STURTEVANT S NOTES ON EDIBLE PLANTS 233 



says the root of the wild carrot is less fit to be eaten than that of the domestic' In the 

 thirteenth century, however, Albertus Magnus treats of the plants under field 

 culture, garden culture, orchard culture and vineyard cultiire, and yet, while naming 

 the parsnip, makes no mention of the carrot if the word pastinaca really means the pars- 

 nip. One may believe, however, that the pastinaca of Albertus Magnus is the carrot 

 for, in the sixteenth century, Ammonius ^ gives the name for the carrot pastenei, as applying 

 to Pastinaca sativa and agrestis. Barbarus, who died in 1493, and Virgil' both describe 

 the carrot under the name pastinaca; and Apicius,^ a writer on cookery in the third century, 

 gives directions for preparing the Carota sen pastinaca, which can apply only to the carrot. 

 Dioscorides ' uses the word carota as applying to Pastinaca silvestris in the first century. 

 Columella and Palladius ^ both mention the pastinaca as a garden plant but say nothing 

 that cannot better apply to the carrot than to the parsnip. Macer Floridus *' ' also treats 

 of what may be the carrot under pastinaca and says no roots afford better food. 



Hence, we believe that the carrot was cultivated by the ancients but was not a very 

 general food-plant and did not attain the modem appreciation; that the word pastinaca, 

 or cariotam, or carota, in those times was applied to both the cultivated and the wild form; 

 and we suspect that the word Gallicam, used by Pliny in the first century, indicates that 

 the cultivated root reached Italy from France, where now it is in such exaggerated esteem. 



The siasron of Dioscorides and the siser of Columella and Pliny may have been a form 

 of the carrot but we can attain no certainty from the descriptions. The fact that the 

 grouping of the roots which occurs in the skirret, into which authors translate siser, is not 

 mentioned by the ancients a distinction almost too important to be overlooked and 

 that the short carrot was called siser by botanists of the sixteenth century, are argtmients 

 in favor of siser being a carrot. On the other hand, we should scarcely expect a distinction 

 being made between pastinaca and siser, were both as similar in the plant as are the two 

 forms of carrot at present. 



The carrot is now foimd under cultivation and as an escape throughout a large portion 

 of the world. In China, it is noticed in the Yuan djoiasty, as brought from western Asia, 

 1280-1368,' and is classed as a kitchen vegetable in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eigh- 

 teenth centuries by various Chinese authors."' '^ In India, the carrot is said, to 

 have come first from Persia and is now cultivated in abundance in the Mahratta and 

 Mysore countries." The carrot is enumerated among the edible plants of Japan by 



' Matthiolus Opera 570. 1598. 

 'Ammonius Afed. i/er6. 186. 1539. 

 ' Dioscorides Ruellius Ed. 174. 1529. 



* Apicius lib. 3, c. 21. 



Dioscorides Ruelius Ed. 174. 1529. 



' Columella lib. 11, c. 3. 



' Palladius c. 24. 



Macer Floridus Vir. Herb. L. 1284, Sillig Ed. 1832. 



Macer Floridus Herb. Virt. Pictorius Ed. 95. 1581. 

 " Bretschneider, E. On Study ij. 1870. 



" Bretschneider, E. Bot. Sin. 59, 83, 85. 1882. 

 Smith. F. P. Contrib. Mat. Med. China 51. 1871. 

 "Ainslie, W. Mat. Ind. 1:57. 1826. 



