190 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



When I formerly ^ tried to discover whence this plant, 

 cultivated in the old and new worlds, came originally, the 

 absence of a Sanskrit name, and the fact that the first 

 writers on the Indian flora had not seen it wild, led me 

 to put aside the hypothesis of an Asiatic origin. How- 

 ever, as the modem flora of British India ^ mentions it as 

 " probably of native origin," I was constrained to make 

 further researches. 



Although Southern Asia has been thoroughly explored 

 during the last thirty years, no loeaHty is mentioned 

 where the Gombo is wild or half wild. There is no 

 indication, even, of an ancient cultivation in Asia. The 

 doubt, therefore, lies between Africa and America. The 

 plant has been seen wild in the West Indies by a good 

 observer,* but I can discover no similar assertion on the 

 part of any other botanist, either with respect to the 

 islands or to the American continent. The earliest writer 

 on Jamaica, Sloane, had only seen the species in a state of 

 cultivation. Marcgraf * had observed it in Brazilian plan- 

 tations, and as he mentions a name from the Congo and 

 Angola country, quillobo, which the Portuguese corrupted 

 into quingombo, the African origin is hereby indicated. 



Schweinfurth and Ascherson ^ saw the plant wild in 

 the Nile Valley in Nubia, Kordofan, Senaar, Abyssinia, 

 and in the Baar-el-Abiad, where, indeed, it is cultivated. 

 Other travellers are mentioned as having gathered speci- 

 mens in Africa, but it is not specified whether these 

 plants were cultivated or wild at a distance from habita- 

 tions. We should still be in doubt if Fliickiger and 

 Hanbury*" had not made a bibliographical discovery 

 which settles the question. The . Arabs call the fruit 

 hamyah, or bdmiat, and Abul-Abas-Elnabati, who visited 

 Egypt long before the discovery of America, in 1216, has 



' A. de Candolle, GSogr. Bot. Rais., p. 768. 



• Flora oj Brit. Ind., i. p. 343. 



• Jacquin, OiservafioneSj iii. p. 11. 



• Marcgraf, Hist. Plant, p. 32, with illustrations. 



• Schweinfurth and Ascherson, An/zahhtng, p. 265, under the name 

 abelmoschus, 



" Pliickiijer and Hanbiuy, Pharmacogra/pJiia, p. 86. The descrip- 

 tion is in Ebn Baithar, Sondtheimer's trans., i. p. 118. 



