92 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



Frequently cultivated as a salad, this annual, of the 

 Valerian family, is found wild throughout temperate 

 Europe to about the sixtieth degree of latitude, in 

 Southern Europe, in the Canary Isles, Madeira, and the 

 Azores, in the north of Africa, Asia Minor, and the 

 Caucasus.^ It often grows in cultivated ground, near 

 villages, etc., which renders it somewhat difficult to 

 know where it grew before cultivation. It is mentioned, 

 however, in Sardinia and Sicily, in the meadows and 

 mountain pastures.^ I suspect that it is indigenous only 

 in these islands, and that everywhere else it is introduced 

 or naturalized. The grounds for this opinion are the fact 

 that no name which it seems possible to assign to this 

 plant has been found in Greek or Latin authors. We 

 cannot even name any botanist of the Middle Ages or 

 of the sixteenth century who has spoken of it. Neither 

 is it mentioned among the vegetables used in France in 

 the seventeenth century, either by the Jardinier Frangais 

 of 1651, or byLaurenberg's work, Horticultura (Frankfurt, 

 1632). The cultivation and even the use of this salad 

 appear to be modern, a fact which has not been noticed. 



Cardoon — Gynara cardunculus, Linnaeus. 



Artichoke — Gynara soolymus, Linnasus; G. cardun- 

 culus, var. sativa, Moris. 



For a long time botanists have held the opinion that 

 the artichoke is probably a form obtained by cultivation 

 from the wild cardoon.^ Careful observations have lately 

 proved this hypothesis. Moris,^ for instance, having cul- 

 tivated, in the garden at Turin, the wild Sardinian plant 

 side by side with the artichoke, affirmed that true 

 characteristic distinctions no longer existed. 



Willkomm and Lange,^ who have carefully observed 

 the plant in Spain, both wild and cultivated, share the 



* Krok, Monographie des Valerianella, Stockholm, 1864, p. 88; 

 Boissier, Fl. Orient, iii. p. 104. 



« Bertoloni, Fl. Ital., i. p. 185; Moris, Fl. 8ard.,n. p. 314; Gussone, 

 Synopsis Fl. Siculce, edit. 2, vol. i. p. 30. 



' Dodoens, Hist. Plant, p. 724; Linnaeus, Species, p. 1159; De Can« 

 dolle, Prodr., vi. p. 620. 



* Moris, Flora Sardoa, ii. p. 61. 



* Willkomm and Lange, Prodr. Fl. Hisp., ii. p. 180. 



