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Show as "love apple." Squash and pump- kin the name is adapted from an American-Indian word were first seen in this continent. So was the pineapple, the Jerusalem artichoke, the Vanilla pod, the arrowroot, and the cassava which, in the form of tapioca, our civilization has learned to appreciate as a wholesome delicacy. The avocado pear first seems to have attracted public attention through a book of Martin Fernandez Fernan-dez de Encisco, published in 1519, in which he reports their abundance abun-dance in Santa Marta, Colombia, from which they are still shipped today. Nowadays there may not be "anything new under the sun," but to the men who sailed with Columbus there certainly were under un-der this sun of our Americas an unusual number of astonishly new things in the vegetable kingdom. KNOW YOUR NEIGHBOR EDIBLE PLANTS THAT ORIGINATE!) ORIGI-NATE!) IN AMERICA The coming of Columbus to America meant more, to the Occidental Occi-dental World of his time, than the mere discovery of a new land; it meant the opening of a totally new vegetable and animal kingdom. king-dom. Both the fauna and the flora of the Western Hemisphere were a source of constant delight and astonishment to the white men from overseas who when they sailed back home often took with them samples of the Incredible Incredi-ble plants or animals they had seen. This was not the land of spices they had been looking for, but It was almost as good in many respects! In the field of edible plants alone, when one considers the number of vegetable foods that were unknown to the civilized world, prior to the 15th Century, it seems impossible, sometimes, that Europe should owe so much to America. The potato, for instance, was found under cultivation by the Spaniards, in the neighborhood of Quito, Ecuador. In the "Cronica de Peru" of Pedro Creca (Seville, 1553) it is mentioned under the name of "battata" or "papa," and Hieronimus Cardan, a monk, is supposed to have been the first to introduce it from Peru into Spain, from which country it passed into Italy and thence to Belgium. At the time of the discovery dis-covery of America the plant seems to have been cultivated in all the temperate parts of the continent, but not in Mexico. In 1585 potato tubers were brought from what is now North Carolina to Ireland on return of the colonists sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh. They were first cultivated on Sir Walter's estate near Cork. The sweet potato po-tato is said to have been introduced intro-duced from Santa Fe into England Eng-land in 1563. There is some discussion as to whether corn (maize) originated in Asia or in the New World, but it is thought to be most probably indigenous to tropical America. Small grains of an unknown variety vari-ety have been found in the ancient tombs of Peru and it had been long and extensively cultivated in America at the period of the discovery. dis-covery. " . As to the cacao tree, it is without with-out doubt a native of tropical America. Cocoa and chocolate for eating are comparatively modern preparations, whereas drinking chocolate of a sort has been known to Europeans since the discovery of the Western Hemisphere. The original of the modern chocolate was "chocolatl," a frothy beverage taken cold and held in high esteem es-teem in Mexico by the Aztecs. The Spaniards greatly improved this bitter and pungent drink by add-in add-in sugar and they1 guarded the secret of its preparation for nearly near-ly a century when it became known to Italy, Germany and France. It is not absolutely certain that kidney beans were unknown in Europe before the discovery of America, but what is certain is that seeds of that species have been found in ancient Peruvian tombs which gives great probability probabil-ity to the theory that this plant is of South American origin. The seeds of the tomato were brought by the Spaniards from South America and the fruit was then for some time known in Europe |