The species alone constitutes the genus Sechium. There are specimens in every herbarium, but generally collectors do not indicate whether they are naturalized, or really wild, and apparently indigenous in the country. Without speaking of works in which this plant is said to come from the East Indies, which is entirely a mistake, several of the best give Jamaica[1347] as the original home. However, P. Browne,[1348] in the middle of the last century, said positively that it was cultivated there, and Sloane does not mention it. Jacquin[1349] says that it “inhabits Cuba, and is cultivated there,” and Richard copies this phrase in the flora of R. de La Sagra without adding any proof. Naudin says,[1350] “a Mexican plant,” but he does not give his reasons for asserting this. Cogniaux,[1351] in his recent monograph, mentions a great number of specimens gathered from Brazil to the West Indies without saying if he had seen any one of these given as wild. Seemann[1352] saw the plant cultivated at Panama, and he adds a remark, important if correct, namely, that the name chayote, common in the isthmus, is the corruption of an Aztec word, chayotl. This is an indication of an ancient existence in Mexico, but I do not find the word in Hernandez, the classic author on the Mexican plants anterior to the Spanish conquest. The chayote was not cultivated in Cayenne ten years ago.[1353] Nothing indicates an ancient cultivation in Brazil. The species is not mentioned by early writers, such as Piso and Marcgraf, and the name chuchu, given as Brazilian,[1354] seems to me to come from chocho, the Jamaica name, which is perhaps a corruption of the Mexican word.
The plant is probably a native of the south of Mexico and of Central America, and was transported into the West India Islands and to Brazil in the eighteenth century. The species was afterwards introduced into Mauritius and Algeria, where it is very successful.[1355]
Indian Fig, or Prickly Pear—Opuntia ficus indica, Miller.
This fleshy plant of the Cactus family, which produces the fruit known in the south of Europe as the Indian fig, has no connection with the fig tree, nor has the fruit with the fig. Its origin is not Indian but American. Everything is erroneous and absurd in this common name. However, since Linnæus took his botanical name from it, Cactus ficus indica, afterwards connected with the genus Opuntia, it was necessary to retain the specific name to avoid changes which are a source of confusion, and to recall the popular denomination. The prickly forms, and those more or less free from spines, have been considered by some authors as distinct species, but an attentive examination leads us to regard them as one.[1356]
The species existed both wild and cultivated in Mexico before the arrival of the Spaniards. Hernandez[1357] describes nine varieties of it, which shows the antiquity of its cultivation. The cochineal insect appears to feed on one of these, almost without thorns, more than on the others, and it has been transported with the plant to the Canary Isles and elsewhere. It is not known how far its habitat extended in America before man transported pieces of the plant, shaped like a racket, and the fruits, which are two easy ways of propagating it. Perhaps the wild plants in Jamaica, and the other West India Islands mentioned by Sloane,[1358] in 1725, were the result of its introduction by the Spaniards. Certainly the species has become naturalized in this direction as far as the climate permits; for instance, as far as Southern Florida.[1359]
It was one of the first plants which the Spaniards introduced to the old world, both in Europe and Asia. Its singular appearance was the more striking that no other species belonging to the family had before been seen.[1360] All sixteenth-century botanists mention it, and the plant became naturalized in the south of Europe and in Africa as its cultivation was introduced. It was in Spain that the prickly pear was first known under the American name tuna, and it was probably the Moors who took it into Barbary when they were expelled from the peninsula. They called it fig of the Christians.[1361] The custom of using the plant for fences, and the nourishing property of the fruits, which contain a large proportion of sugar, have determined its extension round the Mediterranean, and in general in all countries near the tropics.
The cultivation of the cochineal, which was unfavourable to the production of the fruit,[1362] is dying out since the manufacture of colouring matters by chemical processes.
Gooseberry—Ribes grossularia and R. Vacrispa, Linnæus.
The fruit of the cultivated varieties is generally smooth, or provided with a few stiff hairs, while that of the wild varieties has soft and shorter hairs; but intermediate forms exist, and it has been shown by experiment that by sowing the seeds of the cultivated fruit, plants with either smooth or hairy fruit are obtained.[1363] There is, therefore, but one species, which has produced under cultivation one principal variety and several sub-varieties as to the size, colour, or taste of the fruit.
The gooseberry grows wild throughout temperate Europe, from Southern Sweden to the mountainous regions of Central Spain, of Italy, and of Greece.[1364] It is also mentioned in Northern Africa, but the last published catalogue of Algerian plants[1365] indicates it only in the mountains of Aures, and Ball has found a variety in the Atlas of Marocco.[1366] It grows in the Caucasus,[1367] and under more or less different forms in the western Himalayas.[1368]