Sugar Beet and Lettuce 401 



resembles in its appearance the k'in ?? ('celery,' Apium graveolens), 

 and has a fragrant flavor." 



Judging from the description, the vegetable ts*o ts'ai appears to have 

 been a species of Lactuca, Cidwrium, or Sonchus. These genera are 

 closely allied, belonging to the family Cichoraceae, and are confounded 

 by the Chinese under a large number of terms. A. de Candolle 1 

 supposed that lettuce (Lactuca sativa) was hardly known in China at 

 an early date, as, according to Loureiro, Europeans had introduced it 

 into Macao. 2 With reference to this passage, Bretschneider 3 thinks 

 that de Candolle "may be right, although the Pen ts'ao says nothing 

 about the introduction; the Uh ts'ai ^ ^S (the common name of lettuce 

 at Peking) or pai-kii & H seems not to be mentioned earlier than by 

 writers of the T'ang (618-906)." Again, de Candolle seized on this 

 passage, and embodied it in his "Origin of Cultivated Plants" (p. 96). 

 The problem, however, is not so simple. Bretschneider must have 

 read the Pen ts'ao at that time rather superficially, for some species of 

 Lactuca is directly designated there as being of foreign origin. Again, 

 twenty-five years later, he wrote a notice on the same subject, 4 in which 

 not a word is said about foreign introduction, and from which, on the 

 contrary, it would appear that Lactuca, Cichorium, and Sonchus, have 

 been indigenous to China from ancient times, as the bitter vegetable 

 (k'u ts'ai) is already mentioned in the Pen kin and Pie lu. The terms 

 pai kil Q H and k'u kii i^r H are supposed to represent Cichorium 

 endivia; and wo-kii jaU g, Lactuca sativa. In explanation of the latter 

 name, Li Si-cen cites the Mo k'o hui si M $r W JP by P'en C'eh 1£ 3$, 

 who wrote in the first half of the eleventh century, as saying that wo 

 ts'ai i?S ^ ("wo vegetable") came from the country iBt Kwa, and hence 

 received its name. 5 The TsHn i lu W j^ $fc, a work by T"ao Ku P^ Wi 

 of the Sung period, says that "envoys from the country Kwa came 

 to China, and at the request of the people distributed seeds of a vegetable ; 

 they were so generously rewarded that it was called ts'ien kin ts'ai 

 ^ 4£ #5 ('vegetable of a thousand gold pieces'); now it is styled wo- 



1 Geographie botanique, p. 843. 



2 This certainly is a weak argument. The evidence, in fact, proves nothing. 

 Europeans also introduce their own sugar and many other products of which China 

 has a great plenty. 



8 Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 223. 



* Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, No. 257. 



5 1 do not know how Stuart (p. 229) gets at the definition "in the time of the 

 Han dynasty." The same text is also contained in the Sii po wu li (Ch. 7, p. 1 b), 

 written by Li Si ^ ^ about the middle of the twelfth century. 



