6 CARNATIONS AND PINKS 



of the sixteenth century it was known as Hcrba 

 Tunica. 



There was a plant which PHny called Cantabricay 

 thought by Turner in the sixteenth century to be 

 Pink. What Pliny says is : " In Spain is found the 

 Cantabrica, which was first discovered by the natives 

 of the Cantabri.^ It has a stem like that of a rush, 

 a foot in height, and bears small oblong flowers like 

 a calathus in shape, and encloses an extremely diminu- 

 tive seed." The calathus was a lady's work-basket, 

 broad above but tapering below. It might be com- 

 pared to the flower of a Carnation or Pink, taking the 

 calyx and expanded corolla together ; but Pliny uses 

 the same word to indicate the form of the perianth of 

 the White Lily, which he otherwise describes with great 

 accuracy ; so it would seem to be more descriptive of 

 a Convolvulus, which, too, has a small fruit at the 

 bottom of the tube, that of the Pink being large. 

 Linnaeus, indeed, named a species of Convolvulus 

 C. cantabricus, which might be the plant in question. 

 It was introduced into England from Southern 

 Europe in 1640, according to Paxton. 



Castore Durante, in his Herbarium (1636), gives an 

 illustration of Cantabrica, and describes it as creeping, 

 or rather, as we should say, procumbent, for the tips 

 of the shoots rise up again. " The leaves," he says, 

 " are like those of the periwinkle, the flowers being 

 long, purple, scentless, and shaped like a vessel, with 

 a small seed." He is here copying Pliny. Nothing, 

 howevei", can be identified from the illustration. The 



1 By the Bay of Biscay. 



