Freaks and marvels of plant life; or, Curiosities of vegetation / by M.C. Cooke.

  • Cooke, M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt), 1825-1914.
Date:
[1881]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Freaks and marvels of plant life; or, Curiosities of vegetation / by M.C. Cooke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    30/484 (page 18)
    Mexicans, and in recent times another species of the same genus {Agave Americana) has acquired the name of Mexican aloe, and furnishes a well-known fibrous material. Above the limit of rye and barley, in Chili and Peru, grows another characteristic plant—the quinoa—the seeds of which are used as food. On the lower Orinoco the savage races subsist on the Mauritia palm. In Africa the date-palm is the in- heritance of the Arab. In Abyssinia the coffee appears as the characteristic plant. With the Hindoo it is rice or cotton. In China the tea-shrub is the supreme national plant. Amongst the Indo-Cauca- sian races of Western Asia and Europe the original characteristic plants are wheat, barley, rye, and oats. Southern Europe has the olive, and, together with Central Europe, the vine. The Laplanders have no characteristic plant, if we except the reindeer moss. Yet all this is being changed with increasing civilisa- tion ; as the European races obtained the almond, peach, and apricot from Asia Minor, the orange from China, rice from India, and the maize and potato from America, so the colonies of the same races, established in all climates and scattered over the world, carried with them their characteristic plants, or collected around them those of all other races. In this manner maize, cotton, the vine, coffee, the orange, and even tea, travelling from their original centres, threaten every climate for which they are suitable,