[790] and this agrees with the absence of the species in the region of the Himalayas, and shows that the early Aryan peoples had not noticed and employed it. I have quoted before[791] some of the European names, showing their diversity, although some few of them may be derived from a common stock. Hehn, the philologist, has treated of their etymology, and shown how obscure it is, but he has not mentioned the names totally distinct from humle, hopf or hop, and chmeli of the Scandinavian, Gothic, and Slav races; for example, Apini in Lette, Apwynis in Lithuanian, tap in Esthonian, blust in Illyrian,[792] which have evidently other roots. This variety tends to confirm the theory that the species existed in Europe before the arrival of the Aryan nations. Several different peoples must have distinguished, known, and used this plant successively, which confirms its extension in Europe and in Asia before it was used in brewing.

Carthamine—Carthamus tinctorius, Linnæus.

The composite annual which produces the dye called carthamine is one of the most ancient cultivated species. Its flowers are used for dyeing in red or yellow, and the seeds yield oil.

The grave-cloths which wrap the ancient Egyptian mummies are dyed with carthamine,[793] and quite recently fragments of the plant have been found in the tombs discovered at Deir el Bahari.[794] Its cultivation must also be ancient in India, since there are two Sanskrit names for it, cusumbha and kamalottara, of which the first has several derivatives in the modern languages of the peninsula.[795] The Chinese only received carthamine in the second century B.C., when Chang-kien brought it back from Bactriana.[796] The Greeks and Latins were probably not acquainted with it, for it is very doubtful whether this is the plant which they knew as cnikos or cnicus.[797] At a later period the Arabs contributed largely to diffuse the cultivation of carthamine, which they named qorton, kurtum, whence carthamine, or usfur, or ihridh, or morabu,[798] a diversity indicating an ancient existence in several countries of Western Asia or of Africa. The progress of chemistry threatens to do away with the cultivation of this plant as of many others, but it still subsists in the south of Europe, in the East, and throughout the valley of the Nile.[799]

No botanist has found the carthamine in a really wild state. Authors doubtfully assign to it an origin in India or Africa, in Abyssinia in particular, but they have never seen it except in a cultivated state, or with every appearance of having escaped from cultivation.[800]

Mr. Clarke,[801] formerly director of the Botanical Gardens in Calcutta, who has lately studied the Compositæ of India, includes the species only as a cultivated one. The summary of our modern knowledge of the plants of the Nile region, including Abyssinia, by Schweinfurth and Ascherson,[802] only indicates it as a cultivated species, nor does the list of the plants observed by Rohlfs on his recent journey mention a wild carthamine.[803]

As the species has not been found wild either in India or in Africa, and as it has been cultivated for thousands of years in both countries, the idea occurred to me of seeking its origin in the intermediate region; a method which had been successful in other cases.