274 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 
which the Spaniards could bring to America, and they had no facilities 
for securing coconuts from the East Indies. And even if they had 
been able to arrange such an importation through their jealous com- 
petitors, the Portuguese, the time required in those days for the 
necessary sea voyages would have been too long. 
A motive for such an introduction was lacking, as well as an oppor- 
tunity. It does not appear that any of the early discoverers or 
historians were familiar with the coconut before coming to America, 
and they evidently did not become acquainted with it here as an 
important article of food or as having any other value that would 
lead them to give it their active attention and care. The agricultural 
activities of the Spanish colonists took the direction of introducing 
European plants into America, in the hope of being able to supply 
themselves with their accustomed foods. The appreciation of the 
new foods and other products of the agricultural plants that were 
natives of America and the introduction of American plants into 
Europe went on only slowly and casually. 
There is nothing to show that tobacco or potatoes reached Europe 
untal after the middle of the sixteenth century. Indian corn and 
capsicum pepper were known in Germany by 1543, as described by 
Fuchs, but in both these cases it is possible to doubt whether the 
plants were post-Columbian introductions from America or pre- 
Columbian arrivals from the Orient, as indicated by the early histories 
and by their earliest European names.¢ Columbus himself began the 
introduction of European plants into America, but the only tropical 
types introduced during the period of the early discoveries appear 
to have been the varieties of bananas and sugar cane brought over 
from the Canary Islands. 
The Malayan and Polynesian islands, where the coconut is a plant 
of the first rank, were still undiscovered by Europeans, who had only 
vague rumors of the medicinal virtues of the Nux Indica, as it was 
termed in the medieval pharmacopeeia. Even in parts of the East 
Indies where the coconut palm undoubtedly existed some of the 
early writers make little or no mention of it. Thus in the extended 
“The history of the early introduction of American plants into Europe has been 
summarized by Dr. Seb. Killermann, in the Naturwissenschaftliche Wochenschrift, 
vol. 24, p. 193. (March 28, 1909.) 
Doctor Killermann finds that four American plants were known in Europe before 
1543, the Indian corn, the capsicum pepper, the squash (Cucurbita maxima), and the 
French marigold (Tagetes patula), By about the middle of the sixteenth century 
five other American plants had been recorded, two species of tobacco (Nicotiana 
tabacum and N. rustica), the prickly pear (Opuntia), the century plant (Agave), and 
the tomato. From the second half of the century there are accounts of the bean 
(Phaseolus vulgaris and P. coecineus), the peanut, the Jerusalem artichoke (/Helian- 
thus tuberosus), the spiderwort (Tradescantia), the nasturtium (Tropaeolum), and the 
potato. The sweet potato does not appear in this list. The first reference to its 
existence in Europe given by De Candolle is that of Clusius in 1601. 
