The cultivation of beets for sugar is not of very ancient date. The
Romans knew the beets and used them as vegetables, both the roots and
the leaves. They distinguished a variety with white and one with red
flesh, but whether they cultivated them, or only collected them from
where they grew spontaneously, appears to be unknown.
[68] Beets are even now found in large quantities along the shores of
Italy. They prefer the vicinity of the sea, as do so many other members
of the beet family, and are not limited to Italy, but are found growing
elsewhere on the littoral of the Mediterranean, in the Canary Islands
and through Persia and Babylonia to India. In most of their native
localities they occur in great abundance.
The color of the foliage and the size of the roots are extremely
variable. Some have red leafstalks and veins, others a uniform red or
green foliage, some have red or white or yellow roots, or exhibit
alternating rings of a red and of a white tinge on cut surfaces. It
seems only natural to consider the white and the red, and even the
variegated types as distinct varieties, which in nature do not
transgress their limits nor change into one another. In a subsequent
lecture I will show that this at least is the rule with the
corresponding color-varieties in other genera.
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