1885.] Kitchen Garden Esculents of American Origin. 453 
Chinese writers,’ but Louriero mentions it in Cochinchina in his 
day (1790). A dark red form came to Martens from Batavia, and 
an orange-red from farther India” Schweinfurth found it in Cen- 
tral Africa,> Martens‘ received it from Sierra Leone, the form 
bipunctatus came from the Cape of Good Hope to ‘Vienna, and 
Martens received it from Reunion under the name Pots du Cap. 
As Jaquin wrote in 1770 this fixes its appearance in Austria, but 
it only first reached England in 1779 The form zxamanus was 
considered by Linnzus to belong to Africa, but he advances, as 
De Candolle remarks, no evidence of this habitat, and we may 
remark that the slave trade may well be responsible for the trans- 
mission very quietly of South American species of food plants of 
convenient characters for ship use to the African coast. P. der- 
asus Schrank, considered by Sprengel a variety of P. inamænus, 
was found at Rio Janeiro. 
The lima bean is the scimetar podded kidney-bean and sugar 
bean of Barbadoes ;* it was mentioned in Jamaica by Lunan ;’- it 
may have been “the bushel bean,” “ very flat, white and mottled 
with a purple figure,” of the Carolinas in 1700-8,” as this descrip- 
tion applies very closely to the lima beans now spontaneous in 
Florida. Two varieties, the “ Carolina” or sieva and the “ lima,’ 
were grown in American gardens in 1806. Eight varieties, some 
scarcely differing, are now offered for sale by our seedsmen: Vil- 
morin enumerates four for France; the speckled form occurs 
in Brazil™ and in Florida; a black form (P. derasus) in Brazil ; the 
blood red in Texas;” the dark red with light or orange ruddy 
spots in the Bourbon isles (Jacquin); the black white-streaked 
in Cochin China (Loureiro); and the large white, small white or 
sieva, the red, the white striped and speckled with dark red, and 
the green, in our gardens. In Central Africa but two seeds are 
1 Bretschneider, On the study and value of Chinese botanical works. 
2 Martens, Die Gartenbohne, 96 
* Africa, 11, 254. 
lh 
5 Miller’s Dict. 
8 Millers Dict. 
1 Martens, 1. c. 
8 Schomburgh, Hist. of Barb., 605. 
* Hort. Jam., 1, 434. 
10 e Voy. to Car., 76-77. 
artens. 
