32 OEIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



which we must also examine. Several botanists 1 suspect 

 that Raphanus sativus is simply a particular condition, 

 with enlarged root and non-articulated fruit, of Rapha- 

 nus raphanistrum, a very common plant in the tem- 

 perate cultivated districts of Europe and Asia, and 

 which is also found in a wild state in sand and light 

 soil near the sea for instance, at St. Sebastian, in Dal- 

 matia, and at Trebizond. 2 Its usual haunts are in deserted 

 fields; and many common names which signify wild 

 radish, show the affinity of the two plants. I should not 

 insist upon this point if their supposed identity were a 

 mere presumption, but it rests upon experiments and 

 observations which it is important to know. 



In R. raphanistrum the siliqua is articulated, that 

 is to say, contracted at intervals, and the seeds placed 

 each in a division. In R. sativus the siliqua is con- 

 tinuous, and forms a single cavity. Some botanists had 

 made this difference the basis of two distinct genera, 

 Raphanistrum and Raphanus. But three accurate ob- 

 servers, Webb, Gay, and Spach, have noticed among 

 plants of Raphanus sativus, raised from the same seed, 

 both unilocular and articulated pods, some of them 

 bilocular, others plurilocular. Webb 3 arrived at the 

 same results when he afterwards repeated these experi- 

 ments, and he observed yet another fact of some import- 

 ance : the radish which sows itself by chance, and is 

 not cultivated, produced the siliquse of Raphanistrum. 4 

 Another difference between the two plants is in the 

 root, fleshy in R. sativus, slender in R. raphanis- 

 trum ; but this changes with cultivation, as appears 

 from the experiments of Carriere, the head gardener of 

 the nurceries of the Natural History Museum in Paris. 5 

 It occurred to him to sow the seeds of the slender- 



1 Webb, Phytogr. Canar., p. 83 ; Iter. Hisp., p. 71 ; Bentham, Fl. 

 Hong Kong, p. 17 ; Hooker, Fl. Brit. Ind., i. p. 166. 



2 Willkomm and Lange, Prod. FL Hisp., iii. p. 748 ; Viviani, Flor. 

 Dalmat., iii. p. 104; Boissier, Fl. Orient., i. p. 401. 



3 Webb, Phytographia Canariensis, i. p. 83. 



4 Webb, Iter. Hispaniense, 1838, p. 72. 



8 Carriere, Origins des Plantes Domestiques de'montre'e par la Culture 

 du Radis Sauvage, in 8vo, 24 pp., 1869. 



