June 1907.] 



381 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



A Useful Family: the Solancese. 



By James Ryan. 



Botany is a science which occasionally frightens away its neophytes by a 

 crabbed, terminology and a dreary schedule of unintelligible Greek and Latin 

 derivations not always of the most scholarly. 



The writer would be the last to decry the habit of exactitude in observation 

 and accuracy of description, but there is a good deal of profit to be got out of 

 Botany on other lines of broad common sense. 



Perhaps the Solanaceoe are as interesting a family as any to start on — they 

 are largely represented in the every day life of the East and West Indies, from 

 which latter place many of the best known members of the family come. Before 

 going further afield it may be as well to note that the importation to the East of 

 West Indian and S. American plants has followed certain definite lines. An 

 enormous amount of unrecorded and unacknowledged work was done first of all 

 by the Portuguese who undeniably are responsible for the introduction of the Capsi- 

 cums and probably the Pine Apple (although this of course is ho congener of the 

 Solanaceoe). It is however now-a-days difficult to distinguish between the plants 

 brought in by the Portuguese from the Brazils via Cape Verde and W. Africa and 

 thence viz Mozambique to Goaand Malacca, and the Dutch imports from Guiana via 

 the Cape and, perhaps, even round the Horn. 



So much for a digression, now let us tackle our main subject. The Solanaceoe 

 may be divided into two main classes — I beg pardon of the Botanist— Suborders, the 

 Solauece and the Atropece. To all intents and purposes the difference between these 

 is that the Solaneoe are on the whole more or less eatable and the Autropeoe are 

 more or less poisonous. 



The Solaneoe comprise such plants as the Brinjal, (Solatium Melongena) the 

 Capsicums or Chili peppers, the Tomato (Lycopersicum esculentum) and the Cape 

 gooseberry (Physalis edulis). The last is an interesting example of the dangers of a 

 cheap and popular nomenclature, as it is not a gooseberry and does not come from 

 the Cape, any more than the Jerusalem Artichoke, which is a Sunflower (Girasole) 

 from Brazil— as the Freeh name Topinambouv indicates— the Topinambos being a 

 Carib tribe living near Bahia. 



By far the most interesting of the Solaneoe, is the Potato, Solarium Tuberosum 

 This, like most of the Solaneoe, is of American origin — it dates from the earliest 

 dates of the Spanish conquistadores (the name Potato is a corruption of the Carib 

 word Batata) but curiously enough was never developed by the Latin races. 

 Introduced into Ireland by Sir Walter Raleigh at his estate of Myrtle Grove, Water- 

 ford, now (1907) the property of Sir Henry Blake, it has identified itself through 

 good and ill report, feast and famine with the Irish people— in this respect unique 

 as an alien plant among the foodstuffs of the world. We are by the way so 

 accustomed to regard the tubers of the Potato as harmless that we are apt to forget 

 that boiling has much to do with the non poisonous quality. Raw or under boiled 

 potatoes (especially when under-ripe with an insufficient development of starch) 

 have been known to produce symptome of narcotic poison. The fruit or potato-* 



