In general usage the word indigen is treated as a variant of the word indigene, meaning a native.

Usage in botany

However, it was used in a strictly botanical sense for the first time in 1918 by Liberty Hyde Bailey

Liberty Hyde Bailey

Liberty Hyde Bailey was an American horticulturist, botanist and cofounder of the American Society for Horticultural Science.-Biography:...

 ((1858–1954) an American horticulturist, botanist and cofounder of the American Society for Horticultural Science) and described as a plant

" of known habitat ".

Later, in 1923, Bailey formally defined the indigen as:

Botanical definition

" ... a species of which we know the nativity, - one that is somewhere recorded as indigenous. "

The term was coined to contrast with cultigen

Cultigen

A cultigen is a plant that has been deliberately altered or selected by humans; it is the result of artificial selection. These "man-made" or anthropogenic plants are, for the most part, plants of commerce that are used in horticulture, agriculture and forestry...

 which he defined in the 1923 paper as:

" ... the species, or its equivalent, that has appeared under domestication, - the plant is cultigenous."

The definition and usage of the word cultigen has undergone subsequent change (see entry under cultigen

Cultigen

A cultigen is a plant that has been deliberately altered or selected by humans; it is the result of artificial selection. These "man-made" or anthropogenic plants are, for the most part, plants of commerce that are used in horticulture, agriculture and forestry...

).

See also

• cultigen
  Cultigen
  A cultigen is a plant that has been deliberately altered or selected by humans; it is the result of artificial selection. These "man-made" or anthropogenic plants are, for the most part, plants of commerce that are used in horticulture, agriculture and forestry...
  
  
• alien (biology)
  Introduced species
  An introduced species — or neozoon, alien, exotic, non-indigenous, or non-native species, or simply an introduction, is a species living outside its indigenous or native distributional range, and has arrived in an ecosystem or plant community by human activity, either deliberate or accidental...
  
  
• native

• naturalised