The title is the question. As a person who was born in India, I can confirm that the phrase is commonly used in Indian languages also.
Do other Indo-European languages like French, German and Spanish have it too ? What about other language groups like Chinese, Arabic, Japanese ?
Thanks
Interestingly, this doesn’t seem to have an origin anyone has pinned down. If you search for the origin you’ll find it given to the Statesville, NC, Landmark newspaper in 1891 as “Money doesn’t grow on trees here yet." That’s old news.
A quick newspaper search finds the Monongahela, PA, Daily Republican from March 8, 1883, p. 4:
That’s obviously a familiar phrase even then.
Thank you Exapno Mapcase. I suspect it maybe even older.
Here’s a cite that seems to be from circa 1854.
And here’s onefrom 1862
Those both point to the same page. That’s the problem with Google Books. It dates magazines by the first issue in the volume they scanned. All individual pages that turn up from that volume have that same initial date, even if they are from decades later.
Derived from a more general family of idioms about various desirable things not growing on trees, apparently:
That cite also notes:
I wonder if the version in Indian languages is ultimately translated from English, or has an indigenous source.
Trying to understand this bit am a bit confused 
Can you please rephrase that?
Ngram viewer lists 1836 as the first occurrence of ‘does not grow on trees’ but the expression does not specify money. After the 1836 appearance, it does not turn up again until the 1890s.
My mistake. The second one should point here.
Although I’ve found an earlier publicationof the same book, 1855.
I am aware of that. However, if you search the book for 1854or 1855the snippets show that it does come from circa that year.
Google’s dating of the publications is wonky and full of errors. It’s frequently gives the wrong date for publication. It’s particularly bad with newspapers/ magazines with a daily/weekly/ monthly publication.
A periodical might start in 1850 and last for 100 years, ceasing in 1950. A particular phrase might be included in an issue of 1924. However, Google will frequently date it to 1850, the date of the first issue.
Reading the thread title, an interesting idea about the possible origin of the phrase occurred to me. Please be advised that this is a wholly irresponsible, unchecked bit of speculation. But it’s an awfully intriguing one.
One of the biggest problems facing paper money was the issue of forgery. If you could duplicate the original mold closely enough and had access to a printing press, you could strike off as many copies of banknotes as you wanted, and no one would be the wiser. It’s one reason that paper money, despite its convenience, was distrusted so much. It’s the reason that the bill had to be signed at first (and we still do have reproductions of the signatures on American money). But, of course, signatures can be forged, too. Eighteenth century technology didn’t allow for holographic images stuck on the bill.
It was Benjamin Franklin who came up with a fascinating and inexpensive solution. He had actual leaves used in making the printing plates for the bills. The pattern of veins in the leaves were as individual as fingerprints, and almost impossible to accurately forge. If they did try to forge them, at least the forgers would be working hard for their money
I first encountered these “leaf dollars” as a kid when we bought some of those packets of reproduction colonial money (“They actually LOOK and FEEL old!!”) and wondered what weird quirk would make them want to put pictures of leaves on their money. When I got older, I read about it. It was an ingenious solution, and one Franklin ought to be better known for, along with the lightning rod and bifocals.
It wouldn’t be hard to imagine someone, surveying his wad of leaf-festoonerd paper money, observing that, although it may have looked like it, “money doesn’t grow on trees”.
Of course, the origin may be much more prosaic. Individual flat and flexible pieces of paper money already bear a physical resemblance to leaves, and the same sentiment about them not growing on trees could develop just from that crude resemblance. But it’s interesting to note that those bills at one time even more closely resembled leaves.
In Spanish I’ve heard references such as ¡éste se cree que el dinero crece en maceta! - dude thinks money grows in flower pots. To have a tree you need a decent plot of land; for a flower pot, not even that much.
A different sentence involving things that don’t grow on (all) trees, about asking too much from someone: no se puede pedir peras al olmo. Don’t ask an elm to give you pears.
Ah, thank you!!
Note from my above post that the English idiom about some desirable item or other “not growing on trees” dates back at least as far as the 17th century, well before Franklin’s time, and in fact pre-dating the standard Western use of paper currency.
The “leafiness” of Franklin’s money or paper currency notes in general may have reinforced the “money doesn’t grow on trees” idiom, but it seems unlikely that it was the original inspiration for it.
The literal equivalent pengar växer inte på träd is a common proverb in Swedish. I have no idea how old it is. My guess is it’s borrowed from English.
Conversely, of course, trees do not grow on money.
Google gets almost all of its older magazines from university libraries. Libraries bind individual issues together for convenience. Google will date all the issues bound together from the date of the first.
Volume can have two possible meanings. Most magazines, especially in the old days, had a volume number and an issue number. The May, 1862 of the Mapcase might be volume 6, issue 5. That indicates that the magazine was founded in January, 1858, as v. 1, #1. A volume would therefore be 12 issues. Those 12 issues were intended to be bound together in nice leather and set on shelves.
Nothing is ever easy in this subject. A volume could be any number of issues. Some magazines did two volumes a year of six issues each. A weekly magazine might do four volumes of 13 issues each. If Mapcase magazine started in February, 1858, then May, 1862 might be v.6 #4.
The other possible meaning is at the library end. Libraries would bind magazines both to make them suitable for shelving and because individual issues had a tendency to walk away. College students were no different in the 19th century. So by the time the library got around to binding Mapcase magazine, there may be 1 issue from 1858, 2 from 1859, none from 1860, and so forth. The librarian will tell the binder, just stuff together what we got, and make all the volumes the same physical width. Therefore the bound volume with the May 1862 issue might run from 1858 to 1882. But the May 1862 issue in it will be dated 1858 by Google because that’s the first one bound with it.
Sorry if volume confused you. It’s a jargon term that’s second nature to people who deal with it everyday and forget that others have no reason to be familiar with its nuances.
That’s a nice find. Note that it was copyright in 1854 and published in 1855 so we can push it back a year.
I found an earlier allusion to the general concept in the December 19, 1810 issue of Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, in an article titled Paper Against Gold: Being an Examination of the Report of the Bullion Committee: in a Series of Letters to the Tradesmen and Farmers in and Near Salisbury - Letter XXI: “But, as yet, we have seen only one limb, and, perhaps, the least fruitful of this paper-money tree. The other, the Country Banks, has been, according to all appearance, much more prolific.”
Based on this statement I have concluded that in the early 1800s money really did grow on trees. Unless, umm, he was being sarcastic…