BROOM-RAPE. 159 



crinkled, so that the forms are somewhat difficult to trace, 

 and the flower is consequently by no means an easy one 

 to draw. 



The literal translation of the Greek word Orobanche 

 is " strangle-tare." The term was originally used by 

 Theophrastus, and we find it again applied by Pliny and 

 Dioscorides to another plant. What the plant of the first 

 of these writers could be we have now no certain means 

 of knowing 1 , though the words he employs to describe it 

 clearly indicate a climbing plant ; but the Orobanche of the 

 other two old writers agrees entirely in its description with 

 the plant we have figured, and leaves little or no doubt 

 on our minds that the name has been borne by the same 

 plant for more than a thousand years. From its habit of 

 living on other plants, and weakening them for its own 

 support, it was called in some parts of Italy, we are told 

 by Matthiolus, the wolf-plant. Its pernicious effects are 

 confirmed by a later Italian writer, Micheli, who mentions 

 its being proscribed in Tuscany by public edict. The Eng- 

 lish name is derived from the Latin rapa, a turnip. The 

 tuberous mass of scales at the base of the stems is sup- 

 posed to resemble a turnip, but the resemblance is of the 

 slightest possible character. It is a fairly globular mass 

 at the base of the stem, and that is really all that can be 

 said ; in colour, size, and almost every other respect, it is 

 wholly unlike it. The mediaeval title, Rapum genista, is 

 evidently only a translation into Latin of the common 

 English name. Curtis says that the strong astringency of 

 the plant makes it a useful vulnerary, but the plant has a 

 slightly uncanny look that would probably make many 

 people rather chary of meddling with it. Both Parkinson 

 and Gerarde refer incidentally to it when the broom comes 



