CULTIVATED PLANTS. 161 



that there were no cherries in Italy, before the victory obtained 

 over Mithridates by Lucullus, who was tlie first to bring cherries 

 to Rome in the year of Rome 680, and that within one hundred 

 and twenty years after that, they were spread over the empire as 

 far as Britain. This statement gave rise to the tale that clierries 

 came originally from Cerasunte, now Zefano, and were therefore 

 called cerasus by the Latins. Lucullus may, however, have first 

 imported the cultivated varieties, which the Romans may not 

 have recognised as identical with the wild cherry. In Greece, 

 cherries were certainly known long before his time, for Diphilns 

 Siphnius, according to Athenaeus, mentions them under the govern- 

 ment of Lysimachus, one of the dukes of Alexander the Great. 



Among the numerous varieties of cherries of modern days, 

 Pliny records only eight, of which the Juliana, according to 

 Matthioli and Micheli, is the acquaiola of modern Italy, and the 

 ceciliana, according to Micheli and Gallesio, is the viscioJona, 

 believed to have been brought from Arabia into Spain, and thence 

 to Rome. The varieties known in modern Tuscany are chiefly 

 due to the exertions of the Grand Dukes of the Medici family. 

 Micheli, in the catalogue already quoted, enumerates forty-seven 

 sorts, and Casfello has figured ninety- three. The double- 

 flowering variety was first introduced into the gardens of Florence, 

 by Giuseppe Benincasa Fiammingo, curator, under Francis I. of 

 Medicis, of the botanic garden then called delle Stalle, afterwards 

 del SenqMci. 



The cherry-tree, especially of the Bigarreau variety, grows to a 

 very large size ; one is recorded on the shores of the gulf of 

 Nicomedia, of which the circumference of the trunk was four and 

 a half braccie (about nine feet), and Prof. Targioni himself had 

 one cut down in his own podere, which was beginning to decay, 

 and had a trunk of eight feet in circumference. 



The Plum (Prunus domestica) is said by Prof. Targioni, after 

 the generality of systematic botanists, to be indigenous to the 

 woods of Italy, and an expression is quoted of Pliny's to the same 

 effect, " sed pruna sylvestria ubique nasci certum est." But 

 these prima sylvestria must have been the Sloe (Prunus spinosa). 

 Our garden plums appear, from the investigations of our Indian 

 botanists, to be varieties produced by long cultivation of the 

 Prunus insititia, a species common in the mountains of Asia, 

 from the Caucasus to the Eastern Himalaya, but which we have 

 no authentic evidence of being a native of Europe. In all the 

 more accurate European floras, the P. domestica and insititia are 



VOL. IX. M 



