3284 



SWEET CICELY 



SWEET PEA 



almost any ordinary garden soil. Spring-sown seed 

 frequently fails to germinate. When once established 

 common care will be sufficient. M Q KAINS 



SWEET CLOVER: Mdilotus alba. S. Fern: Comptonia. S. 

 Flag: Aconis Calamus. S. Gale: Myrica Gale. S. Gum: Liquid- 

 ambar. 



SWEET HERBS. The term "sweet herbs" has long 

 been applied to the fragrant and aromatic plants used 

 in cookery to add zest to various culinary preparations, 

 principal among which are dressings, soups, stews, and 

 salads. At the commencement of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury many were to be found in gardens and kitchens 

 that now have been dropped entirely or have but very 

 limited use. Perhaps no group of garden plants dur- 

 ing this time has been marked by so little improvement. 

 Except in parsley, very few distinctly new or valuable 

 varieties have been produced or disseminated. This is 

 mainly due to the prevailing ignorance of their good 

 qualities, to which ignorance may be charged the 

 improper handling, not only by the grower, but by the 

 seller and often by the final purchaser. With the public 

 duly awakened to the uses of herbs, improvements in 

 growing, handling, and in the plants themselves will 

 naturally follow, to the pleasure and profit of all. 



In this country the herbs best known and appre- 

 ciated are parsley, sage, thyme, savory, marjoram, 

 spearmint, dill, fennel, tarragon, balm, and basil, 

 arranged approximately in their order of importance. 

 Since parsley is more extensively used as a garnish than 

 any other garden plant, it is grown upon.a larger scale 

 than all other herbs combined. Hence some seedsmen 

 do not rank parsley with sweet herbs. Sage is the uni- 

 versal flavoring for sausage and the seasoning par 

 excellence for rich meats such as pork, goose, and duck. 

 It is more widely cultivated than thyme, savory, and 

 marjoram, which have more delicate flavors and are 

 more popular for seasoning mild meats, such as turkey, 

 chicken, and veal. With the exception of spearmint, 

 without which spring lamb is deemed insipid and the 

 famous mint julep a thing of little worth, the remaining 

 herbs mentioned above are scarcely seen outside the 

 large city markets, and even there they have only a 

 very limited sale, being restricted mainly to the foreign 

 population and to such restaurants and hotels as have 

 an epicurean patronage. 



In many market-gardens especially near to the large 

 cities, sweet herbs form no small source of profit, since 

 most of them, when properly packed, can be shipped in 

 the green state even a considerable distance, and when 

 the market is over-supplied they can be dried by the 

 grower and sold during the winter. Probably more than 

 one-half the quantities used throughout the country are 

 disposed of in the latter manner. 



As a rule, the herbs are grown as annuals and are 

 propagated from seed sown in early spring, though 

 cuttage, layerage, and division of the perennials are in 

 favor for home practice and to a certain extent also in 

 the market-garden. Commercially they are most com- 

 monly grown as secondary crops to follow early cab- 

 bage, peas, beets, and the like. In the home-garden they 

 are frequently confined to a corner easily accessible to 

 the kitchen, where they remain from year to year. In 

 general, herbs should be planted on good light garden 

 soil of fine texture, kept clean by frequent cultivation, 

 gathered on a dry day after the dew is off, dried in a 

 current of warm, not hot air, rubbed fine and stored in 

 air-tight vessels. 



For specific information, see articles on the follow- 

 ing: Anise, Angelica, Balm, Basil, Caraway, Coriander, 

 Dill, Fennel, Hyssopus, Mentha, Origanum (Mar- 

 joram), Parsley, Sage, Samphire, Savory, Tarragon. 

 Also book on "Culinary Herbs," M. G. Kains. 



M. G. KAINS. 



8WEET MARJORAM: Origanum. 



SWEET PEA. The popular name of Lathyrus odo- 

 ratus, one of the Leguminosse, grown for its handsome 

 and fragrant flowers. See Lathyrus for botanical 

 account; for structure of the flower, see Legume; see 

 also Orobus. 



Because of its range of color, beauty of form, fra- 

 grance, and value as cut-flowers, the sweet pea is not 

 only the queen of the large genus to which it belongs, 

 but now ranks first among annual flowers. It has been 

 long cultivated in gardens, and in recent years in 

 America it has risen to a place among the five leading 

 commercial cut-flowers. 



The sweet pea is a native of the island of Sicily and 

 was first described by Father Franciscus Cupani, a 

 devout Italian monk and an enthusiastic botanist, in 

 a small work published at Panormi in 1695. Cupani 

 sent seeds in 1699 to Dr. Uvedale at Enfield, England, 

 and to Caspar Commelin at Amsterdam, Holland. The 

 latter published a figure and description of the plant in 

 his "Horti-Medici Amstelodamensis" (1697-1701). 

 From this description it is learned that the flowers had 

 purple standards and sky-blue wings, were fragrant, 

 and that the plants were climbing in habit, as they grew 

 to a height of 6 or 7 feet. A white-flowered variety of 

 the sweet pea appears to have been known in 1718, and 

 in 1737 Burmann called attention to the pink-and- 

 white-flowered form. Although he admitted that his 

 plant differed only in the color of the flowers from that 

 described by Cupani, and which, he says, occurred 

 frequently in gardens, Burmann proceeded to make a 

 new species, Lathyrus zeylanicus, because he received 

 the seeds among a collection of plants from Ceylon. 

 Later botanists have not found the sweet pea growing 

 wild in Ceylon, from which the authorities conclude 

 that a mistake was made. This form was named Painted 

 Lady and was grown until about 1900, when it gave 

 way to its improved form, Blanche Ferry. 



Sweet pea seeds were offered for sale as early as 1724. 

 The three colors mentioned appear to have been the 

 only cultivated varieties until 1793, when the black 

 and scarlet varieties were catalogued. In 1837 the first 

 striped variety, in 1860 a yellow-flowered and also the 

 Blue Edged varieties, were offered. The latter was 

 white with a distinct blue edge. Later this form was 

 known as Butterfly, and it was the forerunner of the 

 Picotee section. In 1865 Invincible Scarlet won the 

 first certificate awarded a new sweet pea. Crown 

 Princess of Prussia, the first of light pink varieties, was 

 offered in Germany in 1868. Adonis (1882) was the 

 first of the rose-pink varieties. Until 1880 (a period of 

 185 years) little improvement had been made in the 

 sweet pea, and it had not been given the attention that 

 had been bestowed upon the dahlia, verbena, hollyhock, 

 or the rose. There were nine distinct varieties in 1860, 

 and although many new names appeared during the 

 next twenty years, these mainly represented supposed 

 improved strains of the existing colors. It is very 

 probable that not more than fifteen distinct varieties 

 of sweet peas existed when Henry Eckford, the great 

 specialist, began his remarkable work. 



No one can understand the improvement in sweet 

 peas within the last forty years unless one considers the 

 form of the flowers as well as the limited number of 

 colors which then existed. The oldest illustrations of 

 the sweet pea show the wings to be more prominent 

 than the standard, and although there appears to have 

 been some improvement in the size of the standard 

 before 1875, nevertheless the flower was lacking in 

 many respects. The standards of most of the varieties 

 had a tendency to reflex at the edges, and the apical 

 notch was very prominent. Often there were side 

 notches which caused the standard to droop forward. 

 The natural line of improvement, aside from securing 

 better colors or color combinations, was to round out 

 the outline of the standard and to give it a more 

 expanded form and greater substance. 



