WHERE CULTIVATED PLANTS ORIGINATED. 
15 
REGIONS WHERE CULTIVATED PLANTS 
ORIGINATED. 
BY ALPHONSE I)E CANDOLLE. 
In the beginning of the nineteenth century the origin of most of 
our cultivated species was unknown. Linnaeus made no efforts to 
discover it, and subsequent authors merely copied the vague or 
erroneous expressions by which he indicated their habitations. 
Alexander von Humboldt expressed the true state of the science in 
1807 when he said, “The origin, the first home of the plants most 
useful to man, and which have accompanied him from the remotest 
epochs, is a secret as impenetrable as the dwelling of all our domestic 
animals. . . We do not know what region produced spontaneously 
wheat, barley, oats, and rye. The plants which constitute the natural 
riches of all the inhabitants of the tropics—the banana, the papaw, 
the manioc, and maize, have never been found in a wild state. The 
potato presents the same phenomenon.” * 
At the present day, if a few cultivated species have not yet been 
seen in a wild state, this is not the case with the immense majority. 
We know, at least, most frequently, from what country they first came. 
This was already the result of my work of 1855,f which modern more 
extensive research has confirmed in almost all points. This research 
has been applied to 247 species cultivated on a large scale by agri¬ 
culturists or in kitchen gardens and orchards. I might have added a 
few rarely cultivated, or but little known, or of which the cultivation 
has been abandoned ; but the statistical results would have been the 
same. 
Out of the 247 species which I have studied, the old world has 
furnished 199, America 45, and three are still uncertain. 
No species was common to the tropical and austral regions of the 
two hemispheres before cultivation. Allium schcenoprasum, the hop 
(Humulus tupulus), the strawberry (Fragaria vesca), the currant (Riles 
minim), the chestnut (Castanea vulgaris), and the mushroom (Agaricus 
campestris) were common to the northern regions of the old and new 
worlds. I have reckoned them among the species of the old world, 
since their principal habitation is there, and there they were first 
cultivated. 
* “ Essai sur la Geographic des Plantes,” p. 28. 
+ A. de Candolle, “Geogr. Bot. Baisonnee.” 
\ Common Haricot Phaseolus vulgaris, Musk gourd Curcubita moschata, and 
the Fig-leaved gourd M. ficifolia. 
