Agro-Climatic Analogues

Abstract

THE majority of the cultivated plants of the eastern and western hemispheres are represented by totally different genera, and until comparatively modern times very few such plants were common to both hemispheres. Many of the cereal and legume crops cultivated in the Old World before the time of Columbus were quite unknown in America, and the reverse was equally true. The subsequent introduction of rubber into the Far East from the Amazon region, via Kew, is the classic example of plant introduction ; but of equal importance we may note that of sugar cane from the East into the West Indies, potatoes from South America into Europe, cinchona from South America into the East Indies, groundnuts from Brazil into Africa and India, and in more recent years, soybeans from Manchuria into America and parts of Europe.