40 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



Russian name, certainly, but the Germans have original 

 names, Krizel or Grizel, Gorlein or Gierlein, which 

 indicate an ancient cultivation, more than the ordinary 

 name Zuckerivurzel, or sugar-root.^ The Danish name has 

 the same meaning — sokerot, whence the English skirret 

 The name sisaron is not known in modern Greece ; nor 

 was it known there even in the Middle Ages, and the plant 

 is not now cultivated in that country.^ There are reasons 

 for doubt as to the true sense of the words sisaron and 

 siser. Some botanists of the sixteenth century thought 

 that sisaron was perhaps the parsnip proper, and 

 Sprengel ^ supports this idea. 



The French names cheriis and girole ^ would perhaps 

 teach us something if we knew their origin. Littre 

 derives chervis from the Spanish chirivia, but the latter is 

 more likely derived from the French. Bauhin ^ mentions 

 the low Latin names servilhim, chervilhini, or servillam, 

 words which are not in Ducange's dictionary. This may 

 well be the origin of chervis, but whence came servillmn 

 or ckervilhmi ? 



Arracacha or Arracacia — Arracaxha esculenta, de Can- 

 dolle. 



An umbel generally cultivated in Venezuela, New 

 Granada, and Ecuador as a nutritious plant. In the tem- 

 perate regions of those countries it bears comparison with 

 the potato, and even yields, we are assured, a lighter and 

 more agreeable fecida. The lower part of the stem is 

 swelled into a bulb, on which, Avhen the plant thrives well, 

 tubercles, or lateral bulbs, form themselves, and persist 

 for several months, which are more prized than the central 

 bulb, and serve for future planting.^ 



The species is probably indigenous in the region where 



^ Nemnich, Polygl. Leccicon, ii. p. 1313. 



^ Lenz, Bof. derAlten, p. 560; Heldreich, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands ; 

 Langkavel, Bot. der Spdteren Grieclien. 



^ Sprengel, Dioscoridis, etc., ii. p. 462. 



"* Olivier de Serres, Theatre de V Agriculture, p. 471. 



5 BanhiB, Hist. PL, iii. p. 154. 



^ The best information about the cultivation of this plant was given by 

 Bancroft to Sir W. Hooker, and may be found in the Botanical Magazine, 

 pi. 3092. A. P. de Candolle published, in La o' Notice sur les Plantes Rare-i 

 des Jardin Bot. de Geneve, an illustration showing the principal bulb. 



