56 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



according to Sir Joseph Hooker, the sweet potato.^ 

 Seemann^ remarks that these names resemble the 

 Quichuen name of the sweet potato in America, which is, 

 he says, cumar. The cultivation of the sweet potato be- 

 came general in Hindustan in the eighteenth century.^ 

 Several popular names are attributed to it, and even, 

 according to Piddington,* a Sanskrit name, ruktalu, 

 which has no analogy with any name known to me, and 

 is not in Wilson's Sanskrit Dictionary. According to a 

 note given me by Adolphe Pictet, ruktalu seems a 

 Bengalee name composed from the Sanskrit alu (Rukta 

 plus dlu, the name of Arum campanulatum). This 

 name in modern dialects designates the yam and the 

 potato. However, Wallich^ gives several names omitted 

 by Piddington. Roxburgh ^ mentions no Sanskrit name. 

 Rheede "^ says the plant was cultivated in Malabar, and 

 mentions common Indian names. 



The arguments in favour of an American origin seem 

 to me much stronger. If the sweet potato had been 

 known in Hindustan at the epoch of the Sanskrit 

 language it would have become diffused in the old world, 

 since its propagation is easy and its utility evident. It 

 seems, on the contrary, that this cultivation remained 

 long unknown in the Sunda Isles, Egypt, etc. Perhaps 

 an attentive examination might lead us to share the 

 opinion of Meyer,^ who distinguished the Asiatic plant 

 from the American species. However, this author has 

 not been generally followed, and I suspect that if there is 

 a different Asiatic species it is not, as Meyer believed, 

 the sweet potato described by Rumphius, which the 

 latter says was brought from America, but the Indian 

 plant of Roxburgh. 



Sweet potatoes are grown in Africa ; but either the 

 cultivation is rare, or the species are different. Robert 

 Brown ^ says that the traveller Lockhardt had not seen 



* Hooker, Handhooh of New Zealand Flora, p. 194. 

 « Seemann, Journal of Bot., 1866, p. 328. 



' Roxburgh, edit. Wall., ii. p. 69. * Piddington, Indem. 



» Wallich, Flora Ind. « Roxburgh, edit. 1832, vol. i. p. 483. 



^ Rheede, Mai., vii. p. 95. • Meyer, Primitioe Ft. Esseq., p. 103. 



• R. Brown, Bot. Congo, p. 55. 



