This Peruvian Caïmito must not be confounded with the Chrysophyllum Caïnito of the West Indies. Both belong to the family Sapotaceæ, but the flowers and seeds are different. There is a figure of this one in Ruiz and Pavon, Flora Peruviana, vol. iii. pl. 240. It has been transported from Peru, where it is cultivated, to Ega on the Amazon River, and to Para, where it is commonly called abi or abiu.[1418] Ruiz and Pavon say it is wild in the warm regions of Peru, and at the foot of the Andes.
Marmalade Plum, or Mammee Sapota—Lucuma mammosa, Gærtner.
This fruit tree, of the order Sapotaceæ and a native of tropical America, has been the subject of several mistakes in works on botany.[1419] There exists no satisfactory and complete illustration of it as yet, because colonists and travellers think it is too well known to send selected specimens of it, such as may be described in herbaria. This neglect is common enough in the case of cultivated plants. The mammee is cultivated in the West Indies and in some warm regions of America. Sagot tells us it is grown in Venezuela, but not in Cayenne.[1420] I do not find that it has been transported into Africa and Asia, the Philippines[1421] excepted. This is probably due to the insipid taste of the fruit. Humboldt and Bonpland found it wild in the forests on the banks of the Orinoco.[1422] All authors mention it in the West Indies, but as cultivated or without asserting that it is wild. In Brazil it is only a garden species.
Sapodilla—Sapota achras, Miller.
The sapodilla is the most esteemed of the order Sapotaceæ, and one of the best of tropical fruits. “An over-ripe sapodilla,” says Descourtilz, in his Flore des Antilles, “is melting, and has the sweet perfumes of honey, jasmin, and lily of the valley.” There is a very good illustration in the Botanical Magazine, pls. 3111 and 3112, and in Tussac, Flore des Antilles, i. pl. 5. It has been introduced into gardens in Mauritius, the Malay Archipelago, and India, from the time of Rheede and Rumphius, but no one disputes its American origin. Several botanists have seen it wild in the forests of the Isthmus of Panama, of Campeachy,[1423] of Venezuela,[1424] and perhaps of Trinidad.[1425] In Jamaica, in the time of Sloane, it existed only in gardens.[1426] It is very doubtful that it is wild in the other West India Islands, although perhaps the seeds, scattered here and there, may have naturalized it to a certain degree. Tussac says that the young plants are not easy to rear in the plantations.
Aubergine—Solanum melongena, Linnæus; Solanum esculentum, Dunal.
The aubergine has a Sanskrit name, vartta, and several names, which Piddington in his Index considers as both Sanskrit and Bengali, such as bong, bartakon, mahoti, hingoli. Wallich, in his edition of Roxburgh’s Indian Flora, gives vartta, varttakou, varttaka bunguna, whence the Hindustani bungan. Hence it cannot be doubted that the species has been known in India from a very remote epoch. Rumphius had seen it in gardens in the Sunda Islands, and Loureiro in those of Cochin-China. Thunberg does not mention it in Japan, though several varieties are now cultivated in that country. The Greeks and Romans did not know the species, and no botanist mentions it in Europe before the beginning of the seventeenth century,[1427] but its cultivation must have spread towards Africa before the Middle Ages. The Arab physician, Ebn Baithar,[1428] who wrote in the thirteenth century, speaks of it, and he quotes Rhasis, who lived in the ninth century. Rauwolf[1429] had seen the plant in the gardens of Aleppo at the end of the sixteenth century. It was called melanzana and bedengiam. This Arabic name, which Forskal writes badinjan, is the same as the Hindustani badanjan, which Piddington gives. A sign of antiquity in Northern Africa is the existence of a name, tabendjalts, among the Berbers or Kabyles of the province of Algiers,[1430] which differs considerably from the Arab word. Modern travellers have found the aubergine cultivated in the whole of the Nile Valley and on the coast of Guinea.[1431] It has been transported into America.
The cultivated form of Solanum melongena has not hitherto been found wild, but most botanists are agreed in regarding Solanum insanum, Roxburgh, and S. incanum, Linnæus, as belonging to the same species. Other synonyms are sometimes added, the result of a study made by Nees von Esenbeck from numerous specimens.[1432] S. insanum appears to have been lately found wild in the Madras presidency and at Tong-dong in Burmah. The publication of the article on the Solanaceæ in the Flora of British India, will probably give more precise information on this head.
Red Pepper—Capsicum. In the best botanical works the genus Capsicum is encumbered with a number of cultivated forms, which have never been found wild, and which differ especially in their duration (which is often variable), or in the form of the fruit, a character which is of little value in plants cultivated for that special organ. I shall speak of the two species most often cultivated, but I cannot refrain from stating my opinion that no capsicum is indigenous to the old world. I believe them to be all of American origin, though I cannot absolutely prove it. These are my reasons.
Fruits so conspicuous, so easily grown in gardens, and so agreeable to the palate of the inhabitants of hot countries, would have been very quickly diffused throughout the old world, if they had existed in the south of Asia, as it has sometimes been supposed. They would have had names in several ancient languages. Yet neither Romans, Greeks, nor even Hebrews were acquainted with them. They are not mentioned in ancient Chinese books.[1433] The islanders of the Pacific did not cultivate them at the time of Cook’s voyages,[1434] in spite of their proximity to the Sunda Isles, where Rumphius mentions their very general use. The Arabian physician, Ebn Baithar, who collected in the thirteenth century all that Eastern nations knew about medicinal plants, says nothing about it. Roxburgh knew no Sanskrit name for the capsicums. Later, Piddington mentions a name for C. frutescens, bran-maricha,[1435] which he says is Sanskrit; but this name, which may be compared to that of black pepper (muricha, murichung), is probably not really ancient, for it has left no trace in the Indian languages which are derived from Sanskrit.[1436] The wild nature and ancient existence of the capsicum is always uncertain, owing to its very general cultivation; but it seems to me to be more often doubtful in Asia than in South America. The Indian specimens described by the most trustworthy authors nearly all come from the herbaria of the East India Company, in which we never know whether a plant appeared really wild, if it was found far from dwellings, in forests, etc. For the localities in the Malay Archipelago authors often give rubbish-heaps, hedges, etc. We pass to a more particular examination of the two cultivated species.