424 sturtevant's notes on edible plants 



mottled with a purple figure, was trained on poles. (This is undoubtedly the lima, as it 

 answers to the description given by a very creditible person who secured for me samples 

 from a spontaneous plant in Florida: ' the trunk as large as a man's thigh, and the plant 

 known for the past twenty-five years, some years yielding as much as fifty bushels of 

 pods,' and the seeds smaller than the cultivated lima, very flat, white and mottled with 

 purple.) Indian rounceval or miraculous pulse, so called from their large pods and great 

 increase; they are very good, and so are the bonavis, calavances, nanticokes and abundance 

 of other pulse, too tedious to mention, which we find the Indians possessed of when first 

 we settled in America." Bonavis is perhaps Bonavista, a variety of bean sold by Thor- 

 bum, a New York seedsman, in 1828. The bonavista bean (Long) of Jamaica, is said 

 to be Lablab vulgaris; calavances is the Barbados name for Dolichos sinensis Linn., as used 

 by Long, a red bean; and galavangher pea is the Barbados name for D. barbadensis Mayc. 

 In A True Declaration of Virginia, London, 1610, p. 12, " the two beans (planted with 

 the com) runne upon the stalks of the wheat, as our garden pease upon stickes." 



In 1528, Narvaes found beans in great plenty in Florida and westward, and de Vaca 

 found beans in New Mexico or Sonora in 1535. De Soto, 1539, also found beans in abim- 

 dance * and mentions that " the granaries were fvill of maes and small beans," but we have 

 no due to the species. Beans are also mentioned in Ribault's Voyage, 1562, as ctdtivated 

 by the Florida Indians. 



The mention of beans in Mexico is frequent. The Olmecs raised beans before the 

 time of the Toltecs; beans were a product of the Nahua tillage;^ they are mentioned by 

 Acosta in 1590; Alarcon speaks of their ciilture by the Indians of the Colorado River in 

 1758. The native Mexican name was ayacotle, according to Humboldt, and Bancroft 

 says that they were the etl of the Aztecs; when boiled in the pod exotl. 



In November, 1492, Coliunbus, in Cuba, found " a sort of bean " ' or " fields planted 

 with faxones and habas very different from those of Spain;" * and red and white beans 

 were afterwards seen by him in Honduras, according to Pickering.* Gray and Trumbull 

 quote Oviedo as saying that on the island and on the main many bushels are produced 

 yearly of these and oi fesoles of other sorts and different colors.* 



The Indians of Peru, according to de la Vega, had three or four kinds of beans called 

 purutu.'' Squier found lima beans in the mummy covering of a woman from the huaca 

 at Pachacamac, Peru;' Wittmack, who studied the beans brought from Peruvian tombs 

 by Reiss and Strobel, identified the lima beans and also three kidney beans with P. 

 vulgaris purpurens Martens, P. vulgaris ellipticus praecox Alefield, and P. vulgaris ellip- 

 ticus atrofuscus Alefield.' 



^ De Soto Disc. Cong. Fla. 1557. Hakl. Soc. Ed. 9:117. 1851. 

 ' Bancroft, H. H. Native Races 2:347. 1882. 

 'Knox, J. Coll. Voy. 1:83. 1767. 



Gray and Trumbull Amer. Journ. Sci. Arts 130. 1883. 

 ' Pickering, C. Chron. Hist. Pis. sys. 1879. 



Gray and Trumbull Amer. Journ. Sci. Arts 131. 1883. 



' Vega, G. de la Roy. Comment. Hakl. Soc. Ed. 2:358. 1871. 



Squier, E. G. Peru 78. 1877. 



De Candolle, A. Orig. Cult. Pis. 341. 1885. 



