366 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



1884. J In the mean time let us see whether this form 

 of spelt has been long in cultivation, and if it has any- 

 where been found growing wild. 



The one-grained wheat thrives in the poorest and 

 most stony soil. It is not very productive, but yields 

 excellent meal. It is sown es2)ecially in mountainous 

 districts, in Spain, France, and the east of Europe, but 

 I do not find it mentioned in Barbary, Egypt, the East, 

 or in India or China. 



From some expressions it has been believed to be 

 the tiphai of Theophrastus.^ It is easier to invoke 

 Dioscorides,^ for he distinguishes two kinds of zeia, one 

 with two seeds, another with onlv one. The latter would 

 be the one-grained wheat. Nothing proves that it was 

 commonly cultivated by the Greeks and Romans. Their 

 modern descendants do not sow it.^ There are no Sans- 

 krit, Persian, or Arabic names. I suggested formerly 

 that the Hebrew word hiisse'ineth might apply to this 

 species, but this hypothesis now seems to me difficult to 

 maintain. 



Marschall Bieberstein* mentions Triticuni mono- 

 coccuon, or a variety of it, growing wild in the Crimea 

 and the eastern Caucasus, but no botanist has confirmed 

 this assertion. Steven,^ who lived in the Crimea, 

 declares that he never saw the species except cultivated 

 by the Tartars. On the other hand, the plant which 

 Balansa gathered in a wild state near Mount Sipyliis, in 

 Anatolia, is T. ononococcum, according to J. Gay,^ wlio 

 takes with this form Tritlcuin hceotlcum, Boissier, which 

 grows wild in the plains of Boeotia "^ and in Servia.^ 



* Fraas, Syn. Fl. Class., p. 307. 



^ Diuscorides, Mat. Med., 2, c. iii. 155. 



' Heldreich, Nutz. Griech. 



* Bieberstein, Fl. Tauro- Caucasaica, voL i. p. 85. 



* Steven, Verzeichniss Taur. Halhins. PJlan., p. 354-. 

 « Bull. Soc. Bot. Fran., 1860, p. 30. 



' Boissier, Diagnoses, 1st series, vol. ii. fasc. 13, p. 69. 



* Balansa, 1854, No. 137 in Boissier's Herbarium, in wliicli there is 

 also a specimen found in the fields in Servia, and a variety with brown 

 beards sent by Pancic, growing in Servian meadows. The same 

 botanist (of Belgrade) has just sent me wild specimens from Servia, 

 which I cannot distinguish from T. iiionococcum, which he assures me 

 is not cultivated in Servia. Bentham writes to me that T. hceoticum. 



