274 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



Cuba, and is cultivated there," and Richard copies this 

 phrase in the flora of R. de La Sagra without adding 

 any proof. Naudin says/ "a Mexican plant," but he 

 does not give his reasons for asserting this. Cogniaux,^ 

 in his recent monograph, mentions a great number of 

 specimens gathered from Brazil to the West Indies with- 

 out saying if he had seen any one of these given as wild. 

 Seemann ^ saw the plant cultivated at Panama, and he 

 adds a remark, important if correct, namely, that the 

 name chayote, common in the isthmus, is the corruption 

 of an Aztec word, chayotl. This is an indication of an 

 ancient existence in Mexico, but I do not find the word 

 in Hernandez, the classic author on the Mexican plants 

 anterior to the Spanish conquest. The chayote was not 

 cultivated in Cayenne ten years ago.* Nothing indicates 

 an ancient cultivation in Brazil. The species is not 

 mentioned by early writers, such as Piso and Marcgraf, 

 and the name chuchu, given as Brazilian,^ seems to me to 

 come from chocho, the Jamaica name, which is perhaps 

 a corruption of the Mexican word. 



The plant is probably a native of the south of Mexico 

 and of Central America, and was transported into the 

 West India Islands and to Brazil in the eighteenth 

 century. The species was afterwards introduced into 

 Mauritius and Algeria, where it is very successful.^ 



Indian Fig, or Prickly Pear — Opuntia ficus indica, 

 Miller. 



This fleshy plant of the Cactus family, which produces 

 the fruit known in the south of Europe as the Indian fig, 

 has no connection with the fig tree, nor has the fruit 

 with the fig. Its origin is not Indian but American. 

 Everything is erroneous and absurd in this common 

 name. However, since Linn?eus took his botanical name 

 from it. Cactus ficus indica, afterwards connected with 

 the genus Opuntia, it was necessary to retain the specific 



* Nandin, Ann. Sc Nat^ 4th seiies, vol. xviii. p. 205. 



* In Monogr. Phan^r., iii. p. 902. 



* Seemann, Boi. of Herald, ip. 128. 



* iSaj^^ot, JaurnaL de la Soc. d'Hortic. de France, 1872. 



* Cogniaux, FL Brasil, fasc. 78. • Sagot, ibid. 



