Origin of Cultivated Plants: The International Scientific Series Volume XLVIIICandolle, Alphonse de
History
Origin of Cultivated Plants: The International Scientific Series Volume XLVIII
Candolle, Alphonse de
Botany, Economic; Plants, Cultivated
Rumphius[1496] saw the species wild in several of the Sunda Isles.
Modern authors, less careful, or acquainted only with cultivated
species, say nothing on this head. Seemann[1497] says for the Fiji
Isles, “cultivated, and to all appearance wild in some places.” On the
continent of Asia it is not even cultivated, as the climate is not hot
enough.
The bread-fruit is evidently a native of Java, Amboyna, and the
neighbouring islands; but the antiquity of its cultivation in the whole
of the archipelago, proved by the number of varieties, and the facility
of propagating it by buds and suckers, prevent us from knowing its
history accurately. In the islands to the extreme east, like Otahiti,
certain fables and traditions point to an introduction which is not very
ancient, and the absence of seeds confirms this.[1498]
+Jack-Fruit+—_Artocarpus integrifolia_, Linnæus.
The jack-fruit, larger than the bread-fruit, for it sometimes weighs as
much as eighty pounds, hangs from the branches of a tree thirty to fifty
feet high.[1499] The common name is derived from the Indian names
_jaca_, or _tsjaka_.
The species has long been cultivated in southern Asia, from the Punjab
to China, from the Himalayas to the Moluccas. It has not spread into the
small islands more to the east, such as Otahiti, which leads us to
suppose it has not been so long in the archipelago as upon the
continent. In the north-west of India, also, its cultivation does not
perhaps date from a very remote epoch, for the existence of a Sanskrit
name is not absolutely certain. Roxburgh mentions one, _punusa_, but
Piddington does not admit it into his _Index_. The Persians and the
Arabs do not seem to have known the species. Its enormous fruit must,
however, have struck them if the species had been cultivated near their
frontiers. Dr. Bretschneider does not speak of any Artocarpus in his
work on the plants known to the ancient Chinese, whence it may be
inferred that towards China, as in other directions, the jack-fruit was
not diffused at a very early epoch. The first statement as to its
existence in a wild state is given by Rheede in ambiguous terms: “This
tree grows everywhere in Malabar and throughout India.” He perhaps
confounded the planted tree with the wild one. After him, however, Wight
found the species several times in the Indian Peninsula, notably in the
Western Ghauts, with every appearance of a wild and indigenous tree. It
has been extensively planted in Ceylon; but Thwaites, the best authority
for the flora of this island, does not recognize it as wild. Neither is
it wild in the archipelago to the south of India, according to the
general opinion. Lastly, Brandis found it growing in the forests of the
district of Attaran, in Burmah, but, he adds, always in the
neighbourhood of abandoned settlements. Kurz did not find it wild in
British Burmah.[1500]
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