The Origin of Cultivated Plants

An investigation tracing the origins of the plants cultivated by humans, published here in the second translated edition of 1886.

Alphonse de Candolle (Author)

9781108038904, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 November 2011

482 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.7 cm, 0.61 kg

Alphonse de Candolle (1806–93) was a French-Swiss botanist who was an important figure in the study of the origins of plants and the reasons for their geographic distribution. He also created the first Code of Botanical Nomenclature. Despite initially studying law, he took over both the chair of botany at the University of Geneva, and the directorship of Geneva's botanical gardens from his father Augustin de Candolle (1778–1841). He published numerous botanical books, and edited ten volumes of the Prodromus, a seventeen-volume reference text intended to cover the key properties of all known seed plants. This work, reissued in the second edition of the English translation of 1886, is his most famous and influential book, tracing the geographic origins of plants known to have been cultivated by humans. It is one of the earliest studies of the history of crop domestication, and an important contribution to phytogeography.

Preface
Part I. General Remarks: 1. In what manner and at what epochs cultivation began in different countries
2. Methods for discovering on proving the origin of species
Part II. On the Study of Species, Considered as to their Origin, their Early Cultivation, and the Principal Facts of their Diffusion: 1. Plants cultivated for their subterranean parts, such as roots, tubercles, or bulbs
2. Plants cultivated for their stems or leaves
3. Plants cultivated for their flowers, or for the organs which envelop them
4. Plants cultivated for their fruits
5. Plants cultivated for their seeds
Part III. Summary and Conclusion: 1. General table of species, with their origin and the epoch of their earliest cultivation
2. General observations and conclusion
Index.

Subject Areas: Botany & plant sciences [PST]