234 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



(excepting in the extreme north), in Anatolia, the south 

 of the Caucasus, and the Persian province of Ghilan.^ 

 Near Trebizond, the botanist Bourgeau saw quite a small 

 forest of them.^ In the mountains of the north-west 

 of India it is " apparently wild," as Sir Joseph Hooker 

 writes in his Flora of British India. No author men- 

 tions it as growing in Siberia, in Mongolia, or in Japan.^ 



There are two varieties wild in Germany, the one 

 with glabrous leaves and ovaries, the other with leaves 

 downy on the under side, and Koch adds that this down 

 varies considerably.* In France accurate authors also 

 give two wild varieties, but with characters which do 

 not tally exactly with those of the German flora.^ It 

 would be easy to account for this difference if the wild 

 trees in certain districts spring from cultivated varieties 

 whose seeds have been accidentally dispersed. The 

 question is, therefore, to discover to what degree the 

 species is probably ancient and indigenous in different 

 countries, and, if it is not more ancient in one country 

 than another, how it was gradually extended by the 

 accidental sowing of forms changed by the crossing of 

 varieties and by cultivation. 



The country in which the apple appears to be most 

 indigenous is the region lying between Trebizond and 

 Ghilan. The variety which there grows wild has leaves 

 downy on the under side, short peduncles, and sweet 

 fruit,® like Malus communis of France, de'scribed by 

 Boreau. This indicates that its prehistoric area extended 

 from the Caspian Sea nearly to Europe. 



Piddington gives in his Index a Sanskrit name for 

 the apple, but Adolphe Pictet^ informs us that this 



• Nyman, Conspectus Flora Europece, p. 240 ; Ledebour, Flora Bossica, 

 ii. p. 96; Boisaier, Flora Orientalis, ii. p. 656; Decaisne, Nouv. Arch. 

 Mus., X. p. 153. 



' Boissier, ibid. 



' Maximowioz, Prim. Ussur. ; Eegel, Opit. Mori, etc., on the plants of 

 tte TTssuri collected by Maak ; Schmidt, Rdsen Amur. Pranchet and 

 Savatier do not mention it in their Bnum. Jap. Bretschneider quotes 

 a Chinese name which, he says, applies also to other species. 



* Koch, Syn. Fl. Germ., i. p. 261. 



» Borean, Fl. du Centre de la France, edit. 3, vol. ii. p. 236. 



' Boissier, «6» supra. » Orig. Indo-Eur., i. p. 27G. 



