Annual Capsicum—Capsicum annuum, Linnæus.
This species has a number of different names in European languages,[1437] which all indicate a foreign origin and the resemblance of the taste to that of pepper. In French it is often called poivre de Guinée (Guinea pepper), but also poivre du Brézil, d’Inde (Indian, Brazilian pepper), etc., denominations to which no importance can be attributed. Its cultivation was introduced into Europe in the sixteenth century. It was one of the peppers that Piso and Marcgraf[1438] saw grown in Brazil under the name quija or quiya. They say nothing as to its origin. The species appears to have been early cultivated in the West Indies, where it has several Carib names.[1439]
Botanists who have most thoroughly studied the genus Capsicum[1440] do not appear to have found in herbaria a single specimen which can be considered wild. I have not been more fortunate. The original home is probably Brazil.
C. grossum, Willdenow, seems to be a variety of the same species. It is cultivated in India under the name kafree murich, and kafree chilly, but Roxburgh did not consider it to be of Indian origin.[1441]
Shrubby Capsicum—Capsicum frutescens, Willdenow.
This species, taller and with a more woody stock than C. annuum, is generally cultivated in the warm regions of both hemispheres. The great part of our so-called Cayenne pepper is made from it, but this name is given also to the product of other peppers. Roxburgh, the author who is most attentive to the origin of Indian plants, does not consider it to be wild in India. Blume says it is naturalized in the Malay Archipelago in hedges.[1442] In America, on the contrary, where its culture is ancient, it has been several times found wild in forests, apparently indigenous. De Martius brought it from the banks of the Amazon, Pœppig from the province of Maynas in Peru, and Blanchet from the province of Bahia.[1443] So that its area extends from Bahia to Eastern Peru, which explains its diffusion over South America generally.
Tomato—Lycopersicum esculentum, Miller.
The tomato, or love apple, belongs to a genus of the Solaneæ, of which all the species are American.[1444] It has no name in the ancient languages of Asia, nor even in modern Indian languages.[1445] It was not cultivated in Japan in the time of Thunberg, that is to say a century ago, and the silence of ancient writers on China on this head shows that it is of recent introduction there. Rumphius[1446] had seen it in gardens in the Malay Archipelago. The Malays called it tomatte, but this is an American name, for C. Bauhin calls the species tumatle Americanorum. Nothing leads us to suppose it was known in Europe before the discovery of America.
The first names given to it by botanists in the sixteenth century indicate that they received the plant from Peru.[1447] It was cultivated on the continent of America before it was grown in the West India Islands, for Sloane does not mention it in Jamaica, and Hughes[1448] says it was brought to Barbados from Portugal hardly more than a century ago. Humboldt considered that the cultivation of the tomato was of ancient date in Mexico.[1449] I notice, however, that the earliest work on the plants of this country (Hernandez, Historia) makes no mention of it. Neither do the early writers on Brazil, Piso and Marcgraf, speak of it, although the species is now cultivated throughout tropical America. Thus by the process of exhaustion we return to the idea of a Peruvian origin, at least for its cultivation.
De Martius[1450] found the plant wild in the neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro and Para, but it had perhaps escaped from gardens. I do not know of any botanist who has found it really wild in the state in which it is familiar to us, with the fruit more or less large, lumpy, and with swelled sides; but this is not the case with the variety with small spherical fruit, called L. cerasiforme in some botanical works, and considered in others (and rightly so, I think[1451]) as belonging to the same species. This variety is wild on the sea-shore of Peru,[1452] at Tarapoto, in Eastern Peru,[1453] and on the frontiers of Mexico and of the United States towards California.[1454] It is sometimes naturalized in clearings near gardens.[1455] It is probably in this manner that its area has extended north and south from Peru.