PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 87 



it in Cyprus.^ Unger and Kotschy ^ do not consider it 

 to be wild in that island. According to Ledeboiir,^ Koch 

 found it round the convent on Mount Ararat; Pallas 

 near Sarepta; Falk on the banks of the Oka, a tributary 

 of the Volga ; lastly, H. Martins mentions it in his flora of 

 Moscow ; but there is no proof that it was wild in these 

 various localities. Lindeniann,* in 18G0, did not reckon 

 the species among those of Russia, and he only indicates it 

 as cultivated in the Crimea.^ According to Nyman,^ the 

 botanist Schur found it wild in Transylvania, while the 

 Austro-Hungarian floras either do not mention the species, 

 or give it as cultivated, or growing in cultivated ground. 



I am led to believe, by this assemblage of more or 

 less doubtful facts, that the plant is of Persian origin, 

 whence it may have spread, after the Sanskrit epoch, 

 into the gardens of India, Syria, Greece, and Egypt, and 

 even as far as Abyssinia.'^ 



Purslane — Portulaca oleracea, Linnaeus. 



Purslane is one of the kitchen garden plants most 

 widely diffused throughout the old world from the earliest 

 times. It has been transported into America,^ where it 

 spreads itself, as in Europe, in gardens, among rubbish, 

 by the wayside, etc. It is more or less used as a vege- 

 table, a medicinal plant, and is excellent food for pigs. 



A Sanskrit name for it is known, lonica or lounia, 

 which recurs in the modern languages of India.^ The 



* Poech, Enum. PI. Cypri, 1842. 



' Unj^er and Kotschy, Inseln Cypern., p. 331. 

 » Ledebour, Fl. Eoss., i. p. 203. 



* LindemsLTin, Index Plant. inRoss. , Bull. Soc.Nat.Mosc.18GO, vol. xxxiii. 



* Lindemann, Prodr. Fl. Cherson, p. 21. 



« Nyman, Conspectus Fl. Eur op., 1878, p. 65. 



» Schweinfurth, Beitr. Fl. Mh., p. 270. 



' In the United States purslane was believed to be of foreign origin 

 (Asa Gray, Fl. ofNorthern States, ed. 5; Bot. of California, i. p. 79), but 

 in a recent publication, Asa Gray and Trumbull give reasons for believing 

 that it is indigenous in America as in the old world. Columbus had 

 noticed it at San Salvador and at Cuba ; Oviedo mentions it in St. 

 Domingo and De Lery in Brazil. This is not the testimony of botanists, 

 but Nuttall and others found it wild in the upper valley of the Missouri, 

 in Colorado, and Texas, where, however, from the date, it might have 

 been introduced. — Author's Note, 1884. 



* Piddington, Index to Indian Plants. 



