FOOD RESOURCE COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
SOLANUM MELONGENA, EGGPLANT, JEW'S APPLE, MAD APPLE
Hedrick, U.P. editor. 1919. Sturtevant's Notes on Edible Plants. Report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station for the Year 1919 II. Albany, J.B Lyon Company, State Printers. [References Available]
is a plant of Old World tropics. The eggplant seems not to have been known in Europe in the time of the ancients. The Arab physician, Ebn Baithar, who wrote in the thirteenth century, speaks of it and cites Rhases, who lived in the ninth century. Albertus Magnus, who lived in Europe in the thirteenth century, mentions it. Ibn-al-awarm, a Moorish Spaniard of the twelfth century, describes four species, and six are noted in the Nabathaean agriculture. According to Jessen, Avicenna, who flourished about A.D. 595, knew it, and called it badingan. Bretschneider says the eggplant can be identified in the Ts'i min yao shu, a Chinese work on agriculture of the fifth century, and is described in later writings of 1590, 1640, and 1742. Acosta mentions, as among the vegetables carried from Spain to America, the "berengenas, or apples of Love;" and Piso, 1658, figures the eggplant among Brazilian plants, under the name of belingela.
The eggplants first known in Europe appear to belong to the class we now grow for ornament, the fruit resembling an egg. They were of various colors. Fuchsius, 1542, mentions the purple and the yellow; Tragus, 1552, who says they have recently reached Germany from Naples, names the same colors; Lyte's Dodoens, 1586, names two kinds, one purple and the other pale or whitish. In 1587, Dalechamp figures three kinds, the one long, another obscurely pear-shaped and the third rounded; he mentions the colors purple, yellow and ash-colored; Gerarde, 1597, says white, yellow or brown; Dodonaeus, 1616, mentions the oblong and round, white and purple; Marcgravius, 1648, describes a round and yellow fruit; J. Bauhin, 1651, names various sorts, the long, the deep and the round, yellow, purple and whitish. Bontius, 1658, describes the wild plant of java as oblong and round, or spherical, the color yellow; the cultivated sorts purple or white. Rauwolf particularly describes these plants at Aleppo, 1574, as ash-colored, yellow and purple.
At present, the purple eggplant is almost the only color grown in our kitchen gardens but there are many sorts grown in other regions. The purple and the white ornamental are mentioned for America gardens in 1806; as also in England, 1807; in France, 1824. In the Mauritius, bojer names three varieties of purple and white colors. In India, Carey says, there are several varieties in constant cultivation by the natives, such as green, white, purple, yellow. Firminger describes purple-, black- and white-fruited forms; and Speede names the purple and white in six varieties. In Cochin China, Loureiro describes five sorts: purple, white, and variegated.
There are two sorts of plants to be recognized: (a)The one with the stems, leaves and calyxes unarmed, or nearly so. (b) The other with the stems, leaves and calyxes more or less aculeate. The first sort is figured by Fuchsius, 1542, and by succeeding authors up to the present date. The second sort is first noticed by Camerarius, 1588, and has continued to the present time.
The varieties now grown in American gardens can be divided very readily into four types, the oval, round, long and the oblong or pear-shaped. The following synonymy can be established:
I. THE OVAL.
This, at present, includes but ornamental sorts, and present forms show a marked improvement in evenness and regularity over the odler forms.
Calyx not spiny.- Mala insana. Fuch. 513. 1542; Roeszl. 117. 1550; Tragus. 894. 1552; Pineaus 514. 1561; Germ. 274. 1597; Sweert. t. 20, p0. I. 1612; Dod. 458. 1616. Melongena sive mala insana vel melanzana. Lob. Obs. 138. 1576; Icon. i. 268. 1591. Melongena, seu mala insana. Cam. Epit. 820. 1586. Melongena. Matt. Opera. 760. 1598. Melanzane. Dur. C. 279. 1617. Solanum pomiferum fructu rotundo. Bauh. J. 3: 618. 1651. Melongena arabum. Chabr. 524. 1674 Aubergine blanche. Vilm. 27. 1883. Calyx spiny.- Melanzana fructu pallido. Hort Eyst. 1713; Aut . Ord. i: 3, 1613. White Egg Plant. N.Y. St. 1886.
II. THE ROUND.
Calyx not spiny. Belingela. Marcg. 24. 1648; Piso. 210. 1658. Aubergine ronde de Chine. Decaisne and Naudin. Man. 4: 288. Black Pekin. Ferry. 1883; Hovey. 1866. Calyx spiny.- Black Pekin. Greg. 1886; thorb. 1886.
III. THE LONG.
This type varies much in size and proportion, if the Chinese variety described by Kizo Tamari as recently introduced into Japan belongs to this class. He says it is about one inch in diameter by one foot and a half long. This form may be either straight or curved.
Calyx not spiny.- Melantzana arabum melongena. Dalechamp 2: app. 23. 1587. Solanum pomiferum fructu incurvo. Bauh. J. 3: 619. 1651; chabr. 524. 1673; Pluk. Phyt. t. 226, pl. 2 1691. aubergine violette longue. Decaisne and Naudin. Man. 4: 287. Calyx spiny.- Aubergine violette longue. Vilm. 24. 1883.
IV. THE OBLONG OR PEAR-SHAPED.
This form is a swollen fruit with an elongation towards the summit, in some of its varieties shaped like the powder-horn gourd.
Calyx not spiny.- Melantzana nigra. Dalechamp. 2: app. 23. 1587. Aubergine violette nain tres hative. Vilm. 26. 1883 Early Round Violet. Damman. 1884. Calyx spiny.- Solanum pomiferum magnus fructu, etc. Pluk. Phyt. t. 226, p. 3. 1691. Melongena Tourn. t. 65. 1719. American Large Purple. Burr. 609. 1863.
We may note that the Arabic words melongena and bedengaim were applied by Rauwolf to the long-fruited form, the calyx not spiny, while the word betleschaim or melanzana batleschaim was appled to the spiny-calyx form of the pear-shaped, if Gronovius's synonymy is to be trusted.
Every type in the varieties under cultivation can with certainty be referred to one of the four forms above named. The oval type is figured in 1542, as we have shown; the round type in 1648, in brazil; the long type, by Dalechamp, in 1587; and the pear-shaped type also in 1587. All the colors now noted, andmore, receive notice by the ancient writers. As we have confined our synonymy to those authors who have given figures and have omitted those who but described, however certainly the descriptions would apply, we can claim accuracy as to our facts.
We, hence, have no evidence that types have originated through cultivation in recent years and we have strong evidence that types have continued unchanged through long-continued cultivation under diverse cliimates. It is but as we examine variation within types that we see the influences of cultivation. The oval-fruited is described by Dodonaeus, 1616, as of the form and size of an egg, but he says that in Egypt, where the plant is wild, it attains double or three times the size which it has in France and Germany. Ray, 1686, compares the size of the long-fruited to that of an egg, or of a cucumber, a comparison tht would answer for to-day, as cucumber-size covers a wide range; but, he adds, that the cured form is like a long gourd. The figures of the pear-shaped in 1719 indicate a fruit which compares well with the usual sizes gorwn at the present time. It is in regularity of form and in the large size of selected strains that we see the influence arising from careful selection and protected growth. What other influence has climate excercised? We do not know.
This sketch illustrates the point already made in studies of the dandelion, celery and other vegetables-that types of varieties have great fixity, are not produced through human selection and cultivation, and, we wish we could add in this case, originated from wild prototypes; but, unfortunately, there are no records of the variation observed in feral or spontaneous plants.
