BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN 
LEAFLETS 
THE BROOKLYN INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND. SCIENCES 
Series III Brooklyn, N. Y., June 30, 1915. Number 6 
THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF SOME OF OUR 
MORE COMMON GARDEN VEGETABLES 
What are and whence came the garden vegetables ? I wonder 
if any of the throng of people one commonly sees at green 
grocers’ stores have ever considered this question as they were 
inspecting the various goods displayed. Of course, it must have 
occurred to anyone who gave the subject a moment’s thought and 
who was at all acquainted with the plant world that he had never 
seen such vegetables growing wild— denizens of the roadside, the 
forest, the fields, or the prairies. Perhaps, you thought they 
came from a very far country, where Nature was more bountiful. 
And, to a great extent, you were right. For, although a large 
country, the United States can lay claim to being the original 
home of only a very few of the green grocer’s goods. 
The vegetables we usually style American are American only 
in the broad sense, which takes in both American continents. 
Corn for example is supposed, ancestrally, to have been confined 
to southern Mexico or to the plateau of central Colombia, though 
when the white race first came into contact with it, it had been 
distributed by the Indians and their predecessors over the whole 
of northern and central South America and all of North America, 
as far north as southern Canada. Vast fields of this grain were 
traversed by the Spaniards in their pioneer marches in what are 
now the states of Alabama and Mississippi. As to varieties, the}'’ 
were as varied in texture as regards their fruits and as kaleido- 
scopic in color as they are at present. No wizard white man can 
take credit for “creating” sweet corn, flint corn, pop corn, flour 
corn and dent corn— for these varieties were all known to the 
Indian, long before his coming. 
Likewise, the original home of the staple and very necessary 
potato is in the cool elevated region of far-away Peru and the 
islands of the Chilean Archipelago, where it to-day flourishes in 
