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The decline of the Roman Empire was followed by a lengthy period of about a thousand years during which few advancements were made, particularly in botany, and many classical works were likely lost or forgotten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There was a general hiatus in interest in the chemical interaction of plants for at least a decade following about 1910. The reasons for this were twofold: 1) the work of Pickering at the Woburn Experimental Fruit Farm, and the relevant work of Whitney, Schreiner and various associates at United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Soils were seen as either unconvincing, unrepeatable, uneven, misinterpreted or biased, and were essentially regarded as best forgotten; and 2) events in Europe, including World War I (1914-1918), and the Russian Revolution of 1917 had farreaching effects on resources, and consequently directions and funding for agricultural and botanical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Without doubt, the most tumultuous period in the history of allelopathy was that associated with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and its Bureau of Soils, during the first two decades of the twentieth century. During this period, the academic debate on allelopathy became charged with emotion, the commentary eventually became libelous, and academic and political reputations were on the line, as were the budgets of numerous agricultural institutions and departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in allelopathy in the first half of the nineteenth century has been linked primarily to one man, Augustin Pyramus de Candolle (Willis 1996, 2002). A.P. de Candolle (1778-1841; Figure 7.1) was born in Geneva into a moderately affluent Protestant family. At the age of seven, he was stricken with hydrocephalus, but survived seemingly with no ill affects. He became fluent in Latin while at school, and seemed destined for a literary career. The revolutionary fervour in France spread to the republic of Geneva, and de Candolle's family, being both Protestant and of privileged position, was forced to seek refuge during 1792-4 in Vaud on the shores of Lac Neuchâtel. This period was undoubtedly important for de Candolle's health, and for the development of his lifelong love of botany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key figures in the revival of interest in allelopathy in the twentieth century was the Englishman, S. U. Pickering (Willis 1994, 1997). Percival Spencer Umfreville Pickering1 (1858-1920; Figure 9.1) was born into an upper middle-class family, and as a youth he had the luxury of pursuing his interest in chemistry within a private laboratory at home. He eventually attended Oxford and had a relatively distinguished academic career, which culminated in an academic appointment in chemistry at Bedford College, Oxford, and ultimately in his becoming Professor of Chemistry there in 1886. In 1878 Pickering had lost his right eye, which he had initially damaged as a youth in a chemistry accident. In any case, Pickering suffered continuing poor health, and he also became disillusioned through the indifferent reception of his chemical research, which focused largely on the nature of aqueous solutions. He resigned from Bedford College in 1887, although he maintained a private interest in chemistry until about 1896. He recuperated routinely in the country at Harpenden in Hertfordshire, and to relieve any sense of idleness, he became a part-time labourer at the nearby Rothamsted Agricultural Station. He eventually decided that the lifestyle suited him, and he bought a small property in Harpenden in 1885, where he learned the rudiments of farming and horticulture, and which became his permanent home from 1902 onwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More or less commensurate with the death of Augustin Pyramus de Candolle in 1841, there was a groundswell of overt opposition to the root excretion theory. The reasons for this were manifold. Renewed interest in plant nutrition, led by Justus von Liebig at Giessen in Germany caused a re-examination of many of the precepts of the functioning of the root, at both an anatomical and physiological level. De Candolle had supposed that roots passively absorbed all solutes, and that the root spongioles were the active organs in this function. Since the early parts of the eighteenth century, there had been controversy about the function of the root, particularly in consideration of its structure. Moldenhawer (1820) had uniquely suggested that root exudations were not excretory in function, but occurred to assist in the absorption of food substances. Murray (1822a, 1822b) claimed that the structure of the root was not well suited to the absorption process, but was better suited for excretion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first half of the eighteenth century, there were scattered advancements in the understanding of how plants grow and function. In particular relevance to the discourse here, a topic that hitherto had received little attention, namely plant excretion, became a matter of progressive conjecture during the course of the eighteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Allelopathy is widely understood as the harmful effect that one plant has on another plant due to chemicals it releases into the environment. However, unfortunately, there has been substantial variation and confusion in defining and using the term over the past fifty years (Willis 1994). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following accounts owe little more than a related geography and a common paucity of information for their inclusion together in one chapter. As far as I know, there has been no substantial treatment in English of the early Asian literature relating to allelopathy, and doubtless much has been omitted here. Particularly in the case of China, there is a very rich body of literature of which very little has been translated into European languages. Ironically, the survival of some of these ancient documents is due to the fact that copies have found their way into Western libraries where they have been preserved, whereas native copies have perished, as for examples appears to be case with the work of the Indian writer Surapala. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the demise of the Roman Empire, most of Europe slid into decline, into the Mediaeval period, and what is sometimes referred to as the Dark Ages. In marked contrast to this, the Arab-dominated world, which at its height in about 900 A.D. included northern Africa, Asia Minor, the Middle East, and Iberia, was ascendant. There were great advancements in mathematics, the physical sciences, astronomy, geography, and medicine, although there was an enormous debt to Greek and Roman scholarship, which the Islamic world had conserved through copies and translations. Indeed during the period spanning from the 9th through to the 12th century, more books were written in Arabic than in any other language. Despite significant advances made in the sciences noted above, there was only modest progress in botany and agriculture, which were still heavily reliant on Greek and Roman works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The observation that certain animals were venomous to others, and that some plants were poisonous to livestock and even humans, likely led some individuals to wonder whether some plants were actually toxic to other plants. This concept is the core of allelopathy, that is, the chemical interaction of plants, although today we also acknowledge that many plants may benefit others through the chemicals they release. In any case, the concept that one plant could poison another plant was well known to the classical authors of Greece and Rome (see Figure 2.1 for a map of the Classical world). Furthermore, the idea that one plant was inimical to another fitted comfortably within the ancient concepts of antipathy and sympathy. The literature from ancient Greece and Rome, as it concerns antipathy (Pease 1927), or more specifically allelopathy, has been broached on a few occasions (Rice 1983, Willis 1985, Aliotta and Mallik 2004, Petriccione and Aliotta 2006); however, it is the intent of this chapter to investigate this matter more fully. What emerges is that the concept of allelopathy was well known to a wide range of classical authors, and not simply those remembered for their works on natural history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]