138 THE BOOK OF USEFUL PLANTS 



brighten the kitchen windows and to furnish 

 leaves for cutting throughout the cold weather. 



Sardinia is the original home of wild parsley, 

 but to-day it grows in most European countries, 

 run wild from gardens, and gone back to the plain 

 leaves that mark the parent form. Selection for 

 more ornamental leaves has developed the double- 

 curled varieties with leaves, marvellously fluted 

 and frayed and multiplied in their subdivisions. 



In sharp contrast with the wiry-rooted, bushy- 

 topped varieties, is the turnip-rooted parsley, 

 with almost no leaves at all. The fleshy roots 

 are cut up and used as a vegetable, or as soup 

 flavoring. This plant is like celeriac, the flesh- 

 rooted celery, in flavor and use. 



SEA-KALE 



A robust member of the Mustard Family grows 

 on the west coasts of Europe, right down on the 

 dunes, to the line the tide reaches. In other 

 countries it is considered a weed, but along the 

 English Channel the people who live near the 

 beach claim the sea-kale that grows in front of 

 their ground. When the cold weather comes and 

 the tops die down, the natives go out with shovels 

 and heap sand and gravel a foot deep or more 



