56 sturtevant's notes on edible plants 



herbs eaten to purify the blood. Cultivated smallage is now grown in France under the 

 name Celeri d couper, differing but little from the wild form. The number of names that 

 are given to smallage indicate antiquity. 



The prevalence of a name derived from one root indicates a recent dispersion of the 

 cultivated variety. Vilmorin ' gives the following synonyms: French Celeri, English 

 celery, German Selleree, Flanders Selderij, Denmark Selleri, Italy Sedano, Spain apio, 

 Portugal Aipo. The first mention of the word celery seems to be in Walafridus Strabo's 

 poem entitled Hortulus, where he gives the medicinal uses of Apium and in line 335 uses 

 the word as follows: "Passio turn celeri cedit devicla medelae." "The disease then to 

 celery yields, conquered by the remedy," as it may be literally construed, yet the word 

 celeri here may be translated quick-acting and this suggests that our word celery was 

 derived from the medicinal uses. Strabo wrote in the ninth century; he was born A. D. 

 806 or 807, and died in France in 849. 



Targioni-Tozzetti ^ says, it is certain that in the sixteenth century celery was grown 

 for the table in Tuscany. There is no mention of celery in Fuchsius, 1542; Tragus, 1552; 

 Matthiolus' Commentaries, 1558; Camerarius' Epitome, 1558; Pinaeus, 1561; Pena and 

 Lobel, 1570; Gerarde, 1597; Clusius, 1601; Dodonaeus, 1616; or in Bauhin's Pinax, 1623; 

 Parkinson's Paradisus, 1629, mentions Sellery as a rarity and names it Apium dulce. 

 Ray, in his Historia Plantarum, 1686, says, "smallage transferred to culture becomes 

 milder and less ungrateful, whence in Italy and France the leaves and stalks are esteemed 

 as delicacies, eaten with oil and pepper." The Italians call this variety Sceleri or Celeri. 

 The French also use the vegetable and the name. Ray adds that in English gardens 

 the cultivated form often degenerates into smallage. Quintjme, who wrote' prior to 

 1697, the year in which the third edition of his Complete Gardener was published, say^, 

 in France " we know but one sort of it." Celeri is mentioned, however, as Apium dulce, 

 Celeri Italorum by Toumefort, 1665.^ In 1778, Mawe and Abercrombie note two sorts 

 of celery in England, one with the stalks hollow and the other with the stalks solid. 

 In 1726, Townsend' distinguished the celeries as smallage and " selery " and the latter 

 he says should be planted " for Winter Sallads, because it is very hot." Tinburg * says 

 celery is common among the richer classes in Sweden and is preserved in cellars for winter 

 use. In 1806, McMahon ' mentions four sorts in his list of garden esculents for Ameri- 

 can use. It is curious that no mention of a plant that can suggest celery occurs in Bodaeus 

 and Scaliger's edition of Theophrastus, published at Amsterdam in 1 644. 



There is no clear evidence, then, that smallage was grown by the ancients as a food 

 plant but that if planted at all it was for medicinal use. The first mention of its ctdtiva- 

 tion as a food plant is by Olivier de Serres, 1623, who called it ache, while Parkinson 

 speaks of celery in 1629, and Ray indicates the cultivation as commencing in Italy and 



' Vilmorin Les Pis. Potag. 72. 1883. 

 'Ta.Tff.oni-Tozzet,ti Journ. Hort. Soc. Lond. 9:144. 1855. 

 ' Quintyne Comp. Card. 1704. 



* Toumefort Inst. 305. 17 19. 

 ' Townsend Seedsman. 1726. 



Tinburg Hort. CuJin. 25. 1764. 



' McMahon, B. Amer. Card. Cat. 581. 1806. 



