The French names _chervis_ and _girole_[79] would perhaps teach us something if we knew their origin. Littré derives _chervis_ from the Spanish _chirivia_, but the latter is more likely derived from the French. Bauhin[80] mentions the low Latin names _servillum_, _chervillum_, or _servillam_, words which are not in Ducange’s dictionary. This may well be the origin of _chervis_, but whence came _servillum_ or _chervillum_?
+Arracacha+ or +Arracacia+—_Arracacha esculenta_, de Candolle.
An umbel generally cultivated in Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador as a nutritious plant. In the temperate regions of those countries it bears comparison with the potato, and even yields, we are assured, a lighter and more agreeable _fecula_. The lower part of the stem is swelled into a bulb, on which, when the plant thrives well, tubercles, or lateral bulbs, form themselves, and persist for several months, which are more prized than the central bulb, and serve for future planting.[81]
The species is probably indigenous in the region where it is cultivated, but I do not find in any author a positive assertion of the fact. The existing descriptions are drawn from cultivated stocks. Grisebach indeed says that he has seen (presumably in the herbarium at Kew) specimens gathered in New Granada, in Peru, and in Trinidad,[82] but he does not say whether they were wild. The other species of the same genus, to the number of a dozen, grow in the same districts of America, which renders the above-mentioned origin more probable.
The introduction of the arracacha into Europe has been attempted several times without success. The damp climate of England accounts for the failure of Sir William Hooker’s attempts; but ours, made at two different times, under very different conditions, have met with no better success. The lateral bulbs did not form, and the central bulb died in the house where it was placed for the winter. The bulbs presented to different botanical gardens in France and Italy and elsewhere shared the same fate. It is clear that if the plant is in America really equal to the potato in productiveness and taste, this will never be the case in Europe. Its cultivation does not in America spread as far as Chili and Mexico, like that of the potato and sweet potato, which confirms the difficulty of propagation observed elsewhere.