Saccharum

Harvested in New Guinea a century before Christ, sugarcane reached the shores of China and India. The Persians called it the “honey-bearing reed,” and Alexander the Great brought the exotic plant home from his conquests. Arab conquerors planted canes in Palestine, on the shores of the Nile, and along the Mediterranean where crusaders discovered it with delight. Until then, sugar, of the sanskrit “sarkara”, was a rare commodity. The Portuguese brought sugarcane to Brazil, from where its cultivation spread to the ‘Sugar islands’ of the West Indies, and later to the French Louisiana.