Bullace—Prunus insititia, Linnæus;[1052] Pflauenbaum and Haferschlehen in German.
This kind of plum grows wild in the south of Europe.[1053] It has also been found in Cilicia, Armenia, to the south of the Caucasus, and in the province of Talysch near the Caspian Sea.[1054] It is especially in Turkey in Europe and to the south of the Caucasus that it appears to be truly wild. In Italy and in Spain it is perhaps less so, although trustworthy authors who have seen the plant growing have no doubt about it. In the localities named north of the Alps, even as far as Denmark, it is probably naturalized from cultivation. The species is commonly found in hedges not far from dwellings, and apparently not truly wild.
All this agrees with archæological and historical data. The ancient Greeks distinguished the Coccumelea of their country from those of Syria,[1055] whence it is inferred that the former were Prunus insititia. This seems the more likely that the modern Greeks call it coromeleia.[1056] The Albanians say corombile,[1057] which has led some people to suppose an ancient Pelasgian origin. For the rest, we must not insist upon the common names of the plum which each nation may have given to one or another species, perhaps also to some cultivated variety, without any rule. The names which have been much commented upon in learned works generally, appear to me to apply to any plum or plum tree without having any very defined meaning.
No stones of P. insititia have yet been found in the terra-mare of Italy, but Heer has described and given illustrations of some which were found in the lake-dwellings of Robenhausen.[1058] The species does not seem to be now indigenous in this part of Switzerland, but we must not forget that, as we saw in the history of flax, the lake-dwellers of the canton of Zurich, in the age of stone, had communications with Italy. These ancient Swiss were not hard to please in the matter of food, for they also gathered the berries of the blackthorn, which are, as we think, uneatable. It is probable that they ate them cooked.
Apricot—Prunus armeniaca, Linnæus; Armenica vulgaris, Lamarck.
The Greeks and Romans received the apricot about the beginning of the Christian era. Unknown in the time of Theophrastus, Dioscorides[1059] mentions it under the name of mailon armeniacon. He says that the Latins called it praikokion. It is, in fact, one of the fruits mentioned briefly by Pliny,[1060] under the name of præcocium, so called from the precocity of the species.[1061] Its Armenian origin is indicated by the Greek name, but this name might mean only that the species was cultivated in Armenia. Modern botanists have long had good reason to believe that the species is wild in that country. Pallas, Güldenstädt, and Hohenacker say they found it in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus Mountains, on the north, on the banks of the Terek, and to the south between the Caspian and Black Seas.[1062] Boissier[1063] admits all these localities, but without saying anything about the wild character of the species. He saw a specimen gathered by Hohenacker, near Elisabethpol. On the other hand, Tchihatcheff[1064] who has crossed Anatolia and Armenia several times, does not seem to have seen the wild apricot; and what is still more significant, Karl Koch, who travelled through the region to the south of the Caucasus, in order to observe facts of this nature, expresses himself as follows:[1065] “Native country unknown. At least, during my long sojourn in Armenia, I nowhere found the apricot wild, and I have rarely seen it even cultivated.”
A traveller, W. J. Hamilton,[1066] said he found it wild near Orgou and Outch Hisar in Anatolia: but this assertion has not been verified by a botanist. The supposed wild apricot of the ruins of Baalbek, described by Eusèbe de Salle[1067] is, from what he says of the leaf and fruit, totally different to the common apricot. Boissier, and the different collectors who sent him plants from Syria and Lebanon, do not appear to have seen the species. Spach[1068] asserts that it is indigenous in Persia, but he gives no proof. Boissier and Buhse[1069] do not mention it in their list of the plants of Transcaucasia and Persia. It is useless to seek its origin in Africa. The apricots which Reynier[1070] says he saw, “almost wild,” in Upper Egypt must have sprung from stones grown in cultivated ground, as is seen in Algeria.[1071] Schweinfurth and Ascherson,[1072] in their catalogue of the plants of Egypt and Abyssinia, only mention the species as cultivated. Besides, if it had existed formerly in the north of Africa it would have been early known to the Hebrews and the Romans. Now there is no Hebrew name, and Pliny says its introduction at Rome took place thirty years before he wrote.
Carrying our researches eastward, we find that Anglo-Indian botanists[1073] are agreed in considering that the apricot, which is generally cultivated in the north of India and in Thibet, is not wild in those regions; but they add that it has a tendency to become naturalized, and that it is found upon the site of ruined villages. Messrs. Schlagintweit brought specimens from the northwest provinces of India, and from Thibet, which Westmael verified,[1074] but he was kind enough to write to me that he cannot affirm that it was wild, since the collector’s label gives no information on that head.
Roxburgh,[1075] who did not neglect the question of origin, says, speaking of the apricot, “native of China as well as the west of Asia.” I read in Dr. Bretschneider’s curious little work,[1076] drawn up at Pekin, the following passage, which seems to me to decide the question in favour of a Chinese origin:—“Sing, as is well known, is the apricot (Prunus armeniaca). The character (a Chinese sign printed on p. 10) does not exist as indicating a fruit, either in the Shu-king, or in the Shi-king, Cihouli, etc., but the Shan-hai-king says that several sings grow upon the hills (here a Chinese character). Besides, the name of the apricot is represented by a particular sign which may show that it is indigenous in China.” The Shan-hai-king is attributed to the Emperor Yü, who lived in 2205-2198 B.C. Decaisne,[1077] who was the first to suspect the Chinese origin of the apricot, has recently received from Dr. Bretschneider some specimens accompanied by the following note:—“No. 24, apricot wild in the mountains of Pekin, where it grows in abundance; the fruit is small (an inch and a quarter in diameter), the skin red and yellow; the flesh salmon colour, sour, but eatable. No. 25, the stone of the apricot cultivated round Pekin. The fruit is twice as large as that of the wild tree.”[1078] Decaisne adds, in the letter he was good enough to write to me, “In shape and surface the stones are exactly like those of our small apricots; they are smooth and not pitted.” The leaves he sent me are certainly those of the apricot.
The apricot is not mentioned in Japan, or in the basin of the river Amoor.[1079] Perhaps the cold of the winter is too great. If we recollect the absence of communication in ancient times between China and India, and the assertions that the plant is indigenous in both countries, we are at first tempted to believe that the ancient area extended from the north-west of India to China. However, if we wish to adopt this hypothesis, we must also admit that the culture of the apricot spread very late towards the West.[1080] For no Sanskrit or Hebrew name is known, but only a Hindu name, zard alu, and a Persian name, mischmisch, which has passed into Arabic.[1081] How is it to be supposed that so excellent a fruit, and one which grows in abundance in Western Asia, spread so slowly from the north-west of India towards the Græco-Roman world? The Chinese knew it two or three thousand years before the Christian era. Changkien went as far as Bactriana, a century before our era, and he was the first to make the West known to his fellow-countrymen.[1082] It was then, perhaps, that the apricot was introduced in Western Asia, and that it was cultivated and became naturalized here and there in the north-west of India, and at the foot of the Caucasus, by the scattering of the stones beyond the limits of the plantations.