132 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



G. olitorius is more used as a vegetable than for 

 its fibres. Out of Asia it is employed exclusively for 

 the leaves. It is one of the commonest of culinary 

 plants among the modern Egyptians and Syrians, who 

 call it in Arabic meloJcych, but it is not likely that they 

 had any knowledge of it in ancient times, as we know 

 of no Hebrew name.^ The present inhabitants of Crete 

 cultivate it under the name of moiuchlia,^ evidently 

 derived from the Arabic, and the ancient Greeks were 

 not acquainted with it. 



According to several authors^ this species of Corchorus 

 is wild in several provinces of British India. Thwaites 

 says it is common in the hot districts of Ceylon ; but in 

 Java, Blume only mentions it as growing among rubbish 

 (in rvderatis). I cannot find it mentioned in Cochin-China 

 or Japan. Boissier saw specimens from Mesopotamia, 

 Afghanistan, Syria, and Anatolia, but gives as a general 

 indication, "culta, et in ruderatis subspontanea." No 

 Sanskrit name for the two cultivated species of Corchorus 

 is known.* 



Touching the indigenous character of the plant in 

 Africa, Masters, in Oliver's Flora of Tropical Africa (i. 

 p. 262j, says, "wild, or cultivated as a vegetable through- 

 out tropical Africa." He attributes to the same species 

 two plants from Guinea which G. Don had described as 

 different, and as to whose wild nature he probably knew 

 nothing. I have a specimen from Kordofan gathered by 

 Kotschy, No. 45, "on the borders of the fields of sorghum." 

 Peters, as far as I know, is the only author who asserts 

 that the plant is wild. He found C. olitorius " in 

 dry places, and also in the meadows in the neighbour- 

 hood of Sena and Tette." Schweinfurth only gives it as 

 a cultivated plant in the whole Nile Valley."^ Tbis is 

 also the case in the flora of Senegambia by Guillemin, 

 Peprottet, and Richard. 



' RosenmiiUor, Bihl. Naturgeach. 



* Von Heldreich, Die Nutzpfl. Qriechenl., p. 53. 



» Masters, in Hooker's F/. Brit. Ind., i. p. 397 j Aitc>iisnn, Qaial, 

 Punjai, p. 23; Roxburgh, Fl.Jnd., ii. p. 581. ' 



* Piddington, Indeai. ■'■ 



* Sohweinfurth, Beitr. e.-tl. ^thiop., p. 264, ■'- ' 



