EXOTICPLANTSOFWESTERNAFRICA - ruta de la memoria · PDF fileMy reading of precolonial African history had ... Phil Cohan, Monique ... thought “the greatest technical change in Africa

EXOTIC PLANTS OF WESTERN AFRICA:WHERE THEY CAME FROM ANDWHEN

STANLEY B. ALPERN*

I

History in Africa carried an article in 1992 entitled “The European Intro-duction of Crops into West Africa in Precolonial Times.”1 I wrote this tocorrect an impression left by several historians that only maize and cassavawere worth mentioning. My reading of precolonial African history hadmade it very clear that a great many new crops were brought to the conti-nent during the slave-trade period. My initial geographical focus was whatused to be called Lower Guinea, roughly the coast from Cape Palmas to Mt.Cameroon, but inevitably my research took in all of western Africa fromSenegal to Angola and up to the southern fringe of the Sahara.2 My findingswere admittedly interim, a sort of database for future refinement. And yet Iwas able to identify 86 introduced crops.

It was ingenuous of me to expect that one paper would suffice to over-turn what had become conventional wisdom. In 1995 John Iliffe,3 in 1997Elizabeth Isichei,4 in 1998 John Reader5 repeated the maize-cassava

History in Africa 35(2008), 63–102

*I am grateful for research help from Africanists Roger Blench, Daniel Hopkins, AdamJones, Jim La Fleur and Selena Winsnes, librarians Erica Maillart and Élisabeth Ortunio,friends Tania and Mike Buckrell-Pos, Phil Cohan, Monique Picard, Yale Richmond andAase and Per Rostgaard-Haldbo, and my son-in-law Phil Lovdal.1HA 19(1992), 13-43. Because of the proliferation of citations, I usually include only theauthors’ names rather than repeated short titles.2I shall sometimes refer to western Africa in this paper as “the Region.” For my purposes“west Africa” encompasses Senegal to Nigeria and inland to the Sahel, while “west-cen-tral Africa” comprises Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, EquatorialGuinea, Gabon, the two Congos, and Angola.3Africans: the History of a Continent (Cambridge, 1995), 138.4A History of African Societies to 1870 (Cambridge, 1997)), 339.5Africa: a Biography of the Continent (New York, 1998), 413-15.

64 Stanley B. Alpern

mantra. In 2002 Christopher Ehret expanded the duo of exotic crops toinclude tobacco, peanuts, New World beans, Asian rice and sugar cane.6David W. Phillipson reiterated in 2005 what he had said 20 years earlier,citing only maize, cassava and bananas.7 And in 2006 James L.A. Webb Jr.named just four: maize, cassava, peanuts and potatoes.8

This pattern of minimization may reflect what seems to be a general dis-inclination of historians to dig deeply into botany. An important recent booktitled Writing African History devotes only 17 of 510 pages to the subject.9A 591-page tome, The History of Islam in Africa, says nothing about theMuslim impact on sub-Saharan farming.10 And yet agriculture has been theprimary economic activity of western Africa for several millennia. Theworldwide expansion of Europeans beginning in the fifteenth centurybrought profound changes to farming and diet there as elsewhere. The mix-ing of New and Old World plants after 1492 has been called “one of themost important aspects of the history of life on this planet since the retreatof the continental glaciers.”11 The transfer of plants within the Old World byEuropeans (and Arabs/Berbers) may have been just as important to sub-Saharan Africa.

The arrival of many new crops in the region permanently transformedthe everyday life of its inhabitants and often the very landscape. The pur-pose of this paper is to encourage historians to give due recognition to thisquiet, long-drawn-out, grass-roots revolution of the kind illuminated by theFrench historian Fernand Braudel.12 To begin, I have compressed the 31-page 1992 article (hereafter referred to simply as 1992) into a table namingthe 86 crops, indicating their geographical source (not necessarily their

6The Civilizations of Africa: a History to 1800 (Charlottesville, 2002), 354-55.7African Archaeology, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 2005), 167.8“Ecology and Culture in West Africa” in Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong, ed., Themesin West Africa’s History (Athens, OH, 2006), 46. Presumably Webb means sweet pota-toes.9John Edward Philips, ed. (Rochester, 2005). In that brief entry, “The Importance ofBotanical Data to Historical Research on Africa,” Dorothea Bedigian (ibid., 152) makesthe obvious statement, almost plaintive in the context, that “plants have altered the courseof human history.”10Nehemia Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels, eds., (Athens, OH, 2000).11Alfred W. Crosby Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Conse-quences of 1492 (Westport, CT, 1973), 3. Manioc (cassava) specialist William O. Jonesthought “the greatest technical change in Africa in modern times was the introduction ofa complete foodcrop complex from the Americas.” See his “Environment, TechnicalKnowledge, and Economic Development” in David Brokensha, ed., Ecology and Eco-nomic Development in Tropical Africa (Berkeley, 1965), 37.12See, for example, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of PhilipII, tr. Siân Reynolds (2 vols.: New York, 1976).

Exotic Plants of Western Africa 65

place of origin), dating the earliest written reference, locating the sighting,and specifying who reported it. In cases where a crop was introduced bothby Arabs (or Berbers) and Europeans, I include both. The plants aregrouped by category and in order of their appearance in the written recordsfor western Africa. Nearly all the written sources were fully detailed in theoriginal paper.

Abbreviations used: Af =Africa; Am=the Americas; As=Asia; GC=GoldCoast (now Ghana); Med=Mediterranean area; Port=Portuguese; SL=SierraLeone; S. Tiago=São Tiago (a/k/a Santiago) in the Cape Verde Islands; S.Tomé=São Tomé. Benin refers to old Benin in Nigeria.

Cereals1. Maize (Am) 1554 GC Eden2. Asian rice 1574-1625 SL Donelha

Root Crops3. Taro (As) prehistoric13

4. Sweet potato (Am) 1520-40 S.Tomé Anon Port Pilot5. Turnip (Med) 1337-38 Mali/Kanem al-Ùmari

1572 Elmina Port source6. Greater yam (As) 1591 S.Tomé Port source7. Cassava (Am) 1612 Gabon Brun8. Tiger nut (Med) 1662-69 GC Müller9. Carrot (Med) 1698 Whydah Bosman10. Radish (Med) 1698 Whydah Bosman11. Tannia (Am) 1843 GC Reindorf12. Arrowroot (Am) 1843 GC Reindorf/Freeman

Pulses13. Chick-pea (Med) 1512 Congo Port source14. Fava bean (Med) 1600-01 Senegal/Benin Marees/Ruiters15. Pea (Med) 1600-01 Senegal/GC Marees16. Scarlet runner (Am) 1600-01 GC Marees17. Common bean (Am) 1645-48 Congo da Roma18. Lima bean (Am) 1645-48 Congo da Roma19. Pigeon pea (Af/As) ?20. Jack bean (Am) ?

13Meaning the plant arrived in western Africa before that part of the Region was writtenabout.


Oil Plants21. Peanut (Am) 1664 Congo/Angola Cavazzi22. Castor-oil (Af) 1681-82 Elmina Barbot23. Physic nut (Am) 1839 GC Freeman

Vegetables24. Onion (Med) 1154 Senegal al-Idrisi

1645-48 Congo da Roma25. Garlic (Med) 1337-38 Mali al-Ùmari

1645-48 Congo da Roma26. Cabbage (Med) 1337-38 Mali al-Ùmari

1666-67 GC Villault27. Eggplant (Med) 1337-38 Kanem/Mali al-Ùmari

1572 Elmina Port source28. Kale (Med) 1572 Elmina Port source29. Purslane (Med) 1701-02 Assini Loyer30. Sorrel (Med) 1701-02 Assini Loyer31. Lettuce (Med) 1709-12 Accra Rask32. Cauliflower (Med) 1709-12 Accra Rask33. Shallot (Med) 1788-89 Príncipe Labarthe34. Tomato (Am) 1824 Senegal Monod35. Chive (Med) 1861-64 Yorubaland/ Burton

Dahomey36. Sweet pepper (Am) ?

Cucurbits37. Melon (Af/Med) 1352-53 Gao Ibn Battuta

c1506-07 S.Tiago Fernandes38. Pumpkin (Am) 1564-65 Guinea Sparke39. Cucumber (Med) 1506-10 Gao Leo Africanus

1579-83 Congo Lopes40. Squash (Am) ?

Fruits41. Bananas/Plantains (As) prehistoric42. Pomegranate (Med) 1269-86 Kanem Ibn Sa’id

1520-40 S.Tiago Anon Port pilot43. Fig (Med) 1337-38 Kanem/Mali al-Ùmari

c1506-07 S.Tiago Fernandes44. Lime (Med) 1337-38 Kanem al-Ùmari

c1506-07 Gambia Fernandes


45. Lemon (Med) 1456 Gambia Gomesc1509-13 Kano Leo Africanus

46. Sour orange(Med) c1505-08 S.Tiago/ Fernandes/S.Tomé Pacheco Pereira

c1509-13 Kano Leo Africanus47. Citron (Med) c1505-08 S.Tiago/ Fernandes/

S.Tomé Pacheco Pereira48. Coconut (As) 1519 Cameroon Fernández de Enciso49. Tamarind (Af/As) 1579-83 Congo Lopes50. Pineapple (Am) 1600-04 GC/Benin Marees/Ulsheimer51. Prickly pear (Am) 1647 S.Tiago Ligon52. Papaya (Am) 1647 S.Tiago Ligon53. Guava (Am) 1647 S.Tiago Ligon54. Sweetsop (Am) 1647 S.Tiago Ligon55. Soursop (Am) 1668 Angola Dapper56. Cashew (Am) 1668 S.Tomé Dapper57. Sweet orange(Med) 1679 GC Barbot58. Mango (As) 1824 Senegal Monod59. Avocado (Am) 1824 Senegal Monod60. Breadnut (Am) 1843 GC Reindorf61. Passion fruit(Am) 1850 SL, Liberia Bowen62. Breadfruit (As) 1850-56 Lagos Bowen63. Barbados cherry(Am) ?64. Hog plum (Am) ?65. Mammee apple (Am) ?66. Pitanga cherry (Am) ?67. Star apple (Am) ?68. Sapodilla plum(Am) ?

Spices and Flavorings69. Sugarcane (Med) twelfth cent. Gao al-Zuhri

1485 S.Tomé Port source70. Clove (As) 1572 Elmina Port source71. Coriander (Med) 1572 Elmina Port source72. Mint (Med) 1572 Elmina Port source73. Ginger (As) 1579-83 S.Tomé Lopes74. Lovage (Med) 1600-01 GC Marees75. Hot pepper (Am) 1686 Gambia La Courbe76. Cardamom (As) 1688-1702 GC Bosman77. Tarragon (Med) 1688-1702 GC Bosman78. Cinnamon (As) 1693 S.Tomé Oettinger


79. Parsley (Med) 1698 Whydah Bosman80. Rosemary (Med) 1709-12 GC Rask81. Thyme (Med) 1709-12 GC Rask82. Basil (Med) 1766-76 Congo Proyart83. Allspice (Am) 1893-95 “several Kingsley

districts”84. Turmeric (As) ?

Non-Food Plants85. Tobacco (Am) 1594/96 Timbuktu Tarikh al-Fattash

1600-01 Senegal/ MareesPríncipe

86. Kenaf (Af/As) ?

II

My further research over the years on the above crops has shown the needfor amendments and comments. These will be numbered as in the abovetable. Skipped numbers signify a lack of new data.[1] Portuguese documents inform us that maize, doubtless locally grown,

was being loaded on ships as slave provisions at São Tomé beginning in1534. This would seem to be the earliest unambiguous evidence we nowhave for the presence of maize in Africa.14 An investigation of vernacularnames for maize in Nigeria reached the interesting conclusion that “in con-trast to elsewhere in West Africa, maize was not adopted from the Por-tuguese.” Even on the coast, only one group, the Itsekiri, were found to usea word of Portuguese derivation. All other names for maize in southernNigeria show a northern origin, indicating trans-Saharan transmission.15

Roland Portères’ distinction between “flint corn” from the north and “flourcorn” from the south, mentioned in my 1992 paper (24), therefore does notapply, at least to Nigeria. Early Arabic sources, however, fail to mentionmaize, and it was not until 1788 that its presence in northern Nigeria wasreported in the Borno area.16

Across four centuries, maize displaced two indigenous cereals, sorghumand millet, in many parts of western Africa, particularly Angola, Cameroon,14Maria Emília Madeira Santos and Maria Manuel Ferraz Torrão, “Entre l’Amérique etl’Afrique, les îles du Cap-Vert et São Tomé: les cheminements des milhos (mil, sorgho etmaïs)” in Monique Chastanet, ed., Plantes et paysages d’Afrique (Paris, 1998), 76.15Roger M. Blench, Kay Williamson, and Bruce Connell, “The Diffusion of Maize inNigeria: a Historical and Linguistic Investigation,” Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika15(1994), 38-39.16Marvin P. Miracle,Maize in Tropical Africa (Madison, 1966), 90-91.


Benin (ex-Dahomey), Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo. John William Pursegloveexplains that it is usually higher yielding; requires less labor to grow, har-vest and thresh; can be harvested over long periods; is protected from birdsand rain by its husks; stores well if properly dried; is easily transportable;offers cultivars suited to a wide range of environments; provides nutrients ina compact form; and is often preferred as food. The two African domesti-cates continue to be the dominant cereals in drier areas unsuited to maize.17

[2] As stated in 1992 (20), Asian rice, Oryza sativa, has largely replacedanother African domesticate, O. glaberrima. African rice is actually moretolerant of poor growing conditions and no less tasty—it was the speciesthat sparked South Carolina’s rice-growing boom in the late seventeenthcentury—but it is less productive.18 Asian rice exhibits more diversity andhas stronger stems, shatter-proof husks, and harder grain that combine toraise output.19 A promising project has been under way in West Africa sincethe mid-1990s to combine the best characteristics of African and Asianrice.20 The Arabs, who brought Asian rice to the Mediterranean, may havecarried it across the Sahara too, but there is no evidence that the rice seenoften in their sub-Saharan travels was not O. glaberrima.21 Jean Barbot’sstatement that rice on the Gold Coast “was first brought from India,” citedin 1992 (21), appears to have been borrowed from Pieter de Marees.22

[3] The Asian origins of taro, also known as the “old cocoyam” in theRegion, and its long presence there are not disputed, but scholars disagree

17Tropical Crops: Monocotyledons (New York, 1975), 262, 301.18Judith A. Carney, Black Rice: the African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas(Cambridge, MA, 2001), 78-98.19Roland Portères, “Vieilles agricultures de l’Afrique intertropicale,” Agronomie Tropi-cale 5(1950), 493; Purseglove, 161-62; Humphrey Morrison Burkill, The Useful Plants ofWest Tropical Africa (2d ed.: 6 vols.: Kew, 1985-2004), 2(1994):287-88; J.D. La Fleur,“The Culture of Crops on the Gold Coast (West Africa) from the Earliest Times to circa1850,” unpublished MS based on his 2003 Ph.D. thesis, University of Virginia, 138-51.20Celia W. Dugger, “A Bounty of Rice for Africa, Just out of Reach,” New York Times(10 October 2007); J.D. La Fleur, “Plants: Imported Species” in John Middleton andJoseph Miller, eds., New Encyclopedia of Africa (5 vols.: Farmington Hills, MI, 2007),4:158-59.21Auguste Chevalier, Ressources végétales du Sahara et des ses confins nord et sud(Paris, 1932), 86-87; Andrew M. Watson, Agricultural Innovation in the Early IslamicWorld: the Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, 700-1100 (Cambridge, 1983),17-19; Roger Blench, “A History of Agriculture in Northeastern Nigeria” in Daniel Bar-reteau, René Dognin, and Charlotte von Graffenreid, eds., L’homme et le milieu végétaldans le bassin du lac Tchad (Paris, 1997), 87.22Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea (1602), tr. and ed.Albert van Dantzig and Adam Jones (Oxford, 1987), 159. The editors thought it was tooearly for Asian rice to have reached the Gold Coast, but Marees’ reference to yellowishhusks and white grains would seem to fit O. sativa rather than O. glaberrima.


on how the root crop reached western Africa. In the fourteenth century bothal-Ùmari and Ibn Battuta saw a food resembling taro in Mali.23 This indi-cated a northern source for the crop to Islamic specialist Andrew M. Wat-son.24 But the late Kay Williamson challenged this view on linguisticgrounds25 with strong support from Roger Blench.26 See no. 6 for a possiblealternative explanation of taro’s arrival.[5] Evidence of turnips dating from between the tenth and thirteenth cen-

turies has reportedly been found by archeologists on a purported site of thecapital of ancient Mali, a village in modern Guinea named Niani.27

[6] Blench is convinced from linguistic and cultivar-distribution data thatthe greater yam (Dioscorea alata, a/k/a the water yam or winged yam) pre-ceded the Portuguese to western Africa28 although standard botanical workstake the opposite position.29 He has speculated that it, along with taro andthe plantain, may have been introduced to the region in pre-Portuguesetimes by Austronesian mariners. Blench concedes that evidence for such along voyage is thin: a noise-maker fabricated from a plantain leaf-stem thatis found elsewhere only in the Malay peninsula, a method of fixing drum-heads with wedges duplicated only in Indonesia, and the presence of ele-phantiasis that originated in southeast Asian islands. But he notes that Poly-nesian settlement of Easter Island and Viking landings in North Americawere equally unlikely.30

[7] Half a century has gone by since William O. Jones raised the possi-bility that cassava had been introduced to west-central Africa by the Por-

23Nehemia Levtzion and J.F.P. Hopkins, eds., Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for WestAfrican History (2d ed.: Princeton, 2000), 263, 288.24Agricultural Innovation, 68. See also Donald L. Plucknett, “Edible Aroids” in NormanWillison Simmonds, ed., Evolution of Crop Plants (London, 1976), 11; Burkill,1(1985):200.25“Linguistic Evidence for the Use of Some Tree and Tuber Food Plants in SouthernNigeria,” in Thurstan Shaw, Paul Sinclair, Bassey Andah, and Alex Okpoko, The Archae-ology of Africa: Food, Metals, and Towns (London, 1993), 150-51.26“History,” 84; Archaeology, Language, and the African Past (Lanham, MD, 2006),233-34.27Marianne Cornevin, Archéologie africaine (Paris, 1993), 197. Serious doubt has beencast on the claim that Niani was Mali’s capital. See David C. Conrad, “A Town CalledDakalajan: the Sunjata Tradition and the Question of Ancient Mali’s Capital,” Journal ofAfrican History 35(1994), 355-77.28Archaeology, 225-26.29Purseglove, 102; Donald Gilbert Coursey, “The Origins and Domestication of Yams inAfrica,” in Jack R. Harlan, Jan M.J. de Wet, and Ann B.L. Stemler, eds., Origins ofAfrican Plant Domestication (Hague, 1976), 391; Simmonds, 72; Burkill, 1:657.30“Ancient Connections between Insular SE Asia and West Africa in the Light of Ethnob-otanical and Other Evidence,” unpublished paper, 2007, 10-12. See also Kay Williamson,“Linguistic Evidence for the Prehistory of the Niger Delta” in E.J. Alagoa, F.N. Anozie,and Nwanna Nzewunwa, eds., The Early History of the Niger Delta (Hamburg, 1988),98-100.


tuguese in the late sixteenth century,31 but despite repeated assertions to thateffect32 no earlier sighting than that by Swiss traveler Samuel Brun in 1612has yet surfaced.33 I erred in a 1992 endnote (40/169) by saying Danishchaplain Johannes Rask reported that cassava was being commonly grownin the Accra area in 1709/12 and its root made into bread flour. His some-what confusing statement referred to Annobón (now Pagalu), as a recenttranslation by Selena Axelrod Winsnes makes clear.34

[10] An anonymous Dutch manuscript translated by Adam Jones report-ed radishes growing on São Tomé, most likely in 1641-48, i.e., half a centu-ry before the date cited in 1992.35

[11] Tannia, the “new cocoyam” brought by Basel Mission West Indiansto the Gold Coast in 1843, was introduced to other parts of western Africaduring the same period. African-American settlers took it to Liberia36 andEnglish Baptist missionaries to Fernando Po (now Bioko).37 The crop is saidto be gradually replacing taro because it is more drought- and shade-toler-ant, resists pests and diseases, and makes better fufu.38

[12] German botanist Theodor Vogel saw arrowroot being grown onCape Mesurado near Monrovia and near Cape Coast Castle in 1841, twoyears before the West Indians brought it to the Gold Coast.39

[13] Chick-peas may also have entered western Africa from the north.The thirteenth-century Greek-born Arabic geographer Yaqut quoted Ibn al-Faqih, who wrote ca. 903, as saying a western Sudanese people whoexchanged gold with northern merchants ate chick-peas.40

31Manioc in Africa (Stanford, 1959), 62.32J. W. Purseglove, Tropical Crops: Dicotyledons (London, 1968), 173; Simmonds, 83;Blench, Archaeology, 223.33Adam Jones, ed., German Sources for West African History, 1599-1669 (Wiesbaden,1983), 47.34Two Views from Christiansborg Castle: Johannes Rask (1708-1713), H.C. Monrad,1805-1809 ( 2 vols.: (Legon, in press), 1:110 (of draft). My thanks to James La Fleur forpointing out the mistake.35West Africa in the Mid-Seventeenth Century: an Anonymous Dutch Manuscript(Atlanta, 1995), 58. The Dutch occupied São Tomé from 1641 to 1648.36James Washington Lugenbeel, Sketches of Liberia (2d ed.: Washington, 1853), 14-15.The first edition dates to 1850, and the book would seem to refer to crops grown by thesettlers in the 1840s. See also Thomas Jefferson Bowen, Adventures and MissionaryLabours in Several Countries in the Interior of Africa from 1849 to 1856 (2d ed.: London,1968), 51.37Edwin Ardener, Coastal Bantu of the Cameroons (London, 1956), 45, refers to thetransfer of the crop from Fernando Po to Cameroon in 1858.38Purseglove,Monocotyledons, 62; Simmonds, 11-12; Burkill, 1:210.39William Jackson Hooker, ed., Niger Flora; or, an Enumeration of the Plants of WesternTropical Africa, Collected by the Late Dr. Theodore Vogel…(London, 1849), 32-33, 38.See also Lugenbeel, 22-23, for arrowroot in Liberia.40Levtzion/Hopkins, 170. “Sudanese” refers to the cross-continental geographic region,not the country.


[14] The fava bean (Vicia faba, a/k/a broad bean, horse bean, or fieldbean) reached western Africa from Europe as a provision for slave ships. Itmay also have crossed the Sahara: a twelfth-century geographer, al-Zuhri,heard that broad beans were sown along the Niger River.41 The crop appearsto have been eclipsed long ago, however, by Phaseolus beans from theAmericas.42

[16] The scarlet runner bean (a/k/a the Turkish bean), was also reportedamong crops at Loango, in what is now Congo-Brazzaville, by Dutch trav-eler Pieter van den Broecke. He visited the area three times between 1608and 1612.43 But the species appears to have died out in western Africa.[18] Presence of the lima bean in precolonial Lower Guinea did not go

unremarked, as indicated in 1992 (27). Paul Erdmann Isert, a German doc-tor in Danish employ, collected specimens of the plant at Whydah in 1785.44

[19] Specialists are divided over whether the pigeon pea originated inAfrica or South Asia, but clearly it is a much more important crop in Indiathan in western Africa.45 It is the main component of the Indian sauce dhal.Isert found it near Whydah in 1785 and Danish botanist Peter Thonning onthe Gold Coast a bit later.46

[20] The jack bean was unsung, as noted in 1992 ( 27), but not ignored.Swedish botanist Adam Afzelius collected it in Sierra Leone in 1792-96,and Frenchman George-Samuel Perrottet in Senegal in 1824-29.47

[21] A much earlier date for the peanut in western Africa may be 1608-12, when van den Broecke saw “large peas known . . . as ingobos” in Loan-go.48 Mid-sixteenth-century sightings have been reported, but without origi-nal sources.49

41Ibid., 97.42It is not mentioned in standard catalogs of plants in tropical Africa.43James D. La Fleur, tr. and ed., Pieter van den Broecke’s Journal of Voyages to CapeVerde, Guinea and Angola, 1605-1612 (London, 2000), 94, 100.44Frank Nigel Hepper, The West African Herbaria of Isert and Thonning (Kew, 1976),97.45Simmonds (154) and Blench (“The Movement of Cultivated Plants between Africa andIndia in Prehistory,” Africa Praehistorica, 15 [2003], 284) favor Asia; Purseglove(Dicotyledons, 236) and Burkill (3[1995]:297) favor Africa.46Hepper, 85. Jan Vansina, “Esquisse historique de l’agriculture en milieu forestier(Afrique équatoriale),” Muntu 2(1985), 14, cites linguistic evidence that the Portugueseintroduced the pigeon pea to Gabon.47Daniel Oliver, Flora of Tropical Africa (3 vols.: London, 1868-77), 2(1871):190-91.Confusingly, the jack bean is sometimes called horse bean or sword bean, which also des-ignate other plants.48La Fleur, Journal, 101, 101n2.49Burkill, 3:288; Félix François Busson, “Étude chimique et biologique des végétaux ali-mentaires de l’Afrique Noire de l’Ouest (doctoral thesis, Université d’Aix-Marseille,1965), 229. The peanut is listed under “Oil Plants” rather than “Pulses” because it yieldsthe second most important cooking oil in the region after palm oil.


[22] The “palma-christi” that Jean Barbot saw in the garden servicingElmina Castle (1992/16) was a castor-oil plant, Ricinus communis. He hadseen the same plant in a French garden on the Senegalese isle of Gorée.50 Itis thought to have originated somewhere in tropical Africa, but H.M.Burkill, author of the latest compendium of data on useful west Africanplants, notes that several vernacular names indicate European introduction,most probably from the Mediterranean.51

[23] The physic nut was seen by Thomas M. Winterbottom and Afzeliusin Sierra Leone in 1792-96 and by Thonning “here and there” on the GoldCoast in 1799-1803.52 Europeans presumably introduced it to have a handysupply of the purgative.[24] Onions were reported being grown on São Tomé in 1641-48.53 Wil-

helm Johann Müller recorded a Fetu word for onion (or garlic) on the GoldCoast in the 1660s.54

[25] Garlic may be more popular than I allowed in 1992 (18). Daniel K.Abbiw refers to Allium sativum 12 times in his book on Ghanaian plants,55 itis cited in works on Sierra Leone and Senegambia,56 and Burkill says it isfound throughout west Africa.57

[26] Cabbage was cultivated on São Tomé in 1641-48.58 Around thesame time, the Duala of Cameroon had a word for it.59

[27] Besides the eggplant, Solanum melongena, an indigenous species,Solanum macrocarpon, known as the African eggplant, is found in theRegion.60

[29] Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) has apparently been confused in theliterature with an indigenous African plant, Sesuvium portulacastrum,

50P.E.H. Hair, Adam Jones, and Robin Law, Barbot on Guinea (2 vols.: London, 1992),1:74.512:133-36. Burkill includes west-central Africa in his mammoth work, but not systemati-cally.52Thomas M. Winterbottom, An Account of the Native Africans in the Neighbourhood ofSierra Leone (2 vols.: London, 1803), 2:125; Alexander Peter Kup, ed., Adam Afzelius:Sierra Leone Journal, 1795-1796 (Uppsala, 1967), 8, 11, 79n3r(2), 82-83n17v(1); Hep-per, 57.53Jones,West Africa, 58. Jones suggests garlic might have been meant.54Jones, German Sources, 322.55Useful Plants of Ghana (London, 1990).56Roy Lewis, Sierra Leone (London, 1954), 15; David P. Gamble, The Wolof ofSenegambia (London, 1957), 38.573:490-91. See also the preceding paragraph on onions.58Jones,West Africa, 58.59Ibid., 206.60Chevalier (Ressources, 205) thought S. macrocarpon originated in the Americas, but Ihave found no corroboration.


sometimes called sea purslane, but there is no doubt it was an early Euro-pean immigrant. Barbot antedates Loyer with citations of purslane in Sene-gal and on the Gold Coast, but it is not clear which plant he alludes to.61

[30] Sorrel is another plant with muddled origins and nomenclature. Thebinomial generally used for the herb in western Africa is Hibiscus sabdarif-fa. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary calls that roselle, not sor-rel, and traces it to Asia. Burkill says one of its names is Guinea sorrel (aswell as Jamaica sorrel and Indian sorrel) and opts for a tropical African ori-gin.62 The American Heritage Dictionary says H. sabdariffa is an Africanplant of unknown origin, while Wikipedia credits the Old World tropics.Blench thinks a sorrel with green calyxes is indigenous, while a variety withred calyxes came across the Sahara.63 I would now rate sorrel’s identifica-tion as an exotic plant as highly dubious.[31] Lettuce was being grown on São Tomé in 1641-48.64 It is now one

of the major salad greens of West Africa.65

[32] Cauliflower was seen growing in an English garden on the GambiaRiver in 1686.66

[33] Auguste Chevalier thought the shallot had been grown for a verylong time in southern Niger and southern Chad, suggesting Arab introduc-tion, but the records are silent.67 Burkill says the shallot is now grownthroughout west Africa, often under irrigation.68

[34] Half a century before French authorities introduced the tomato toSenegal, French missionaries brought it to the Congo. Cherry tomatoes werereported growing there between 1766 and 1776, and being added to localstews.69 Two decades later the plant was seen in Sierra Leone.70

61Hair/Jones/Law, 1:73, 2:467, 547, 554n4. See also Winsnes, 1:24 (of draft); Busson,150-51.624:36-38.63“History,” 97, 104; “Movement,” 281.64Jones,West Africa, 58.65Ellen Gibson Wilson, A West African Cookbook (New York, 1972), 162.66Prosper Cultru, Premier voyage du sieur de La Courbe fait à la coste d’Afrique en 1685(Paris, 1913), 199. La Courbe’s trip lasted until 1687.67Chevalier, Ressources, 117-18.683:487-88.69Liévin-Bonaventure Proyart, Histoire de Loango, Kakongo et autres royaumesd’Afrique, rédigée d’après les mémoires des préfets apostoliques de la mission française(Paris, 1776), 27-28.70C.B. Wadstrom, An Essay on Colonization Particularly Applied to the Western Coast ofAfrica (London, 1794), 278; Kup, 43, 60, 94:150v(1), 96:231r(1). Blench thinks cherrytomatoes were brought across the Sahara but offers no hard evidence. “History,” 97-98;Archaeology, 205.


[36] Sweet peppers, Capsicum annuum, were most likely being grown onthe Gold Coast by the 1690s.71

[37] There is a fairly general consensus among botanists that the sweetmelon, Cucumis melo, originated in sub-Saharan Africa, but that its culti-vars were developed elsewhere, either in India, western Asia, or northAfrica.72 The plant recrossed the Sahara, but the sightings by Ibn Battutaand Leo Africanus reported in 1992 (15) have been shown to suffer from“some semantic confusion” and could be premature.73

[40] Esther Katz, a French scholar, suggests Olfert Dapper as an earlysource for squash in western Africa, citing references to “courges” in Loan-go and “citrouilles” in the Kongo kingdom in the 1686 French edition.74 Butthe original Dutch words—“Pompoenen” and “Citrullen”—more likelystand for pumpkins than squash.75 We may be on firmer ground with Pro-yart a century later: he learned about “potirons,” a word more often used forsquash, in the Congo.76

[41] We now have a slightly earlier date for the banana/plantain in westAfrica than reported in 1992 (20). Job Hortop, a member of John Hawkins’sthird voyage to Guinea, saw “Plantanos” in Sierra Leone in 1567-68. Hesaid they were “a cubite long, and as bigge as a mans wrist,” which suggestsplantains, and when ripe “very good and daintie to eate: Sugar is not moredelicate in taste,” which suggests bananas.77 Soon after, Cape VerdeanAndré Álvares de Almada saw “bananas” in Guinea-Bissau.78 My 1992 con-clusion that “the question of exactly which member or members of thebanana family the Portuguese introduced into West Africa remains open”

71William Bosman, A New and Accurate description of the Coast of Guinea… (London,1705), 305.72Oliver, 2:546; Alphonse de Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants (New York, 1885),261; Chevalier, Ressources, 191; Purseglove, Dicotyledons, 110; Simmonds, 65; Burkill,1:575; Blench, “History,” 96, 104; “Movement,” 281; Archaeology, 459.73Levtzion/Hopkins, 300, 417n52; John O. Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire(Leiden, 1999), ln 94 (source of quote), 283.74“Plantes américaines au sud Congo,” in Chastanet, Plantes, 299, 316. She thinks onemay have been Cucurbita moschata, a winter squash. See Dapper, Description del’Afrique (Amsterdam, 1686), 323, 345.75Dapper, Naukeurige beschrijvinge der afrikaensche gewesten (2d ed.: 2 books: Amster-dam, 1676), 2:148, 194.76Histoire, 18. See Wadstrom, 276, for squash in Sierra Leone in 1794.77P.E.H. Hair, ed., Hawkins in Guinea, 1567-1568 (Leipzig, 2000), 67-68.78P.E.H. Hair, tr. and ed., An Interim and Makeshift Edition of André Álvares de Alma-da’s Brief Treatise on the Rivers of Guinea, Being an English Translation of a VariorumText of Tratado breve dos Rios de Guiné (c. 1594) Organised by the Late Avelino Teix-eira da Mota (2 vols.: Liverpool, 1984), 1:88. Almada, a native of São Tiago, tradedalong the Upper Guinea coast in the 1570s and 1580s.


may have been answered by James La Fleur, who contends that “documen-tary, linguistic, cultural, ecological, and agronomic information pointsstrongly towards an early sixteenth-century beginning of plantain culture onthe Gold Coast and, indeed, [in] all of West Africa.” He credits slaves fromwest-central Africa whom the Portuguese brought to the Gold Coast via SãoTomé to sell for gold. And he thinks bananas were introduced in the samemanner not long after.79

[42] Adam Jones has come up with a dating for pomegranates on SãoTomé: 1641-48.80

[44] Al-Ùmari’s limes at Kanem may have been lemons. That, at least,is how Levtzion and Hopkins translate the Arabic word used, thus differingfrom sources used in 1992 (34/32).81 The linguistic problem is explained byWatson, who notes, however, that limes have become the most widelygrown citrus in tropical Africa.82

[45] Regarding lemons see [44] above.[47] By the late sixteenth century citrons had reached the west African

mainland: Almada reported them in Sierra Leone.83

[49] I wrote in 1992 (23) that the tamarind was so widespread and spon-taneous in the Sudanese zone that it probably came to west Africa from thenorth as well as the coast. More likely it originated in that zone; Burkillidentifies the homeland as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger.84

[50] In 1599, shortly before Marees and Ulsheimer spotted pineapples inwest Africa, the groundbreaking Flemish botanist Carolus Clusius sawpineapple leaves brought from the Guinea Coast.85

[52] Eighteen years before Barbot ate papaya at Anomabu (1992/29) thetree’s presence was mentioned in a 1661 treaty between the English andFetu at Cape Coast.86 Three names for papaya in northern Nigeria suggest alate introduction from across the Sahara.87

[56] Van den Broecke saw cashew on Annobón in 1614,88 and it wasreported growing on São Tomé by the 1640s.89

79Culture of Crops, 78-130. The quote is from p. 101.80West Africa, 58.81Corpus, 260.82Agricultural Innovation, 46-48.83Hair, Almada, 1, part 2:19, 44.843:171. See also Chevalier, Ressources, 107; Busson, 262; Simmonds, 314.85Exoticorum libri decem (Leiden, 1605), ch. 44, cited by Candolle, 312.86Margaret Makepeace, ed., Trade on the Guinea Coast, 1657-1666: the Correspondenceof the English East India Company (Madison, 1991), 88.87Heinrich Barth, Collection of Vocabularies of Central-African Languages (2 vols.:Gotha, 1862-66), 2:184-85. The Hausa, Fulani, and Kanuri had words for it, the lattermeaning “melon tree of Egypt.” See also Blench, Archaeology, 199.88Klaas Ratelband, ed., Reizen naar West-Afrika van Pieter van den Broecke, 1606-1614(Hague, 1950), 83. Van den Broecke stopped at Annobón on a voyage to the East Indies,not on any of his four trips to western Africa.89Jones,West Africa, 58.


[57] Nearly a century before Barbot saw sweet-orange trees on the GoldCoast, Richard Madox tasted the fruit, obtained for his ship on the SierraLeone coast in 1582. They were, he wrote in his diary, “great orenges verysweet and delyciows and green.”90

[58]Mangoes may have reached Sierra Leone in the 1790s, coming fromSão Tomé, but I have not been able to verify this report.91

[60] German surgeon Johann Peter Oettinger claimed to have seen bread-nut (and breadfruit) trees at Whydah in 1693. The breadnut (a/k/a the Mayanut) could have reached Africa from its homeland in the Caribbean area bythen, but the evidence is shaky.92

[61] The New World passion-fruit species known as granadilla (Passiflo-ra quadrangularis) was successfully introduced into Sierra Leone in the1790s by the Sierra Leone Company.93

[62] If Oettinger’s sighting of breadfruit at Whydah is discounted (see[60] above),94 the earliest reference I have found is contained in a 1794report by Afzelius on the plants of Sierra Leone.95

[63] Danish chaplain Hans Christian Monrad reported a “so-calledAmerican cherry” on the Gold Coast in 1805-09 that seems to have been theBarbados cherry (a/k/a acerola).96

[64] The fruit that Duarte Lopes saw in the Kongo kingdom in 1579-83and called “Ogeghe” locally was almost certainly the hog plum (Spondiasmombin), now widespread in western Africa.97

[65] The mammee (or mammy) apple (Mammea americana) was appar-ently introduced to Sierra Leone in the late eighteenth century, but a firmdate is lacking.98

90Elizabeth Story Donno, ed., An Elizabethan in 1582: the Diary of Richard Madox (Lon-don, 1976), 176. Green is a normal color for ripe sweet oranges, which are often dyedorange. See Wilson, 172.91Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (London, 1962), 72.92Adam Jones, Brandenburg Sources for West African History, 1680-1700 (Stuttgart,1985), 192, 192n46. Jones disbelieved the report and Oettinger’s description of the fruitseems wrong.93Winterbottom, 1:57.94Jones, Brandenburg Sources, 192, 192n46. Jones was equally skeptical about the bread-fruit, which Oettinger said was “richly represented” at Whydah. But as it is thought tohave originated in Southeast Asia, it could have reached Africa from that direction aswell as from the West Indies much later.95Wadstrom, 277. See also Dominique Gallet, São Tomé et Príncipe: les îles du milieu dumonde (Paris, 2001), 47, on the planting of 100 breadfruit tree roots on Príncipe begin-ning in 1822.96Winsnes, 2:142 (of draft).97Filippo Pigafetta, A Report of the Kingdom of Congo, tr. and ed., Margarite Hutchinson(London, 1881), 69.98Peter Kup, A History of Sierra Leone, 1400-1787 (Cambridge, 1961), 188-89. Afzeliusmentions mammee apples several times in his 1795-96 Sierra Leone journal, but seems tohave confused it with Ochrocarpus africanus, known as the African mammy apple. Kup,Afzelius, 40, 41, 67, 94:134v(1), 97:262v(1), 138, 165:143v(1).


[66] The pitanga cherry (Eugenia uniflora)—a/k/a the Surinam,Cayenne, or Brazil cherry—was introduced to the Gold Coast ca. 1802 in aDanish plantation north of Accra.99 Creole names for the fruit in Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone may imply long acquaintance there too.100

[67] The star apple (Chrysophyllum cainito) was recorded by Afzelius inSierra Leone in 1794 and again in 1796.101

[68] The sapodilla plum tree is said to have been tested in French gov-ernment gardens in Senegal in the 1820s.102

[69] Sugar cane was reportedly planted in the Cape Verde Islands in the1460s, even before it reached São Tomé.103

[71] There is a strong presumption, but no hard evidence, that coriandercrossed the desert long ago. Chevalier considered it “very ancient” along theNiger in Mali,104 where it has an Arabic name,105 and Blench stresses itsimportance in northeastern Nigeria.106

[72] Mint (Mentha spicata, i.e., spearmint) is likely to have crossed theSahara early because a variety is used for the Arab world’s mint tea, a/k/aTuareg tea. Chevalier cited its cultivation for that purpose in Borno andTimbuktu.107

[73] Van den Broecke gives us very early dates for ginger at Loango(1608-12) and on Annobón (1614).108

[74] The French edition of Marees (1605, p. 65, fig. 13) identified one ofthe Gold Coast plants as “persil de mer,” meaning lovage, but I have foundno other reference to it in the literature and would strike it from the precolo-nial list.[75] I have been unable to find any sure reference to hot pepper (Cap-

sicum frutescens) in western Africa earlier than in La Courbe’s descriptionof a dinner he was served in Gambia in 1686, cited in 1992 (41/192).109

[79] Parsley was among crops growing on São Tomé in 1641-48.110

99C.D. Adams, “Activities of Danish Botanists in Guinea 1783-1850,” Transactions ofthe Historical Society of Ghana 3(1957), 1-37.100Burkill, 4(1997):248.101Wadstrom, 277; Kup, Afzelius, 73, 97:292r(1). See also J.S. Sabine, “Some Account ofthe Edible Fruits of S. Leone,” Transactions of the Royal Horticultural Society 5(1824),458.102Prosper Cultru, Histoire du Sénégal du XVe siècle à 1870 (Paris, 1910), 307. See alsoAbbiw, 46; Burkill, 3:321, 5 (2000):48.103George E. Brooks, Landlords and Strangers: Ecology, Society, and Trade in WesternAfrica, 1000-1630 (Boulder, 1993), 146. He credits Genoese settlers.104Ressources, 194-95.105Burkill, 5:229.106“History,” 101, 104.107Ressources, 208.108La Fleur, Journal, 100; Ratelband, 83.109Cultru, Premier voyage, 196. La Courbe described his hostess as “a famous courtesanof this country, daughter of a king.”110Jones, West Africa, 58.


[82] The pioneer French botanist Michel Adanson saw “basil of all sizesand all colors” on Senegal Island, the site of Saint-Louis, in 1749-53.111

[83] The lack of earlier sightings of allspice vitiates Mary Kingsley’s tes-timony—I would delete the plant from precolonial listing—but theCaribbean condiment is reportedly now established in Ghana.112

[84] Thonning apparently saw turmeric being cultivated on the GoldCoast in 1799-1803.113 Chevalier noticed Muslim peoples of the southernSudanese zone growing it for use as a dye, and was sure it had come fromthe Orient very long ago.114 Blench thinks it was brought across thedesert.115

[85] John Hunwick has supplied us with a very early date, ca. 1598, fortobacco near Jenne.116 Two species, Nicotiana tabacum and T. rustica, wereinvolved in the crop’s invasion of western Africa from both north andsouth.117

[86] As indicated in 1992 (24), young kenaf leaves can be used as apotherb, but I list it as non-edible because it is grown mainly for its fiber inwestern Africa. The plant is so highly developed in India that it was oncethought indigenous there, but a tropical African origin is now generallyaccepted, with some Indian varieties perhaps returning to their ancestralhome.118

III

As expected, further research found more exotic plants dating, or probablydating, to the slave-trade era.119 Unexpectedly, they numbered at least dou-ble the 86 counted the first time around, raising the grand total to more than250. Many of them reached western Africa as stowaways. They sailedacross the Atlantic or Indian Ocean accidentally, their seeds clinging tomerchandise or clothing, or hidden in soil surrounding the roots of deliber-

111Histoire naturelle du Sénégal… (Paris, 1757), 169.112Burkill, 4:250. See also Wilson, 184, 190.113Hepper, 158; Hooker, 534.114Ressources, 218.115Archaeology, 205.116Timbuktu, 231, 231n84. A Muslim notable “was hit by a poisoned arrow and sufferedthe effects until he ‘drank’ tobacco.”117Conde de Ficalho, Plantas úteis da África portuguesa, ed. Ruy Telles Palhinha (2d ed.:Lisbon, 1947[1884]), 231-34; Chevalier, Ressources, 130-31, 204; Burkill, 5:109-15.118The earliest European references I have found are in Hepper, 69-70; Hooker, 228;Oliver, 1(1868):204-05.119Defined as ending ca. 1865, when the last trans-Atlantic slavers ran the internationalblockade.


ately transported plants, or mixed in with programed seeds, or concealed inbales, ballast, or refuse.120

Some of these plants were distinctly undesirable. Chevalier ratedcogongrass (Imperata cylindrica), a probable immigrant from Asia toAfrica, as “the greatest plague of tropical agriculture.”121 Purseglove speaksof “inadvertently introduced camp-following weeds.”122 Several such weedsapparently accompanied Asian rice and continued to torment it in Africanpaddies.

Other species crossed over to western Africa on their own, their seedsfloating from the Americas. These were mostly halophiles, seashore plantsthat flourish in a salty environment. Chevalier reckoned that about 30 couldbe found on both sides of the Atlantic. And he thought that the seeds ofeven more plants were carried across by birds who ingested them or gotthem caught in their feathers.123 But a substantial number of species besidesthose listed in 1992 were voluntarily transported by man to western Africain precolonial times, and I have sought out the more important, the morefamiliar or the more interesting ones for this paper.

CerealsWheat and barley were among Mediterranean crops tried out by Europeansin western Africa, but, with one exception, they seem to have failed every-where. Wheat was being cultivated on São Tiago in 1604-05124 and morethan two centuries later was reported abundant there.125 Both crops, howev-er, successfully crossed the Sahara. Several Arabic authors of the thirteenthand fourteenth centuries told of wheat growing in Kanem and Mali.126 Com-mon bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) is still cultivated under irrigation inMali, Nigeria, Chad, and the Central African Republic.127 Leo Africanus

120See Auguste Chevalier, “Le rôle de l’homme dans la dispersion des plantes tropicales.Échange d’espèces entre l’Afrique tropicale et l’Amérique du Sud,” Revue de BotaniqueAppliquée et d’Agriculture Tropicale 11/120(August 1930), 647-50.121Ibid., 647. Chevalier thought it came from Brazil, but Wikipedia and Webster’s Thirdfavor Asia and the American Heritage Dictionary calls it an Old World grass. Abbiw(244-45) identifies the culprit as I. cylindrica var. africana, known as lalang grass, butdoesn’t say where it originated.122Dicotyledons, 14.123Chevalier, “Rôle,” 634-35.124Avelino Teixeira da Mota and P.E.H. Hair, Jesuit Documents on the Guinea of CapeVerde and the Cape Verde Islands 1587-1617 in English Translation (Liverpool, 1989),section 3, p. 6, section 13, p. 2.125James Hingston Tuckey, Narrative to Explore the River Zaire…in 1816 (London,1818), 28.126Levtzion/Hopkins, 171, 188, 210, 260, 263, 299.127Chevalier, Ressources, 75-80; Purseglove, Monocotyledons, 292-93; Burkill, 2:372-73; Blench, “History,” 90, 104; Archaeology, 220-21; also see Abbiw, 23.


saw barley in Jenne and Katsina early in the sixteenth century,128 and it isstill grown in Mali and Nigeria.129

Root CropBesides the greater yam (Dioscorea alata), the aerial yam (D. bulbifera),a/k/a the air potato and potato yam, came from Asia. Chevalier thought itwas introduced to western Africa by the early Portuguese, and was alsobrought across the Sahara, but there is no documentation for either hypothe-sis.130 There is evidence for its presence in Sierra Leone in 1796131 and theGold Coast in 1799-1803.132

PulseThe black-eyed pea of the American South is the cowpea (Vigna unguicula-ta), one of the crops that accompanied African slaves to the Americas. Itwas once thought to have originated in Asia because it has been grown inIndia for thousands of years, but botanists now generally agree that the cow-pea was domesticated in Africa.133 I have included it because some varietiesdeveloped in Asia have been introduced to Africa.134

Oil PlantsBotanists have been trying to open the secret of sesame origins since at leastthe 1880s. Alphonse de Candolle thought what was then usually calledSesamum indicum started out in Indonesia rather than India.135 The MiddleEast was also proposed, partly because the word sesame is of Semitic ori-gin. The fact that most wild species of Sesamum are found in Africa eventu-ally persuaded specialists that the principal cultivated species, now calledSesamum orientale, originated either on the Upper Niger or in Ethiopia.136

128Hunwick, 277, 287129Chevalier, Ressources, 81-82; Burkill, 2:260; Blench, “History,” 86-87, 104; Archae-ology, 218.130“Nouvelle recherches sur les ignames cultivées,” Revue Internationale de BotaniqueAppliquée et d’Agriculture Tropicale 26(1946), 27-28; “De quelques Dioscoread’Afrique équatoriale toxiques dont plusieurs variétés sont alimentaires,” same periodi-cal, 32 (1952), 16. Purseglove (Monocotyledons, 102-04) and Blench (Archaeology, 226)favor a theory that aerial yams were independently domesticated on both continents,which would be highly unusual if true. Chevalier at first supported it then changed hismind.131Kup, Afzelius, 51, 95:189v(4).132Hepper, 142.133Simmonds (183-84) leans toward Ethiopia, Burkill (3:479) the Niger River basin andBlench (Archaeology, 240) the Nigerian-Cameroon borderland.134Blench, “History,” 92-93, 106.135Origin, 419-22.136Simmonds, 231-32; Burkill, 4:418-22.


But opinion has shifted once again, with new support for beginnings on thesubcontintent, where charred sesame seeds have been found at Harappa, theoldest archeological site.137 The earliest testimony for sesame in westernAfrica is al-Zuhri’s report of its presence at Gao in the twelfth century.138

Almada saw it in Upper Guinea in the late sixteenth century.139 Althoughincluded here because of its oil-producing seeds, its leaves have perhapsbeen even more important in western Africa for making soup.140

A New World plant known as Mexican tea or Jesuits’ tea, Chenopodiumambrosioides, is valued for its essential oil, which has important medicinaluses and is widespread in western Africa.141 British botanist George Donsaw it in Sierra Leone and on São Tomé in 1822-23,142 and Charles Darwin,on a stopover at São Tiago of the HMS Beagle on the way to South Ameri-ca, collected a specimen in 1832.143

Ben oil is obtained from the seeds of a tree of Indian origin, Moringaoleifera. Europeans in the tropics dubbed it the horseradish tree becausethey used the young roots as a horseradish substitute. It apparently reachedAfrica long ago, was reported in Sierra Leone in the 1790s,144 and is nowcommon in the region.145

The aromatic root of an Asian grass called vetiver or khuskhus (Chryso-pogon zizanioides, a/k/a Vetiveria zizanioides) yields an oil used as a per-fume.146 Afzelius said its leaves were employed in a sleeping-sickness rem-edy in Sierra Leone.147

Despite its name and the fact that it is one of the major oil crops of thesubcontinent, Indian mustard (Brassica juncea) is thought by some expertsto be of African origin and to have reached Asia long ago.148 Germanbotanist Friedrich Welwitsch saw it in Angola in 1853-61.149

137Simmonds, 232-33; Blench, “Movement,” 284-85; Archaeology, 238-39.138Levtzion/Hopkins, 97.139Hair, Almada, 2:29 (note by Jean Boulègue); Ficalho, 235-36.140Blench, “Movement,” 285.141Burkill, 1:366-67.142Hooker, 490.143Ibid., 174.144Kup, Afzelius, 33, 92:107r(3), 120, 162:89r(1).145Busson, 204-06; Abbiw, 52, 53; Burkill, 4:221-24; Blench, “Movement,” 284.146Purseglove,Monocotyledons, 297-98; Burkill, 2:376-77.147Kup, Afzelius, 53, 96:198r(1).148Oliver, 1:65; Purseglove, Dicotyledons, 91; Blench, “Movement,” 281. Simmonds, 56-58, however, traces it to Central Asia/Himalayas, andWebster’s Third calls it Asiatic.149Oliver, 1:65.


VegetablesThree kinds of cress from as many continents, watercress (Nasturtium offic-inale) from Europe, garden cress (Lepidium sativum) from southwesternAsia, and Brazil or Para cress (Spilanthes filicaulis) from South America,may all have reached western Africa by the late eighteenth or early nine-teenth centuries. Pierre Labarthe reported that watercress was among shipprovisions obtained at Príncipe in 1788-89.150 Governor Thomas Clarksonof Sierra Leone included “cresses” among “the English vegetables whichthrive here best” in 1792.151 Thonning raised Brazil cress on the Gold Coastin 1800.152 Blench suggests that garden cress also crossed the Saharabecause it is known by variants of the Arabic name in northeastern Nige-ria.153

As noted in 1992 (18-19), any leafy green vegetable used in Nigeriancooking is called spinach, and it is not clear whether any of the references tospinach in the literature on western Africa signify Spinacia oleracea, theEuropean crop of Asian origin. What is certain is that at least two and possi-bly four exotic species of Amaranthus have long been cooked in the Regionas spinach. A. hybridus and A. spinosus, both from Asia, were seen byAfzelius in Sierra Leone in the 1790s.154 Another Asian plant, A. tricolor,seems to be a longtime resident,155 and the New World’s A. cruentes (a/k/apaniculatus) does too.156 Closely related to the amaranths is another“spinach,” Celosia argentea, called quail grass or feathery cockscomb. Itsorigins are disputed, with either Asia or the Americas getting the nod.157

Isert saw it at Whydah in 1785158; Don on São Tomé in 1822-23 and Vogelat Accra and along the Niger in 1841.159 It is widely grown in westernAfrica.

Yet another exotic green is the waterleaf, called in Gã the European’sspinach and in Igbo the Europeans’ eggplant.160 Three different binomials150Voyage à la côte de Guinée (Paris, 1803), 272.151Kup, Afzelius, 91:98v(1). The plural form suggests that both watercress and gardencress were involved since they were long grown in Europe. In any case, Oliver (1:58)says the latter was “cultivated everywhere” in tropical Africa by 1868.152Hepper, 43; Daniel Hopkins, “Danish Natural History and African Colonialism at theClose of the Eighteenth Century: Peter Thonning’s ‘Scientific Journey’ to the GuineaCoast, 1799-1803,” Archives of Natural History 26(1999), 388.153“History,” 97.154Kup, Afzelius, 14, 43, 86:29r(1) & 30r(3), 94:150v(1). See also Hooker, 173, 492; Bus-son, 137; Burkill, 1:49-52155Burkill, 1:52; Vansina, “Esquisse,” 16. See also Kup, Afzelius, 74-75, regarding a redAmaranthus.156Hooker, 492; Simmonds, 6.157Burkill, 1:53-55, Busson, 144.158Hepper, 21-22.159Hooker, 491-92.160Burkill, 4:472. Wikipedia calls Talinum fruticosum “one of the most important leafvegetables of Nigeria.”


seem to be used for it: Talinum triangulare, T. crassifolium, and T. frutico-sum. The waterleaf is thought to have originated in tropical America. Vogelsaid it was cultivated around towns on the Niger, and British botanistCharles Barter saw it along the river in 1857-59.161

Jew’s mallow (Corchorus olitorius) is much better known as jute, theIndian fiber plant. Its origins are obscure, but could well be African. Blenchsuggests it first appeared in Africa and was first domesticated in India.162 Inthe fourteenth century al-Ùmari heard it grew wild in Mali.163 The earliestEuropean report from western Africa may be one by Afzelius describing itsuse for “palaver sauce” in Sierra Leone in 1795.164 Indeed, Jew’s mallow isonly a potherb in western Africa, its leaves going into soups or sauces oreaten as spinach.165

The hyacinth bean (Dolichos lablab, a/k/a Lablab purpureus, L. niger,and L. vulgaris) is of similar vague descent. Though it has been found inarcheological sites four millennia old on the Indian subcontinent, the latestscholarship credits eastern Africa as its homeland.166 The plant was firstrecorded in western Africa by Afzelius and Thønning167 but may havereached the Region much earlier.168 It is grown there for its edible leavesand fruit pods.

Monrad (1805-08) said leeks (Allium porrum) grew in Africa but did notspecify where.169 This onion relative does not adapt to the humid tropics,but is cultivated in Senegal by the Wolof and in northern Nigeria by theHausa.170 Chevalier reported that it did well all year long in European gar-dens in the Sudanese zone.171

Monrad reported another European crop, celery (Apium graveolens),being grown successfully in the Lagos area.172 It appears to have held on inwestern Africa, at least in Senegal.173

161Oliver, 1:150.162“History,” 95; “Movement,” 283.163Levtzion/Hopkins, 263.164Kup, Afzelius, 22, 89:62r(1). Adanson (65) saw Corchorus in Senegal in 1749 but wecan’t be sure it was olitorius.165Oliver, 1:262; Chevalier, Ressources, 119, 140, 167; Simmonds, 290; Burkill, 5:195.166Burkill, 3:385; Dorian Q. Fuller, “African Crops in Prehistoric South Asia,” AfricaPraehistorica 15(2003), 244, 246, 251, 264; Blench, “Movement.” 282.167Kup, Afzelius, 32, 92:102v(5), 144; Hepper, 94. See also Hooker, 27, 125; Oliver,2:210.168See Tadeusz Lewicki, West African Food in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1974), 53-54.169Winsnes, 2:147 (of draft).170Burkill, 3:487.171Ressources, 118.172Winsnes, 2:147 (of draft).173Burkill, 5:228.


CucurbitsThe bottle or calabash gourd (Lagenaria siceraria, L. vulgaris) is ubiquitousin sub-Saharan Africa, but its origins as a cultivated crop go back so manymillennia they can’t be pinpointed. Africa is generally favored over Asia,while Burkill suggests “the region of the Afro-Asian conjunction.”174

Remarkably, the plant has also been grown for many millennia in the NewWorld. It is hypothesized that long, long ago, Atlantic currents took thegourd from West Africa to Brazil and that its seeds survived the trip stillviable.175

The New World had its own calabash plant, Crescentia cujete, a treerather than a Lagenaria vine. The calabash tree is not strictly a cucurbit—itbelongs to the family Bignoniaceae rather than Cucurbitaceae—but Iinclude it here because of the apparently identical use of its fruit. Manbrought it from the West Indies to western Africa. The earliest reference Ihave found is to sightings by Vogel on the Gold Coast in 1841.176 The cal-abash tree, called “the true calabash” by Purseglove,177 is said to be espe-cially popular in west African villages that produce palm wine because thefruit is ideal for wine collection vessels.178

The colocynth (Citrullus colocynthis) is a vine closely related to thewatermelon that seems to have originated in the Mediterranean area andcrossed the Sahara. It reached at least five of the Cape Verde Islands by thenineteenth century (the first report dates to 1822), presumably brought fromthe mainland.179 The colocynth is now widespread in west Africa. Thelemon-sized fruit—a/k/a bitter apple, bitter cucumber, or bitter gourd—Is apowerful cathartic, but the seeds are edible and, like watermelon seeds, areused to make egusi soup.180

Momordica charantia, the balsam apple, balsam pear, or bitter melon, isalso called the African cucumber, although its starting point is unclear.Burkill favors Africa but Simmonds and Webster’s Third opt for Asia, andPurseglove and Wikipedia say the original home is unknown.181 Thonningsaw it on the Gold Coast in 1799-1803,182 and Norwegian botanist Christen

1741:591.175Purseglove, Dicotyledons, 125.176Hooker, 40, 42.177Dicotyledons, 124.178David Gledhill, West African Trees (London, 1972), 66.179Hooker, 128-29; Ficalho, 186-87.180Burkill, 1:570-72.181Ibid., 1:597-99; Simmonds, 306; Purseglove, Dicotyledons, 132-34.182Hepper, 51-52.


Smith on São Tiago in 1816.183 There is no dispute that it was one of thecrops carried to the New World on slave ships.184

The fruit of Momordica cylindrica (a/k/a Luffa cylindrica, L. aegyptiaca,and L. scabra) is eaten young but if allowed to mature develops a fibrousnetwork that is used as a sponge. Its English names are smooth loofah,sponge gourd, dish-cloth gourd, towel gourd, and vegetable sponge. Thiscucurbit is almost certainly of Asian origin.185 It was seen on the Gold Coastin 1799-1803 and along the Niger and on Fernando Po in 1841.186

FruitsUnquestionably the date palm, thought to have originated in the MiddleEast, reached the southern periphery of the Sahara many centuries ago. Al-Ùmari placed it in Kanem in the fourteenth century.187 Jesuit missionariesreported date groves on São Tiago in 1604-11,188 Two centuries later theisland still had such groves.189 Adanson saw a forest of wild date palmsgrowing in the Cape Verde area in 1750.190

Among other important fruit trees that crossed the desert were membersof the Ziziphus genus, sometimes collectively called the jujubes. Almadasaw “jujube apples” in Senegal in the late sixteenth century.191 One specieswas Z. spina-christi, known as Christ’s thorn, a Middle Eastern plant com-mon in the Sahel and Sudan.192 Another was Z. zizyphus (a/k/a Z. jujuba andZ. vulgaris) of Asian origin that Smith saw on São Tiago in 1816.193 Themost widespread jujube in the world, including western Africa, is Z. mauri-tiana. Chevalier emphatically declared it to be of African origin, and wasbacked up by Busson and Burkill.194 But Blench challenges this view,believing the tree originated in India and reached Africa in the dim past.195

183Tuckey, 249. Smith called it Momordica senegalensis but it most likely was M. cha-rantia. See also Hooker, 129, 370.184Purseglove, Dicotyledons, 134; Burkill, 1:598.185Oliver, 2:530; Candolle, 271; Chevalier, Ressources, 191; Simmonds, 306; Purse-glove, Dicotyledons, 129.186Hepper, 51; Hooker, 371.187Levtzion/Hopkins, 260.188Teixeira da Mota/Hair, section 3, p. 6, section 5, p. 10, section 13, p. 2, section 41, p.20. See also T. Bentley Duncan, Atlantic Islands: Madeira, the Azores and the CapeVerdes in Seventeenth-Century Commerce and Navigation (Chicago, 1972), 172.189Tuckey, 33-34.190Histoire, 106-07. See also Chevalier, Ressources, 43-68; Purseglove, Monocotyledons,429-30, and Burkill, 4:376-78, on the date palm.191Hair, Almada, 1, part 1, p. 38.192Auguste Chevalier, “Les jujubiers ou Ziziphus de l’Ancien monde et l’utilisation deleurs fruits,” Revue Internationale de Botanique Appliquée et d’Agriculture Tropicale27(1947), 475; Busson, 361-63; Burkill, 4:493-96.193Tuckey, 250; Hooker, 116. Smith called it Z. insularis, which Hooker translated as Z.jujuba.194Chevalier, “Jujubiers,” 476; Busson, 361; Burkill, 4:489.195“Movement,” 284-85.


Sweetsop (Annona squamosa) and soursop (A. muricata) were not theonly species of the genus Annona brought to Africa from the New World. A.glabra (a/k/a A. palustris), called the pond apple, alligator apple or monkeyapple, arrived early. It was listed among plants sent from Cape Coast Castleto England in the 1690s.196 A. cherimola, called cherimoya, was reported onSão Tiago in 1816197 and abundant in West Africa by the 1840s.198 In 1884the Conde de Ficalho wrote that A. reticulata, known as bullock’s heart, wasgrown in many places in Angola and must have been introduced by the Por-tuguese, but we have no earlier date for it.199 The latter two species aresometimes called custard apple, which is also a name for the sweetsop.

An Asian fruit, the rose apple (Eugenia jambos, a/k/a jambu or Javaplum), was seen by Isert at Whydah in 1785,200 apparently by Don in SierraLeone and on São Tomé in 1822-23,201 and by James Washington Lugen-beel in Liberia in the 1840s.202 It is also known in Guinea-Bissau.203

Two closely related Asian plants, carambola or star fruit (Averrhoacarambola) and bilimbi or cucumber tree or tree sorrel (A. bilimbi), aregrown in western Africa, but I have found only one precolonial referenceand it is not clear to which species it applied.204 In 1796 Afzelius describeda “fluted yellow eatable fruit” in Sierra Leone that his modern editor plausi-bly suggests was an Averrhoa.205

The Portuguese succeeded in growing quinces on São Tiago and SãoTomé by the seventeenth century, but that Asian fruit seems never to havetaken hold on the western African mainland.206

Burkill says the Portuguese brought the Cape gooseberry to West Africabut gives no source.207 Its binomial, Physalis peruviana, reflects its SouthAmerican origin. European settlers brought it to the Cape of Good Hopebefore 1807, which accounts for its most common English name. Other

196James Petiver, “A Catalogue of Some Guinea-Plants,” Philosophical Transactions 19(September 1697), 682. See also Hooker, 205; Oliver, 1:16; Ficalho, 76; Burkill, 1:100.197Tuckey, 250. Christen Smith identified it as Annona tripetala, another name for A.cherimola.198Hooker, 205.199Ficalho, 75.200Hepper, 79.201Hooker, 359. Don called it Jambosa vulgaris.202Sketches, 19.203Burkill, 4:246.204Gledhill, 66; Burkill, 4:335-36.205Kup, Afzelius, 55, 58, 70, 75, 96:221r(1). Afzelius called it tont, atont or atunt, fromTemne. Kup thinks the fruit came by way of the West Indies.206Teixeira da Mota/Hair, section 3, pp. 6-7; Duncan, 172; Hair/Jones/Law, 2:740. Barbotheard that quinces were a dysentery cure on São Tomé.2075:118.


names include ground-cherry, strawberry tomato, and golden berry. Theplant is cultivated and naturalized in various parts of west Africa.

A shrub or small tree called the coco plum or icaco (Chrysobalanusicaco) provides a good example of how much botanists have yet to learn.The name icaco derives from the pre-Columbian Arawak language. Web-ster’s Third and Wikipedia call the plant tropical American. The U.S.Department of Agriculture’s “Plants Database” says it is native to Florida,Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. But the American Heritage and Encar-ta dictionaries believe it is both American and African. Burkill observes thatthe African plant “is held to be the same as that of the New World” andleaves the issue of origins at that.208 Nineteenth-century British botanistsRobert Brown, Joseph Dalton Hooker, and George Bentham thought thecoco plum, already confirmed as widespread in western Africa, might havebeen taken from there to the Americas, presumably on slave ships.209 Butthen again, it could have been one of those oceanside plants that crossed theAtlantic on its own ages ago.

Another producer of plum-like fruit, and another puzzler, is a shrubcalled Ximenia americana, which may be of African origin despite its bino-mial. It has many names, including false sandalwood, tallow nut, sour orseaside or mountain plum, and in French, citron de mer. The USDA data-base describes it too as a Florida native. Wikipedia has it on a list ofCaribbean trees and another of trees indigenous to southern Africa. Theplant is common in western Africa, with many literary references goingback to Adanson in Senegal in 1750.210 Here, again, we may have an exam-ple of a self-reliant intercontinental traveler.

Spices and FlavoringsBesides sugar, coriander, spearmint and turmeric, Arabs or Berbers broughtat least five other condiments across the Sahara, very likely centuries ago,without its being recorded. They were cumin (Cuminum cyminum), blackcumin (Nigella sativa), dill (Anethum graveolens), peppermint (Menthapiperita), and capers (Capparis spinosa), all of which are grown in theSahel.211 A sixth plant, safflower (Carthamus tinctorius), that made thesame journey is used to color food.212

2081:373.209Tuckey, 480; Hooker, 336.210Histoire, 114. Adanson called it Ximenia aculenta, which Busson (161) interprets as X.americana.211Oliver, 1:95; Chevalier, Ressources, 123, 134, 158, 194-95; Burkill, 1:323, 3:18,4:479, 5:228, 230; Blench, “History,” 101.212Chevalier, Ressources, 123, 197; Burkill, 1:454.


Sage, presumably Salvia officinalis from Europe, was being grown in1641-48 on São Tomé213 and in 1792 in Sierra Leone, where it was one ofGovernor Clarkson’s “English vegetables which thrive here best.”214

Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans) was brought to west Africa ultimately fromthe Moluccas and, according to Burkill, is grown here and there.215 Abbiwconfirms its presence in Ghana.216 But the picture is clouded by the fact thatthere are three African nutmegs: Monodora myristica, Monodora tenuifolia,and Pycnanthus angolensis (a/k/a P. kombo). Early references to nutmeg inthe literature do not enlighten us.217 Food writer Ellen Gibson Wilson col-lected 15 west African recipes that call for nutmeg, but does not specifywhich kind.218 Monodora myristica went on slave ships to the West Indies,where it is known as the calabash nutmeg.219

Lavender (Lavandula spp.) entered the region by both sea and land. ThePortuguese apparently introduced it to the Cape Verde Islands by the earlynineteenth century,220 and it reached the Sahel from North Africa at anunknown period.221 We do not know if it was or is used as a flavoring oraromatic.

One of the plants that may have reached western Africa prehistoricallyfrom Asia222 is Abelmoschus moschatus (formerly Hibiscus abelmoschus),known as musk mallow,223 abelmusk, or ambrette. Its leaves are commonlyeaten as potherbs, but its chief value lies in its seeds, which furnish oil usedfor perfume or as a condiment. References go back to Afzelius, Thonning,and Vogel.224

Beverage PlantsCacao’s225 introduction from tropical America to western Africa appears todate to 1822, when trees were planted on Príncipe, and around the same

213Jones,West Africa, 58.214Kup, Afzelius, 91:98v(1).2154:235.216Abbiw, 52.217For example, Wadstrom, 38-39; Winsnes, 2:195 (of draft).218West African Cookbook, 58ff.219Tuckey, 475; Oliver, 1:38.220Tuckey, 243, 250; Hooker, 5, 26-27, 158-59.221Burkill, 3:13-14.222Busson, 94; Blench, “Movement,” 284-85.223Not to be confused with Malva moschata, a European plant that is also called muskmallow.224Kup, Afzelius, 55; Hepper, 68-69; Hooker, 227. See also Oliver, 1:207; Ficalho, 97;Burkill, 4:11-12.225Chocolate is, of course, far more than a beverage but this seemed the most appropriateplace to list it.


time in Senegal.226 Commercial success began with plantings on São Toméin 1852.227 Later in that decade the Basel Mission began experimenting withcacao on the Gold Coast, but it was not until the 1880s that the crop took offthere, sparked by a Gã blacksmith named Tetteh Quashie with podsobtained from Fernando Po. And it was not until the late 1890s thatAkwapim farmers began growing it on a scale that soon made the GoldCoast the world’s largest exporter.228 It has been called “the first example ofan agricultural production of world importance developed solely byAfricans.”229

At least eight species of coffee are indigenous to western Africa, includ-ing the major one cultivated in the region, Coffea canephora, commonlycalled robusta. World production, however, is dominated by C. arabica, anative of Ethiopia despite its name. The Portuguese brought it from theAmericas, where it had migrated, to the Cape Verdes ca. 1790 and to SãoTomé and Príncipe at about the same time.230

Senna occidentalis (formerly Cassia occidentalis) may be a New Worldweed that was dispersed unintentionally throughout the tropics. Among itsnames are negro coffee and coffee senna because its roasted seeds make acoffee substitute. So many medicinal uses have been found for the plant inAfrica that Burkill describes it as “a general panacea.”231 The “senna”reported by Almada in Senegal in the late sixteenth century and by theJesuit Baltasar Barreira on São Tiago in 1604-06 may have been thisplant.232 Later precolonial references abound.233

Another coffee substitute, with a similar pedigree, is Senna obtusifolia(a/k/a Cassia tora, C. obtusifolia). Its vernacular names include fetid cassia,sickle senna, sicklepod, and coffeeweed. Webster’s Third calls it “a cos-mopolitan tropical weed.” Common throughout western Africa, it wasrecorded by Adanson in Senegal in 1749, Afzelius in Sierra Leone in 1796and Thonning on the Gold Coast in 1799-1803.234

226Gallet, 47; Raymond Mauny, “Notes historiques autour des principales plantes cul-tivées en Afrique occidentale,” BIFAN 15(1953), 692; Théodore Monod, “Un cataloguedes plantes de Richard-Toll (Sénégal) en 1824,” BIFAN 13(1951), 1290.227Gallet, 47. See also Lugenbeel, 18, regarding cacao in Liberia.228Polly Hill, The Migrant Cocoa-Farmers of Southern Ghana (2d ed.: Oxford, 1997), x,170-77.229A. Bardin, “Le cacaoyer en Côte d’Ivoire,” Annales Agricoles de l’Afrique Occiden-tale Française et Étrangère 1(1937), 135. Gold Coasters transmitted cacao to the IvoryCoast ca. 1880. See also Burkill, 5:176.230Ficalho, 198-99; Kup, Afzelius, 32, 92:104v(1). See also Tuckey, 20; Hooker, 413;Oliver, 3(1877):180-81; Gallet, 46; Hopkins, “Danish Natural History,” 392; Burkill, 4:518-19.2313:160.232Hair, Almada, 1:38; Teixeira da Mota/Hair, section 3, p. 6, section 13, p. 2.233Hepper, 34; Tuckey, 250; Hooker, 29, 32, 35, 37, 40, 126-27, 324; Oliver, 2:274. Seealso Ficalho, 149-50, Chevalier, Ressources, 178.234Adanson, 65; Kup, Afzelius, 137; Hepper, 34. See also Hooker, 126, 324; Oliver,2:275; Burkill, 3:157-60.


OrnamentalsThe first ornamental introduced to western Africa by Europeans may havebeen Mirabilis jalapa, the marvel of Peru (where it originated), a/k/a thefour o’clock flower (for blooming at night) and charmingly called in Frenchla belle de nuit. Barbot said the forests of Príncipe contained largenumbers.235 Vogel collected a specimen in Sierra Leone in 1841.236

The pride of Barbados is Caesalpinia pulcherrima (a/k/a Poinciana pul-cherrima). It could have originated elsewhere in the Americas: one of itsnames is Mexican bird of paradise, and Burkill thinks it probably comesfrom South America.237 Afzelius grew it in his Freetown garden in 1796 andVogel saw it lining roadsides around Cape Coast Castle in 1841.238 It is nowcommon in western Africa.

Devil’s trumpet and angel’s trumpet are two of the names attached toDatura metel, a poisonous ornamental most likely of tropical American ori-gin.239 Danes introduced it to the Gold Coast toward the end of the eigh-teenth century.240 Smith found it on São Tiago in 1816 and Darwin in1832.241 A relative known as jimsonweed, Datura stramonium, reached SãoTiago by 1839.242 Both are widespread in the region.

Another common ornamental is Plumbago zeylanica, called Ceylon lead-wort, a white-flowered native of Asia. It reached the Gold Coast by 1799-1803 and São Tiago by 1816.243 Another Asian ornamental, Cassia fistula,is called Indian laburnum or golden shower. It was being cultivated in SierraLeone in 1796 and on São Tiago in 1816.244 The plant may have spreadthrough the tropics initially for the value of its fruit pulp as a laxative ratherthan for the beauty of its yellow flowers.245

Two similar species of lantana, L. camara and L. antidotalis, reachedwest Africa from the Americas in precolonial days. The former was seen by

235Hair/Jones/Law, 2:722-23, 731n10. Presumably Barbot was referring to a visit in1682.236Hooker, 496. See also Burkill, 4:262-63.2373:75.238Kup, Afzelius, 144, 153; Hooker, 40, 324. See also Chevalier, Ressources, 179.239Burkill (5:104) says it is thought to be of Asian origin, but that is clearly a minorityview. Its striking tubular flowers are up to eight inches (20 cm) long.240Daniel Hopkins, “A Poisonous Plant of the Genus Datura (Solanaceae) in an Eigh-teenth-Century Danish Garden in West Africa,” Archives of Natural History 30(2003),157-59. See also Hepper, 120.241Tuckey, 250; Hooker, 162.242Hooker, 162. See also Burkill, 5:105-07.243Hepper, 104; Tuckey, 250. See also Hooker, 169-70, 490; Oliver, 3:486; Ficalho, 207;Burkill, 4:445-46.244Kup, Afzelius, 39, 124; Tuckey, 28, 241. See also Oliver, 2:270; Ficalho, 149; Gledhill,67; Burkill, 3:77-78.245Ibid. Afzelius (Kup, 124) said the plant was used in a gonorrhea remedy.


Thonning, the latter by Vogel, both on the Gold Coast.246 Argemone mexi-cana is a New World ornamental with a dozen different English names,including Mexican poppy, golden poppy of Peru, and Jamaica thistle. FromThonning (1799-1803) onward we have many reports of its presence inWest Africa.247

From Asia came another plant with a geographical gamut of names:Melia azedarach, known as Persian lilac, pride of India, chinaberry or prideof China, and lilac of Japan. Thonning saw it on the Gold Coast and Don inSierra Leone.248

Chevalier thought Parkinsonia aculeata, the Barbados flower fence, hadbeen introduced to Senegal from tropical America in the late eighteenth cen-tury, then spread across the Sahel.249 J.D. Hooker said it was frequent alongthe west coast of Africa in the mid-nineteenth century.250 It is both a yellow-flowered ornamental and a thorny hedge.

Chevalier also reckoned that Albizzia lebbek, the ornamental lebbek treeof Asia, had been brought to west Africa in the early nineteenth century.251

He described it as “the avenue tree par excellence” for towns of the aridSahel.252 Other sources confirm its presence by mid-century.253 Webster’sThird identifies it indelicately as the woman’s-tongue tree, “so called fromthe clatter of its dry pods.”

Sweet acacia (Acacia farnesiana), of American origin, was seen on SãoTiago in 1838-39 and in Sierra Leone in 1841,254 and has been reportedfrom Senegal to Angola.255 It is grown for its fragrant yellow flowers. Anornamental vine known as blue pea (Clitoria ternatea) was established fromSenegal to Angola by the mid-nineteenth century. It is either of American orAsian origin.256

Calliandra portoricensis, a tropical American shrub called powder puff,reached the Gold Coast by 1799-1803257 and is now found at least from the

246Hepper, 129; Hooker, 485. See also Chevalier, “Rôle,” 643; Busson, 396; Burkill,5:258-60.247Hepper, 83; Tuckey, 26, 250; Hooker, 29, 98-99, 216; Oliver, 1:54; Chevalier,Ressources, 160. See also Burkill, 4:399-403.248Hepper, 74; Hooker, 255; Oliver, 1:332. See also Ficalho, 114; Chevalier, Ressources,173; Burkill, 4:115-17.249Ressources, 179.250Hooker, 323. See also Oliver, 2:267; Burkill, 3:141-42.251Sometimes spelled Albizia lebbeck.252Ressources, 180.253Hooker, 332; Oliver, 2:358. See also Burkill, 3:213-14.254Hooker, 128, 331.255Ficalho, 173; Chevalier, Ressources, 179-80; Purseglove, Dicotyledons, 209; Burkill,3:180-81.256Hooker, 305; Oliver, 2:177; Burkill, 3:304-05.257Hepper, 76; Hooker, 332. Thonning mistakenly called it Mimosa guineensis. See alsoOliver, 2:354-55.


Ivory Coast to Nigeria.258 It has white flower heads and fern-like foliage.The portia tree (Thespesia populnea) is an Indo-Pacific plant that reachedSenegambia by the 1820s259 and is grown as an ornamental and roadsideshade tree in several western African countries.260

Another ornamental shade and avenue tree is the Asian Terminalia cat-appa, variously known as the Indian almond, Bengal almond, Singaporealmond, or Malabar almond because of the taste of its seed kernel. Unusual-ly for a tropical plant, its foliage turns yellow and red in the fall. It was seenon the Niger in 1841 and reported growing later in the nineteenth century inSenegambia and on São Tiago and São Tomé.261

The Rangoon creeper (Quisqualis indica) is an Asian vine long grown inwestern Africa for its showy flowers and medicinal properties. Thonningreported it on the Gold Coast in 1799-1803, Vogel along the Niger in 1841,and other visitors in Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Congo in the 1850s and1860s.262

Jatropha gossypifolia, known as the bellyache bush because its fruit andfoliage are toxic, is an American ornamental with dark red flowers that dou-bles as a hedge. It reached the Gold Coast by the 1820s and is widespread inwest Africa.263 Another American Jatropha species, multifida, called thecoral plant, forms red-flowered hedges, but also has roots that are eaten likecassava. It was seen in Sierra Leone in 1841.264

Other Non-Food PlantsAmong the plants introduced by Europeans during the slave-trade periodthat would in time become major cash crops along with peanuts, cacao, andtobacco were two American species of cotton, Gossypium hirsutum and G.barbadense. They are said to have been taken to western Africa in the sev-enteenth century265 but I have found no hard evidence before thenineteenth.266 They had been preceded by two Asian species, G. arboreumand G. herbaceum, which had apparently been brought across the Sahara,possibly more than two millennia ago in the case of the former.267 G.

258Burkill, 3:221.259Oliver, 1:209.260Burkill, 4:54-56.261Hooker, 336; Oliver, 2:416; Ficalho, 179. See also Busson, 287-88; Burkill, 1:418.262Hepper, 40; Oliver, 2:435. See also Burkill, 1:413.263Hooker, 509; Burkill, 2:92-93.264Hooker, 509; Ficalho, 249; Busson, 164; Abbiw, 31, 239; Burkill, 2:93.265Burkill, 4:19, 25; Katz, 318; Chevalier, Ressources, 129; Simmonds, 198.266Hepper, 69; Hooker, 229; Oliver, 1:210-11; Ficalho, 99.267Auguste Chevalier, “Systematique des cotonniers cultivés ou ayant été cultivés ancien-nement en Afrique tropicale,” Revue Internationale de Botanique Appliquée et d’Agricul-ture Tropicale 28(1948), 232.


arboreum, the arborescent cotton plant, is almost certainly the “cotton tree”referred to in Arabic writings on west Africa from the eleventh to the four-teenth centuries.268 The two American species were superior to the Asianones in performance and gradually replaced them. Variants of G. hirsutumare now the most widely grown cottons in tropical Africa as well as in theworld at large, while G. barbadense is a distant second. G. arboreum and G.herbaceum have almost disappeared.269

Only a few of some 700 species of Indigofera yield indigo dye; threehave been important in the region. An American species, I. anil (a/k/a I. suf-fruticosa), arrived by the nineteenth century, perhaps much earlier, andspread widely.270 An Asian plant, I. tinctoria, known as true indigo, alsoreached western Africa in precolonial times and did well.271 But both havebeen eclipsed by an indigenous species, I. arrecta, which must have beenthe original regional dye source and has now rebounded in popularity.272

Canna indica, known as Indian shot, actually comes from tropical Amer-ica, as do all members of the genus. It reached west Africa by 1796273 and isnow common in the region.274 Indian shot offers an extraordinary exampleof how Africans have made the most out of exotic plants. “Shot” refers tothe plant’s small, hard, round black seeds that resemble shotgun pellets.They are used as beads strung into necklaces and rosaries, for game coun-ters, and for percussion instruments and rattles, including those dancers tieon their legs. The plant’s rhizomes are eaten, so it is not entirely a non-foodcrop. Its red flowers are displayed ornamentally and its leaves are used aswrappers, but it is mainly a source of medications. Leaves, tender shoots,stems, sap, juice, powdered roots, rhizomes, flowers—all are used to treatan astonishing array of maladies.275

Another American plant with multiple medicinal properties in the regionis Paullinia pinnata, a vine called supplejack. It seems to have been broughtto Africa originally as a fish poison, but has been found useful for muchelse.276 The tough stems serve as ropes, the twigs as toothbrushes and chew-

268Levtzion/Hopkins, 78, 145, 185, 201, 210. The editors supposed (ibid., 475) that aBombax silk-cotton species was meant, but Sahel/Sudan residents were surely weavinggarments out of locally-grown cotton, not kapok. Gossypium plants are sometimes calledcotton trees in English-language literature too; species can grow as high as 10 feet.269Chevalier, “Systematique,” 231-40; Simmonds, 196-99; Burkill, 4:17-26.270Hooker, xiii, 295; Oliver, 2:98; Ficalho, 125-27; Burkill, 3:381-82.271Hepper, 93-94; Hooker, 121, 295; Ficalho, 125-27; Oliver, 2:99; Chevalier,Ressources, 181; Burkill, 3:382.272Burkill, 3: 364-65, 381-82.273Kup, Afzelius, 170. See also Hepper, 134-35; Hooker, 530. Don and Vogel recordedCanna orientalis, a synonym for C. indica.274Purseglove,Monocotyledons, 92; Burkill, 1:314-15.275Ibid.; Abbiw, 153, 154.276Chevalier, “Rôle,” 4; Burkill, 5:27.


sticks. According to Burkill the principal medical use of the plant is to checkbleeding. Its leaves, bark, twigs, roots, flowers, fruit, and seeds treat variousailments.277 The earliest reports I have found of its presence in westernAfrica were by Isert (1784), Afzelius (1795) and Thonning (1799-1803).278

Still another American medicinal plant widely exploited in westernAfrica is sweet broomweed (Scoparia dulcis). It may have been an acciden-tal migrant. Robert Brown noted that its seeds are so tiny they could easilyhave adhered to or been mixed with articles of food or commerce crossingthe Atlantic.279 Afzelius saw the shrub being used as a broom; Thonningalso recorded it.280

An American weed that probably crossed the ocean unnoticed, and issaddled with unappealing names like hairy beggar-tick and devil’s needles,was converted by western Africans into a medication and a potherb. Bidenspilosa is used to treat ear ache, conjunctivitis, worms, jaundice, smallpox,colitis, diarrhea, dysentery, muscular pains, bleeding, and snakebite.281 Ithad reached the region by the 1790s.282

An unlikely candidate for exotic status is the biggest tree of westernAfrica, the fast-growing Ceiba pentandra, called the silk-cotton or kapoktree or simply ceiba. It can reach a height of 230 feet (70 meters), has hugebuttresses that may rise 25 feet, above which is a columnar, branchless,spiny trunk that may exceed 100 feet and have a basal girth of more than 30feet. Its imposing size has given it sacred standing in many places, and alsoa role as “palaver tree.” The wood of C. pentandra is light and easilyworked, suitable for dugout canoes (the French are said to have named thetree fromager because the wood is cheese-like in its softness). Parts of thetree have culinary and medicinal uses. Its wood ash makes salt and soap.But its main value is as a source of kapok, the floss used for stuffing cush-ions, pillows, and mattresses, and providing buoyant, water-resistant materi-al for life preservers and rafts.

No one now doubts that C. Pentandra originated in tropical Americaalong with all other Ceiba species. The question is when (and how) itreached western Africa, an issue that has exercised specialists for decades.Its presence has been recorded since the late sixteenth century, when Alma-da saw it in Senegal.283 Dapper would report it in the Sierra Leone-Liberia

277Ibid., 28-30. See also Abbiw, 9ff.278Hepper, 116-17; Kup, Afzelius, 33, 92:106r(2), 124. See also, Oliver, 1:419-20.279Tuckey, 480.280Kup, Afzelius, 13; Hepper, 119. See also Hooker, 474; Burkill, 5:77-79.281Burkill, 1:451-52.282Hepper, 41; Hooker, 142, 435; Oliver, 3:392-93.283Hair, Almada, 1:38. André Donelha, a Cape Verdean like Almada, saw silk-cottontrees in Guinea-Bissau around the same time. Descrição da Serra Leoa e dos rios deGuiné do Cabo Verde (1625). An Account of Sierra Leone and the Rivers of Guinea ofCape Verde, ed., Avelino Teixeira da Mota, tr. and ed., P.E.H. Hair (Lisbon, 1977), 177,327n317.


border area, Barbot and Adanson in Senegal, and Bosman and Rask on theGold Coast.284 Some modern writers think the Portuguese took it to Africa,or at least that it was brought by man.285 Others favor pre-Columbian trans-fer, possibly by sea or wind though the seeds easily shake loose from thefloss.286 And still others sit on the fence.287

The poisonous red-and-black seeds of Abrus precatorius, a twining herb,were used to weigh gold on the Gold Coast by the turn of the seventeenthcentury.288 Known as jequirity, crab’s eyes, or Indian licorice, the plantprobably originated in Africa, like most Abrus species, though it has longbeen known in China and India, and Webster’s Third calls it East Indian.The seeds became Islamic weight units, and that idea presumably crossedthe desert, if not the herb itself. They also make attractive beads and neck-laces; one of the plant’s names is rosary pea.

A more certain Islamic introduction to West Africa was the henna plant,Lawsonia inermis or L. alba. It is thought to have originated in the MiddleEast, and crossed the Sahara by the twelfth century, when al-Zuhri reportedit in the Gao area.289 The dried and powdered leaves mixed with lime juicemake a cosmetic copper-red dye that is applied to women’s hands, nails,feet and hair. Mixed with other ingredients, the powder produces “all shadesfrom blond to raven black.”290 Another dye used as a cosmetic in the Regioncomes from the annatto tree (Bixa orellana) of tropical America. The dyederives from pulp surrounding the seeds and varies between red, orange,and yellow. It is used as facial makeup for dances and also to stain utensils,cotton, and matting. European visitors began taking note of the plant in the1820s and it was reportedly tested in French gardens in Senegal during thesame decade.291

284Olfert Dapper, Naukeurige beschrijvinge der afrikaensche gewesten (Amsterdam,1668), 387; Hair/Jones/Law, 1:73-74, 81n18; Adanson, 59; Bosman, 295; Winsnes, 1:6(of draft). Bosman also said Dutchmen found the tree on Príncipe in the late fifteenth cen-tury but must have meant the late sixteenth when the Dutch first ventured to westernAfrica.285Chevalier, “Rôle,” 640-41; F.R. Irvine, Woody Plants of Ghana… (London, 1961),191; Busson, 308; Gledhill, 17; Roger Blench, “The Intertwined History of the Silk-Cot-ton and Baobab,” paper presented at Fourth International Workshop for AfricanArchaeobotany, Groningen, 2003, 6, 11.286Herbert G. Baker, “The Evolution of the Cultivated Kapok Tree: a Probable WestAfrican Product,” in Brokensha, 192-93; Purseglove, Dicotyledons, 35; Simmonds, 13.287For example, Burkill, 1: 280.288Dantzig/Jones, 60. See also Hair/Jones/Law, 2:548, 555nn13, 14; Selena Axelrod Win-snes, tr. and ed., Erick Tilleman (1697), a Short and Simple Account of the CountryGuinea and Its Nature (Madison, 1994), 32; Bosman, 86; Timothy F. Garrard, AkanWeights and the Gold Trade (London, 1980), 213, 231-32; Burkill, 3:269-70.289Levtzion/Hopkins, 97; see also 263 regarding Mali in the fourteenth century. Reportsby Europeans include Adanson, 174; Oliver, 2:483; Chevalier, Ressources, 131, 188.290Burkill, 3:563.291Hooker, 220; Oliver, 1:114; Ficalho, 86; Cultru, Histoire, 307. See also Burkill, 1:269-70.


The soapberry tree (Sapindus saponaria) is an American plant that mayhave reached the Gold Coast by 1780-81.292 Its fruit, rich in saponin, is usedas a soap substitute, its seeds make beads, and the tree is grown as an orna-mental.293

IV

Colonial rule brought more exotic plants to western Africa. According tothe late Ghanaian historian A. Adu Boahen, the main reasons for the colo-nial powers’ presence in Africa were “the production of raw materials andthe acquisition of markets for the sale of their manufactured goods,” and Ithink few would disagree. In line with the first goal, he wrote, “colonialadministrations increasingly took part in the economic work being per-formed by the European trading companies and missionaries, namely, thatof promoting the production of cash crops.”294

Most of these crops had already been introduced during the slave-tradeera, notably sugar cane, cacao, arabica coffee, peanuts, American cotton,tobacco, pineapple, ginger, maize, coconut, and American and Asian indigo.Bananas might be included as a plant brought from west-central to westAfrica. New crops introduced for their export potential included Pará rubber(Hevea brasiliensis), which outperformed all indigenous latex sources,295

and sisal (Agave sisalana), the American fiber plant.296 And among newtimber trees brought in were teak from Asia,297 mahogany (Swieteniamahagoni and S. macrophylla)298 and lignum vitae (Guaiacum officinale)from the Americas,299 and eucalyptus from Australia.300

292Tuckey, 427. British botanist William Brass found Sapindus growing near Cape Coastbut did not identify the species. See also Hooker, 249.293Burkill, 5:32-33.294A. Adu Boahen, Jacob F. Ade Ajayi, and Michael Tidy, Topics in West African Histo-ry (2d ed.: Harlow, 1986), 127-28.295Purseglove, Dicotyledons, 146-71; Simmonds, 77-81; Abbiw, 74-75; Burkill, 2:82-83.296Purseglove,Monocotyledons, 14-29; Simmonds, 1-4; Burkill, 1:32-33; Abbiw, 77.297Simmonds, 300; Abbiw, 88; Burkill, 5:270.298Burkill, 4:119-20. S. macrophylla, known as Honduras mahogany, has succeeded S.mahagoni, West Indian mahogany, as the world’s leading commercial species. There areseveral native African mahoganies of the genus Khaya.299Abbiw, 240; Burkill, 5:323-24. It reputedly produces the hardest commercial wood.Madox (192-93) said he collected “guaiacum” in Sierra Leone in 1582, but it is the onlyprecolonial citation I have found and may not refer to the same tree.300Burkill 4:244. Several species are under cultivation. Among other timber trees import-ed were blackwood (Dalbergia latifolia), Chittagong wood (Chukrasia tabularis) andgmelina (Gmelina arborea) from Asia, tulipwood (Harpullia pendula) from Australia,and the cigarbox tree (Cedrela odorata) from the Americas. Burkill, 3:327, 4:95, 4:96,5:21, 5-257-58.


But besides promoting export crops, colonial agricultural and forestrydepartments expanded the western African inventory of exotic food andnon-food plants. The fort gardens of the slaving period, discussed in 1992(16-17), were succeeded by government-sponsored botanical gardens andexperiment stations that provided technical information and seedlings tolocal farmers.301

Two new root crops were introduced in the colonial period. Dioscoreaesculenta, called the lesser yam, was the third Asian species to arrive, afterthe greater and aerial yams. It is grown from the Ivory Coast to Nigeria.302

The white or Irish potato, of South American origin, was found adaptable tothe higher elevations of the Region. It has ousted the sweet potato in parts ofNigeria.303

Two lemony essential-oil plants of the Cymbopogon genus arrived fromAsia. Citronella grass (C. nardus and C. winteranius), is common in gar-dens.304 Lemon grass (C. citratus), besides yielding aromatic oil, is a teasubstitute, a flavoring, a binder of sandy soil, and a medication.305 Anotheressential-oil producer was the camphor tree from Asia.306

Three more citrus species, grapefruit,307 tangerine308 and pomelo (a/k/ashaddock),309 reached western Africa, the first a West Indian hybrid, theothers ultimately Asian. Among other colonial fruit introductions were themangosteen310 and loquat311 from Asia and the honeyberry312 from SouthAmerica.301Chevalier, Ressources, 82-83, 181, 213; Lewis, 83; Gledhill, 67; Boahen/Ajayi/Tidy,128; Burkill, 1:343; Blench, “History,” 99; Archaeology, 200. Even the Belgian Congogovernment, with its unflattering reputation, had “experimental gardens” to supplyAfrican farmers with new crops. Émile de Wildeman, De l’origine de certains élémentsde la flore du Congo belge (Brussels, 1940), 27.302Busson, 431-32; Burkill, 1:663; Abbiw, 28.303Abbiw, 29-30; Burkill, 5:134-35; Blench, “The Introduction and Spread of New WorldCrops in Nigeria: a Historical and Linguistic Investigation” in Chastanet, Plantes, 173,179; “History,” 85-86.304Purseglove, Monocotyledons, 140-41; Abbiw, 231; Burkill, 2:213-14. Burkill wouldwiden its original homeland to include eastern and southern Africa.305Purseglove,Monocotyledons, 137-38; Abbiw, 20ff.; Burkill, 2:209-11.306Abbiw, 231; Burkill, 3:41. Ficalho, 245, reported it on São Tomé, which suggests anearly arrival there.307Lewis, 48; R.E. Bradbury, The Benin Kingdom and the Edo-Speaking Peoples ofSouth-Western Nigeria (London, 1957), 24; Wilson, 172; Gledhill, 66; Andreas Massing,The Economic Anthropology of the Kru (Wiesbaden, 1980), 126; Abbiw, 43; Burkill,4:647.308Chevalier, Ressources, 170; Kup, History, 179; Wilson, 172; Gledhill, 66; Massing,126; Abbiw, 43; Burkill, 4:647.309Chevalier, Ressources, 170; Abbiw, 43; Burkill, 4:644-45.310Abbiw, 46, 222; Burkill, 2:391-92.311Chevalier, Ressources, 176; Burkill, 4:505.312Abbiw, 46; Burkill, 5:25.


The most obvious new plants were a galaxy of ornamentals that embell-ished cities, towns, villages and gardens in the Region. From the NewWorld, among the better known, came bloodflower,313 bougainvillea,314

canna hybrids,315 frangipani,316 jacaranda,317 moonflower,318 morningglory319 and the royal palm.320 One American ornamental, the waterhyacinth, has caused much more harm than good, choking ponds and water-ways.321

Asia sent six or seven species of bauhinia,322 red hibiscus,323 red plumba-go324 and crape myrtle.325 Another Asian immigrant was neem, an avenueand shade tree that also supplies medicine, oil, gum, fodder, fuel, timber,basketry material, chew-sticks, and fertilizer.326

Oleander was brought down from the Mediterranean.327 The bird-of-par-adise flower328 and blue plumbago329 were brought up from South Africa,and the flamboyant330 was introduced from Madagascar. The avenue treecasuarina, sometimes called the whistling pine, came from Australasia.331

The full range of botanical imports is much longer, including grasses forlawns and playing fields, trees to shade cash crops, live fences, fuel trees,cover crops, green manure, forage, construction materials, and so on. Toappreciate its scope in one country alone, I recommend Abbiw’s meticulousstudy of Ghana’s useful plants.

313Burkill, 1:217; Abbiw, 239.314Chevalier, Ressources, 209; Lewis, 23; Busson, 147; Abbiw, 240; Burkill, 4:261.315Purseglove,Monocotyledons, 92; Burkill, 1:315.316Lewis, 21; Gledhill, 68, Burkill, 1:171-72; Abbiw, 240.317Gledhill, 68; Burkill, 1:254; Abbiw, 240.318Burkill, 1:532; Abbiw, 41.319Burkill, 1:531, 544; Abbiw, 239.320Abbiw, 233; Burkill, 4:392.321Abbiw, 235, 246; Burkill, 4:465-66. However, food, fodder, fertilizer, and waste-watertreatment uses are being found for it.322Abbiw, 234, 237; Burkill, 3:60-63. Two of the species reached Angola by the mid-nineteenth century. Oliver, 2:290.323Lewis, 101; Abbiw, 42; Burkill, 4:34-35.324Burkill, 4:445. Abbiw (125, 171, 200) features its medicinal properties.325Abbiw, 240; Burkill, 3:561.326Gledhill, 67; Abbiw, 9ff.; Burkill, 4:88-92.327Chevalier, Ressources, 201; Burkill, 1:166-67; Abbiw, 239-40.328Burkill, 5:181.329Abbiw, 240; Burkill, 4:444-45.330Lewis, 118; Gledhill, 67; Abbiw, 233; Burkill, 3:100-01.331Chevalier, Ressources, 217; Gledhill, 67; Burkill, 1:346; Abbiw, 233. Chevalier said itwas introduced to Senegal in the early nineteenth century but I have not found confirma-tion of that.


V

While substantial in aggregate, many of the plants cited above, or not cited,are minor actors in western Africa. However, the number of staple foodsamong them is impressive. They include maize, cassava, bananas/plantains,Asian rice, “old cocoyams” (taro), “new cocoyams” (tannia), peanuts, sweetpotatoes, common beans, the Asian greater yam, coconuts, andpumpkins/squash. In addition, tomatoes, onions and capsicum peppers, allexotic, may be considered staples since they are basic components ofsauces, soups, and stews in the region. Wilson observes that “almost everymain dish makes use of [them] for flavoring, and this trio is referred to sim-ply as ‘the ingredients’.”332 Moreover, as Gledhill observes, “almost all thefruit trees which are of any importance in West Africa today have beenbrought from other parts of the world.”333 Abbiw similarly remarks that“with the exception of a few semi-cultivated fruits . . . , the cultivated fruits[of Ghana] have all been introduced from other tropical or sub-tropicalcountries.”334

This fruit imbalance points to the root cause of what would superficiallyappear to be the region’s over-reliance on exotic plants. Sub-Saharan Africawas relatively ill-favored by nature compared with the Asian or Americantropics or the Eurasian temperate zones, with plants suitable for human con-sumption and capable of domestication.335 It did, however, independentlydomesticate many more crops than, say, northern Europe or that part of theAmericas that would become the United States and Canada. In the 1880sCandolle calculated that of 247 cultivated plants in the world, only 20 wereof African origin.336 In the 1920s Russian botanist Nikolai Ivanovich Vav-ilov credited Africa with 50 of mankind’s 640 most important cultivatedplants.337 That was not far from the findings in the landmark 1976 book,Origins of African Plant Domestication, in which David R. Harris counted44 indigenous African food plants338 and Purseglove 52.339

332Wilson, 19.333Gledhill, 66.334Abbiw, 43.335Phillipson, 167, contends that “most of the crops which are or have been cultivated inAfrica are species that are indigenous to that continent and which must presumably havebeen first cultivated there.” That is dubious at best.336Candolle, 436-46.337Cited in Crosby, 185.338“Traditional Systems of Plant Food Production and the Origins of Agriculture in WestAfrica” in Harlan/de Wet /Stemler, 329-332.339“The Origins and Migrations of Crops in Tropical Africa” in ibid., 302-05.


While underestimating African achievement, Candolle thought only two“nutritious crops worth cultivating,” Jerusalem artichokes and gourds, hadoriginated in the United States. And he credited Australia and New Zealandwith one tree and one vegetable. He concluded that “the original distributionof cultivated species was very unequal. It had no proportion with the needsof man or the extent of territory.”340 Indeed, that sub-Saharan Africanscould do no better was demonstrated during the colonial period, when Euro-peans, with all their botanical and horticultural know-how, failed to find asingle indigenous food plant, to my knowledge, that African farmers hadoverlooked.341 I was also struck by how African medicine men compiled animmense, unwritten pharmacopoeia by finding medicinal properties in myr-iads of indigenous plants and in practically every new plant from abroad.342

At this they were no less gifted than their counterparts in the Asian andAmerican tropics.

Among historians who have ignored all but maize and cassava as cropsintroduced to Africa during the slave-trade era was Walter Rodney, a spe-cialist on Upper Guinea. He denied that any good could have come out ofthe trade and asserted that to maintain otherwise amounted to “racist bour-geois propaganda.” He argued that maize and cassava would have reachedAfrica anyway through routine intercontinental trade.343 But history, ofcourse, deals with what happened, not what might have happened if . . . Andlike it or not, Europeans were, for whatever reason (usually but not alwaysselfish ones) and by a large margin, the principal agents of beneficial botan-ical innovation in western Africa in precolonial (and colonial) times.

340Candolle, 448-49.341Afzelius tells of coffee plants growing wild and unexploited in the mountains of SierraLeone, but the farmer who found them was a black settler from Georgia named AndrewMoore. He took seeds to the English governor and was rewarded. Kup, Afzelius, 65, 66,68, 71-72, 76, 77, 97:255v(1). The role of Moore and other ex-slaves who returned fromthe Americas and introduced or popularized American crops in the Region, particularly inSierra Leone, Liberia, and Ghana, deserves more attention.342In his book on Ghanaian plants, Abbiw felt obliged to devote 88 pages, or more than athird of his text, to “potions and medicines.”343How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London, 1983), 111.


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