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Digital
History>eXplorations>Columbus & the
Columbian Exchange>The
Columbian Exchange>Origins of Fruits
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This
map shows the sites of domestication for a number of crops.
Places where crops were initially domesticated are called centres
of origin
This
image is from the USDA. |
Sources
for more information:
| Origins of Selected Plants |
| FRUITS: |
| apples |
"The center of diversity of the genus Malus is
the eastern Turkey, southwestern Russia region of Asia Minor.
Apples were probably improved through selection over a period
of thousands of years by early farmers. Alexander the Great is
credited with finding dwarfed apples in Asia Minor in 300 BC;
those he brought back to Greece may well have been the progenitors
of dwarfing rootstocks."
from Dr. Mark Rieger, University of Georgia
http://www.uga.edu/fruit/ |
| avocados |
"The avocado (Persia americana)
apparently originated in Central America, where it was cultivated
as many as 7,000 years ago. It was grown some 5,000 years ago
in Mexico and, but the time of Christopher Columbus, had become
a food as far south as Peru, where it is called palta. Legend
has it that Hernando Cortes found avocados flourishing around
what is now Mexico City in 1519. The English word "avocado" is
derived from the Aztec ahuacatl, which the Spaniards passed along
transliterated as aguacate."
from Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild
Conee Ornelas, Cambridge University Press:Cambridge, 2000, Volume
Two, p. 1725. |
| bananas |
"Edible
bananas originated in the Indo-Malaysian region reaching
to northern Australia. They were known only by hearsay in
the
Mediterranean region in the 3rd Century B.C., and are believed
to have been first carried to Europe in the 10th Century
A.D. Early in the 16th Century, Portuguese mariners transported
the plant from the West African coast to South America. The
types found in cultivation in the Pacific have been traced
to eastern Indonesia from where they spread to the Marquesas
and by stages to Hawaii."
from Center for New Crops & Plant Products at Purdue
University
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/banana.html |
cacao
(source of Chocolate) |
"The first people known to have made chocolate
were the ancient cultures of Mexico and Central America. These
people, including the Maya and Aztec, mixed ground cacao seeds
with various seasonings to make a spicy, frothy drink. Later,
the Spanish conquistadors brought the seeds back home to Spain,
where new recipes were created."
from the Field Museum
http://www.fieldmuseum.org/Chocolate/history.html |
| coffee |
"Coffee as we know it kicked off in Arabia, where
roasted beans were first brewed around A.D. 1000. By the 13th
century Muslims were drinking coffee religiously. The “bean broth”
drove dervishes into orbit, kept worshippers awake, and splashed
over into secular life. And wherever Islam went, coffee went
too: North Africa (map), the eastern Mediterranean, and India
(map). Arabia made export beans infertile by parching or boiling,
and it is said that no coffee seed sprouted outside Africa
or Arabia until the 1600s—until Baba Budan. As tradition has
it, this Indian pilgrim-cum-smuggler left Mecca with fertile
seeds strapped to his belly.
from National Geographic
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/coffee/ax/frame.html |
| grapes |
"There are in all between forty and fifty
species of true grape-vines, one native to Europe, twelve to
Asia, and thirty-five to N. America. The genus Vitis has a much
longer history than man. The earliest representative yet discovered
is the fossil species V. sezonnensis, which flourished in the
subtropical forests of what is now France during the Lower Eocene
epoch."
from Ethnobotanical Leaflets International Web Journal
http://www.siu.edu/~ebl/leaflets/grapes.htm |
| guavas |
"The guava has been cultivated and distributed
by man, by birds, and sundry 4-footed animals for so long that
its place of origin is uncertain, but it is believed to be an
area extending from southern Mexico into or through Central America.
It is common throughout all warm areas of tropical America and
in the West Indies (since 1526), the Bahamas, Bermuda and southern
Florida where it was reportedly introduced in 1847 and was common
over more than half the State by 1886."
from Center for New Crops & Plant Products at Purdue University
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/guava.html |
| lemons |
"...[the lemon's] original home may have
been in the north of India. It only reached the Mediterranean
towards the end of the 1st century AD, ... The Arabs seem to
have been largely responsible for the spread of lemon cultivation
in the Mediterranean region...Arab traders also spread the lemon
eastward to China..."
from The Oxford Companion to Food, by Alan Davidson, Oxford University
Press: Oxford, 1999, p. 449. |
| olives |
"Olive leaf fossils have been found in Pliocene
deposits at Mongardino in Italy. Fossilised remains have been
discovered in strata from the Upper Paleolithic at the Relilai
snail hatchery in North Africa, and pieces of wild olive trees
and stones have been uncovered in excavations of the Chalcolithic
period and the Bronze Age in Spain. The existence of the olive
tree therefore dates back to the twelfth millennium BC. The wild
olive tree originated in Asia Minor where it is extremely abundant
and grows in thick forests. It appears to have spread from Syria
to Greece via Anatolia (De Candolle, 1883) although other hypotheses
point to lower Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, the Atlas Mountains or
certain areas of Europe as its source area."
from the International Olive Council
http://www.internationaloliveoil.org/web/aa-ingles/oliveWorld/olivo.html |
| papayas |
"Though the exact area of origin is unknown, the
papaya is believed native to tropical America, perhaps in southern
Mexico and neighboring Central America. It is recorded that seeds
were taken to Panama and then the Dominican Republic before 1525
and cultivation spread to warm elevations throughout South and
Central America, southern Mexico, the West Indies and Bahamas,
and to Bermuda in 1616. Spaniards carried seeds to the Philippines
about 1550 and the papaya traveled from there to Malacca and
India. Seeds were sent from India to Naples in 1626."
from Center for New Crops & Plant Products at Purdue University
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/papaya_ars.html |
| peaches |
"Peaches were probably the first fruit crop
domesticated in China about 4000 years ago. Cultivars grown today
derive largely from ecotypes native to southern China, an area
with climate similar to that of the southeastern USA, a major
peach growing region. Peaches were moved to Persia (Iran) along
silk trading routes. In fact, the epithet persica denotes Persia,
which is where Europeans thought peaches originated. Greeks and
especially Romans spread the peach throughout Europe and England
starting in 300-400 BC."
from Dr. Mark Rieger, University of Georgia
http://www.uga.edu/fruit/ |
| pears |
"In 5,000 B.C., Feng Li, a Chinese diplomat, abandoned
his responsibilities when he became consumed by grafting peaches,
almonds, persimmons, pears and apples as a commercial venture.
In The Odyssey, the Greek poet laureate Homer lauds
pears as a "gift of the gods." Pomona, goddess of fruit,
was a cherished member of the Roman Pantheon, and Roman farmers
documented
extensive pear growing and grafting techniques. Thanks to their
versatility and long storage life, pears were a valuable and
much-desired commodity among the trading routes of the ancient
world. Evident in the works of Renaissance Masters, pears have
long been an elegant still-life muse for artists. In the 17th
century a great flourishing of modern pear variety cultivation
began taking place in Europe."
from Pears USA
http://www.usapear.com/pears/history.asp |
| pineapples |
"Native to southern Brazil and Paraguay (perhaps
especially the Parana-Paraguay River) area where wild relatives
occur, the pineapple was apparently domesticated by the Indians
and carried by them up through South and Central America to Mexico
and the West Indies long before the arrival of Europeans. Christopher
Columbus and his shipmates saw the pineapple for the first time
on the island of Guadeloupe in 1493 and then again in Panama
in 1502."
from Center for New Crops & Plant Products at Purdue University
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/pineapple.html |
| strawberries |
"The history of the strawberry goes back
as far as the Romans and perhaps even the Greeks, but because
the fruit
has never been a staple of agriculture it is difficult to find
ancient references to it...By the 1300's, the strawberry was
in cultivation in Europe, for the French then began transplanting
the wood strawberry, Fragaria vesca, from the wilderness to the
garden. The plant was considered more ornamental for its flowers
than useful for its fruit, although it was grown to some extent
for eating... the Chilean strawberry, Fragaria
chiloensis, from Chile to France in 1714 was the most important
event in
the history of the modern strawberry. The Chilean berry had one
quality the European kinds lacked -- size."
from The Strawberry: History, Breeding and Physiology by
George Darrow, 1965
http://www.nal.usda.gov/pgdic/Strawberry/darpubs.htm |
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