ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 316 



remained unknown to De Candolle, although it is referred to 

 at the close of Decaisne's independent and exhaustive article, 

 in the " Flore des Serres," 1881. 



It can now be said that the wild plant to which Helianihus 

 tuherosus has been traced is not H. doronicoides, Lam., 

 although it was confounded with that species in Torrey and 

 Gray's " Flora." Lamarck's plant is a sessile-leaved species. 

 Decaisne's remark that H. tuherosus is the only species of 

 the genus which is at all tuberiferous may be qualified. A 

 form of what appears to be H. giganteus, but is not yet very 

 well known, grows in Minnesota and the Saskatchewan region, 

 has been mentioned by Douglas under the name of " Indian 

 Potato " of the Assiniboine tribe, by Bourgeau as "-^. suh- 

 tuherosus" in herb. Kew, and by Dr. C. C. Parry in Owen's 

 Minnesota Report, page 614, under the name of IT. tuherosus. 

 The scanty tubers which we have seen in dried specimens do 

 not compare well with those of H. tuherosus ; and that species 

 has never been found wild so far north (that we know of), 

 not even in the most southern parts of Canada West. The 

 aborigines who cultivated it must have obtained it from the 

 valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi and their tributaries, 

 where it abounds. 



had brought these roots into France, where they began to be sold under the 

 name of Topinamboux, and that their Indian name was Chiquebi. On this 

 last point, Lescarbot was wrong. Chiquebi was an eastern Algonkin name 

 for the tubers of Apios tuherosa, the common " ground nuts," — not for 

 those of Helianthus tuherosus. It is easy to see how Lescarbot was misled. 

 Father Biard's " Relation de la Nouv. France " was printed in 1616, and 

 in it (chap. 22) there is mention of certain ' * racines, appellees en Sauvage 

 Chiquebi," which grow spontaneously under oaks : " elles sont eomme des 

 trufPes, mais nieilleures, et croissant sous terra enfilees Vune a Vautre en 

 forme de chapelet," etc. Lescarbot doubtless caught the name from Biard, 

 and misapplied it. Father Paul Le Jeune (Relation, 1634, chap. 7) men- 

 tions these ground-nuts, " una racine que nos Fran9ois appellent des chape- 

 lets, pource qu'elle est distingude par noeuds en forme de grains." Las- 

 carbot's " Topinamboux " indicates a popular belief, in France, in the 

 Brazilian origin of H. tuherosus. The Tupinamba Indians of Brazil — a 

 division of the Tupi-Guarani family — had been allies of the French in 

 the sixteenth century, and their name was probably well known in France 

 through the relations of J. de Lery and other voyagers. Lescarbot 

 (Histoire de la Nouvelle France, 1612, p. 178) follows Lery in writing 

 the name " Tououpinambaoult." — J. H. T. 



