ASPARAGUS BE1UUES. 177 



rather rare on our own shores, I have still picked a few 

 sprigs of late years on the rocky islets at Ky nance Cove in 

 Cornwall, and at some other isolated places along the 

 English seaboard from Devonshire to Wales. Its life- 

 history is a curious arid an interesting one, for it forms a 

 rare example in our own country of a green leafless 

 plant, with branches closely simulating foliage both in 

 appearance and function. 



The primitive wild asparagus is a wiry herb with a 

 matted perennial rootstock, in which it stores up food- 

 stuffs during each summer for the supply of its succulent 

 green shoots in the succeeding spring. Under tillage 

 we have made it increase from its primitive stature of 

 two feet or less to an average height of four or five ; and 

 at the same time its spring shoots, which are slender and 

 rather stringy in its native sands, have grown much 

 stouter and softer under stress of continuous selection 

 directed to this single end alone. But in order to make 



O 



it send up vigorous grass (as gardeners call it) at the re- 

 turn of spring, we are obliged to let it grow tall and 

 bushy during the whole summer, so as to elaborate 

 plenty of rich materials, including its essential flavoring 

 principle asparagine, in the creeping rootstock from 

 which next year's sprouts will draw their whole supply 

 of food. That is why, though we finished cutting in 

 June, the bushes must still go on cumbering the earth 

 till they die down naturally on the approach of autumn. 

 If we hacked it down at present we should have no aspar- 

 agus to speak of next season. 



Now, everybody has noticed that the young shoots 

 which form the eatable part of asparagus are covered by 

 small pointed purplish scales ; and these scales are, in 

 fact, almost the only true leaves that the plant ever puts 

 forth in its present condition. But as it grows older it 



