WESTER: HISTORY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE ROSELLE 97 
quotations from other authors who again quoted earlier ones, not 
always correctly; some of the illustrations accompanying these 
descriptions have little resemblance to the roselle plant and would 
seem to have been fancied by the author lacking living specimens 
for description. 
The earliest references to the white-fruited variety of roselle 
was made by Hughes * from Barbados in 1750, which may in- 
dicate that this variety has originated in America. Already in 
his days the calyces were used in wine-making there. As late as 
1768, P. Miller, in Dictionary of Gardening, ed. viii, describes 
the roselle from the West Indies as Hibiscus gossypifolius, including 
both varieties mentioned by Hughes, and describes another species 
from India under the name Hibiscus Sabdariffa. Like certain 
other contemporaries, Miller thought that the West Indies were 
the native habitat of the roselle. Cavanilles described the white- 
fruited variety of roselle as a separate.species, Hibiscus digitatus,t 
but this has been repudiated by later botanists. 
Its utility for commercial purposes seems not to have been 
recognized until the middle of the past century when the roselle 
was first recognized as a fiber plant of value. J. F. Royle in 
Fibrous Plants of India, published 1855, p. 260, says, speaking of 
the roselle and two other species of Hibiscus: ‘‘The dietical use of 
these species has been mentioned to show that if cultivated on 
account of their fiber, they would also be useful for other purposes.” 
Taken literally this would indicate that the roselle was not even 
then generally cultivated, notwithstanding that it was known more 
than 150 years earlier that it yielded fiber. That it had attracted 
but little attention scarcely a third of a century ago, is shown by 
the fact that it was not included by A. De Candolle in his Origin 
of Cultivated Plants, published in 1882. 
While the value of the roselle for culinary purposes was recog- 
nized much earlier, as has been shown on another page, only 
recently has its commercial worth in this respect begun to be 
appreciated. The cultivation of the roselle on an extensive scale 
for this purpose was first attempted in Australia, and Semler 
*Hughes, G. Natural History of Barbados 204. 1759. 
+Cavanilles, A. J. Monadelphiae Classis Dissertationes Decem 151. 17909. 
