Recherches sur l'introduction de la patate douce

Abstract

Long long ago, "Chinese sweet potato" (Dioscorea esculenta (Lour.) Burk.) was generally called "sweet potato". It was only a mistake that as early as the first century A. D. or prior to this, sweet potato was utilized and cultivated by Chinese and it was recorded in the famous then contemporary literature named "Chronology of Rare Things" (yi wu zhi) authored by Yang Fu. According to the verification of some literatures, the "sweet potato" (Ipomoea batatas) is entirely different from the "sweet potato" described in the above mentioned literature, even though its emerald covers a good portion of the earth and is as vital as the other cereals to men. It is not a very long time since ."Fanshu" (Ipomoea batatas) was introduced into our country. Though the information concerning the date and channel of introduction is neither very exact nor in detail, yet after a preliminary investigation the authors at the present time prefer to believe that the earliest date of introducing should be the eighth year of Wanli of the Ming Dynasty, i.e., 1582 A.D., or probably a little earlier. There were at least three channels of introduction, the first was from Vietnam to Dianbai County of Guandong Province ; the second was from Vietnam to Dongguan County of Guandong Province, and the third was from the Philippines to Changle County of Fujian province. Among these three channels, excepting that during the twenty-first year of Wanli (1593 A.D.), the last one of which more records could be found was better known by most people while the first and the second ones were little known due to the limited systemic evidences available. As 1980 is the four-hundredth anniversary of the introduction of sweet potato into our country, the present paper is written to fill the gap in plant introduction history and to serve as a token of commemoration.