CULTIVATED PLANTS

Field, Forest and Farm by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. CULTIVATED PLANTS

CHAPTER XXXIII. CULTIVATED PLANTS

“Three modes of plant-propagation are in use among horticulturists, namely: layering, slipping, and grafting. To get an adequate notion of the great usefulness of these operations let us dwell for a moment on the origin of our cultivated plants.

“You perhaps imagine that from the beginning of time, in view of our need of food, the pear-tree was eager to bear large fruit, plump and juicy; that the potato, just to accommodate us, stuffed its big tubers with farinaceous matter; that the cabbage, in its desire to gratify us, conceived the idea of gathering those beautiful white leaves into a compact head. You imagine that wheat, pumpkins, carrots, grapes, beets, and no one knows what besides, possessed with a great interest in man, have always worked for him of their own accord. You think that our grapes of to-day are like those from which Noah extracted the juice that made him drunk; that wheat, ever since it appeared on the earth, has never failed to yield its annual harvest of grain; that the beet and the pumpkin had at the beginning of the world the plumpness that makes them prized by us now. You imagine, in short, that our food-plants came to us originally just as we have them now. Undeceive yourselves: the wild plant is usually of very little nutritive value to man. His is still the task of so cultivating it as to derive advantage from its natural aptitudes by improving them.

“In its native country, on the mountains of Chile and Peru, the potato in its wild state is a poor diminutive tuber about as large as a hazel-nut. Man takes the worthless wild stock into his garden, plants it in rich soil, tends it, waters it; and behold, from year to year the potato thrives more and more, gaining in size and in nutritive properties, and finally becoming a farinaceous tuber as large as your two fists.

“On the sea-coasts, exposed to all the winds that blow, there grows a wild cabbage with a tall stalk and a few green leaves of bitter taste and rank odor. But beneath its rude exterior it may perhaps hide invaluable aptitudes. Apparently this suspicion occurred to him who first, so long ago that the record of it is lost, took the sea-coast cabbage under cultivation. The suspicion was well-founded. The wild cabbage has been improved by man’s incessant care: its stalk has become firmer and its leaves have multiplied, whitened, acquired tenderness, and massed themselves in a compact head, so that we have the crisp and succulent cabbage of to-day as the admirable result of this notable metamorphosis. There on the sea-coast rock was the first beginning of the excellent plant; here in our gardens is its present attainment. But what about its intermediate forms which, through the centuries, marked the gradual [161]development of the species to its present high state of perfection? Each of these forms was a step forward, and each had to be preserved, kept from degenerating, and made the subject of still further improvement. Who could tell the story of all the labor and pains it has taken to produce the cabbage-head as we now have it?

“And the wild pear-tree—are you acquainted with it? It is a frightful bramble-bush, all bristling with sharp thorns; and the pears themselves—a most repellent fruit, sure to choke you and set your teeth on edge—are very small, sour, hard, and full of grit that reminds one of gravel-stones. Surely he must have had an extraordinary inspiration who first pinned his faith on this crabbed specimen of underbrush and foresaw in the remote future the butter-pear on which we regale ourselves to-day.

“In the same way, by the painstaking culture of the primitive vine, whose grapes were no larger than our elderberries, man has, in the sweat of his brow, developed the luscious fruit of the modern vineyard. From some poor species of grass now forgotten he has also produced the wheat that to-day supplies us with bread. A few wretched herbs and shrubs, far from promising in appearance, he has cultivated and improved until they became the vegetables and fruit trees so prized by us at present. This old earth of ours, in order to make us work and thus fulfill the law of our existence, has behaved to us like a harsh stepmother. To the birds of the air she gives food in abundance, but to us she offers of her own free [162]will nothing but wild blackberries and sour sloes. But let us not complain, for the stern struggle with necessity is precisely what constitutes our grandeur.

“It is for us, by our intelligence and labor, to work our way out of the difficulty; upon us it is enjoined to put into practice the noble creed, God helps those who help themselves.

“Thus from the earliest times it has been man’s study to select from the countless forms of vegetation at his disposal those that best lend themselves to improvement. The greater number of species have remained useless to us, but others, predestined no doubt, and created especially with a view to man’s needs, have responded to our efforts and acquired through cultivation qualities of prime importance, since our sustenance depends on them. Nevertheless the improvement attained is not so radical that we can count on its permanence if our vigilance relaxes. The plant always tends to revert to its primitive state. For example, let the gardener leave the headed cabbage to itself without fertilizing, watering, or cultivating it; let him leave the seeds to germinate by chance wherever the wind blows them, and the cabbage will quickly part with its compact head of white leaves and resume the loose green leaves of its wild ancestors. In like manner the vine, set free from man’s constant attention, will degenerate into the little-esteemed wild species that haunts our hedge-rows and yields a scant harvest that will not, all together, be worth a single bunch of cultivated grapes. The pear-tree, if neglected, will again [163]be found on the outskirts of our woods, once more bristling with long sharp thorns and bearing under-sized and extremely unpalatable fruit. Under like conditions the plum-tree and the cherry-tree will bear nothing but stones covered with a sour skin. In short, all the riches of our orchards will in similar circumstances undergo such deterioration as to be worthless to us.

“This reversion to the wild state occurs even under cultivation and in spite of efforts to prevent it when seed is used for propagating the plant. Suppose the seeds from an excellent pear are put into the ground. Well, the trees that spring from those seeds will bear for the most part only mediocre or poor, even very poor, pears. Another planting is made with the pits of the second generation, and the result shows still further decline. Thus if the experiment is continued with seeds taken each time from the immediately preceding generation, the fruit, becoming smaller and smaller, bitterer and harder, will at last return to the sorry wild pear of the thicket.

“One more example. What flower equals the rose in nobleness of carriage, in perfume and brilliant coloring? Suppose we plant the seeds of this superb flower; its descendants will turn out to be miserable bushes, nothing but wild roses like those of our hedges. But we need not be surprised at this. The noble plant had the wild rose for ancestor, and in trying to propagate it by its seed we have simply caused it to resume its native characteristics.[164]

“With some plants, let us note in conclusion, the improvement attained by cultivation is more stable and persists even when the seed is used for purposes of propagation; but this persistence is only on the express condition that our vigilance shall not relax. All plants, if left to themselves and propagated by seed, revert to the primitive state after a certain number of generations in which the characteristics imposed by human skill and care gradually disappear.”

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