tailieunhanh - Ebook Economic botany: Part 2

(BQ) Part 2 book "Economic botany" has contents: The history and nature of food plants, the major cereals, the minor cereals and small grains, legumes and nuts, vegetables, fruits of temperate regions, tropical fruits, spices and other flavoring materials,.and other contents. | CHAPTER XIII THE HISTORY AND NATURE OF FOOD PLANTS THE mSTORY OF FOOD PLANTS The most remarkable fact concerning the food plants in use in the world today, and for that matter the industrial plants as well, is their great antiquity. Most of them were domesticated from wild ance::;tons long before the beginning of the hi -toricaJ period, and all available records inelle-ate that they were as familiar to the peoples of the ancient world as they are to us. Comparatively few new plants have been developed during the last 2000 years, although the older ones have been greatly altered and improved in response to the increasing complexity of man's existence. The history of our utleful plant::; and their influence on civilization has always been of interest to botanists and ethnologists. Many investigations have been carried FIG. Alphonse De Candolle on in an attempt to determine (1806-1 893), from a photograph . . . taken in 1866. (Courtesv of the Gray theu age and place of ongm, as H erba,·ium. ) well as their cultural history. The Work of De classic work dealing with this phase of botany is D e Candolle's "L'origine des plantes cultivees," which appeared in 1883. So careful and painstaking was his work that few of his conclusions have had to be altered in the light of more recent studies. D e Candolle (Fig. 127) based his conclusions on a great variety of evidence : the works of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and other old historians; Chioese writings; arc:heological and ethnological data, such as the monuments of Egypt, the ruins of Pompeii, the remains of the Lake Dwellers of 297 • 298 ECONOMIC BOT ANY Europe, and the Inca ruins of South America; philological indications, involving the names of plants in Hebrew, Sanskrit, and other ancient languages; and botanical conclusions based on distribution, number of varieties, presence or absence of wild types, length of cultivation, and similar matters. He arranged the useful plants in six classes, and .