88 ORIGIN or CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



Greek name andrachne and the Latin portulaca are 

 very different, as also the group of names, cholza in Per- 

 sian, Jchursa or koursa in Hindustani, kourfa kara-or in 

 Arab and Tartar, which seem to be the origin of hurza 

 noka in Polish, kurj-molia in Bohemian, Kreusel in Ger- 

 man, without speaking of the Russian name schrucha,. 

 and some others of Eastern Asia.^ One need not be a 

 ])hilologist to see certain derivations in these names show- 

 ing that the Asiatic peoples in their migrations trans- 

 ported with them their names for the plant, but this does 

 not prove that they transported the jilant itself. They 

 may have found it in the countries to which they came. 

 On the other hand, the existence of three or four different 

 roots shows that European peoples anterior to the Asiatic 

 migrations had already names for the species, which is 

 consequently very ancient in Europe as well as in Asia. 



It is very difficult to discover in the case of a plant 

 so widely diffused, and which propagates itself so easily 

 by means of its enormous number of little seeds, whether 

 a specimen is cultivated, naturalized by spreading from 

 cultivation, or really wild. 



It .does not appear to be so ancient in the east as in 

 the west of the Asiatic continent, and authors never say 

 that it is a wild plant.^ In India the case is very 

 different. Sir Joseph Hooker says^ that it grows in 

 India to the height of five thousand feet in the Himalayas. 

 He also mentions having found in the north-west of 

 India the variety with upright stem, which is cultivated 

 together with the common species in Europe. I find 

 nothing positive about the localities in Persia, but so 

 many are mentioned, and in countries so little cultivated, 

 on the shores of the Caspian Sea, in the neighbourhood of 

 the Caucasus, and even in the south of Russia,* that it 

 is difficult not to admit that the plant is indigenous in 

 that central region whence the Asiatic peoples overran 



' Nemnich, Polyglot. Lex. Naturgesch., ii. p. 1047. 



* Loureiio, Fl. Cochin., i. p. 359 ; Francliet and Savatier, Faum. PI. 

 Japon., i. p. 53 ; Bcnlliaiii, Fl. Hongkong, p. 127. 



* Hooker, Fl. Brit. Ind., i. p. 240. 



* Ledebour, Fl. Ross., ii. p. 145 ; Lindemaiin, in Prodr. Fl. Chers., p. 74, 

 says, " In desertis et arcno^s.s inter Clierson et Btrislaw, circa t'dessara." 



