ALFALFA 



I. The earliest extant literary allusion to alfalfa 1 (Medicago sativa) 

 is made in 424 B.C. in the Equites ("The Knights") of Aristophanes, 

 who says (V, 606) : 



"Hadiov 81 roiis irayobpovs o\vtI irolas nrjSiKrjs. 



"The horses ate the crabs of Corinth as a substitute for the Medic.*! 



The term "Medike" is derived from the name of the country Media. 

 In his description of Media, Strabo* states that the plant constituting 

 the chief food of the horses is called by the Greeks "Medike" from its 

 growing in Media in great abundance. He also mentions as a product 

 of Media silphion, from which is obtained the Medic juice. 3 Pliny 4 

 intimates that "Medica" is by nature foreign to Greece, and that it 

 was first introduced there from Media in consequence of the Persian 

 wars under King Darius. Dioscorides 6 describes the plant without 

 referring to a locality, and adds that it is used as forage by the cattle- 

 breeders. In Italy, the plant was disseminated from the middle of the 

 second century B.C. to the middle of the first century a.d., 8 — almost 

 coeval with its propagation to China. The Assyriologists claim that 

 aspasti or aspastu, the Iranian designation of alfalfa, is mentioned in 

 a Babylonian text of ca. 700 B.C.; 7 and it would not be impossible that 

 its favorite fodder followed the horse at the time of its introduction 

 from Iran into Mesopotamia. A. de Candolle 8 states that Medicago 



1 1 use this term (not lucerne) in accordance with the practice of the U. S. 

 Department of Agriculture; it is also the term generally used and understood by the 

 people of the United States. The word is of Arabic origin, and was adopted by the 

 Spaniards, who introduced it with the plant into Mexico and South America in the 

 sixteenth century. In 1854 it was taken to San Francisco from Chile (J. M. West- 

 gate, Alfalfa, p. 5, Washington, 1908). \ 



1 XI. xni, 7. 



• Theophrastus (Hist, plant., VIII. vn, 7) mentions alfalfa but casually by 

 saying that it is destroyed by the dung and urine of sheep. Regarding silphion 

 see p. 355. 



4 xni, 43. 



•11, 176. 



6 Hehn, Kulturpflanzen, 8th ed., p. 412. 



T Schrader in Hehn, p. 416; C. Joret (Plantes dans l'antiquite\ Vol. II, p. 68) 

 states after J. Hal6vy that aspasti figures in the list drawn up by the gardener of the 

 Babylonian king Mardukbalidin (Merodach-Baladan), a contemporary of Ezechias 

 Bang of Juda. 



8 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 103. 



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