274 STURTEVANT*S NOTES ON EDIBLE PLANTS. 



age and again in the 13th book, " mollia fraga;" and Pliny mentions the plant by n^me in 

 his lib. xxi, c. 50, and separates the ground strawberry from the arbutus tree in his lib. 

 XV, c. 28. The fruit is not mentioned in the cook-book ascribed to Apicius Coelius, an 

 author supposed to have lived about A. D. 230. The Greeks seem to have had no knowl- 

 edge of the plant or fruit ; at least there is no word in their writings which commentators 

 have agreed in interpreting as applying to the strawberry. Nicolaus Myripsicus, an 

 author of the tenth century, uses the word phragouli, and Forskal, in the eighteenth century, 

 found the word phraouli in use for the strawberry by the Greeks about Belgrade. Fraas 

 gives the latter word for the modem Greek, and Sibthorp the word kovkoumaria, which 

 resembles the ancient Greek komaros or komaron, applied to the arbutus tree, whose fruit 

 has a superficial resemblance to the strawberry. 



Neither the strawberry nor its cultivation is mentioned by Ibnal-awam, an author 

 of the tenth century, unusually full and complete in his treatment of garden, orchard, 

 and field products, nor by Albertus Magnus, who died A. D. 1280. It is not mentioned 

 in The Forme of Cury, a roll of ancient English cookery compiled about A. D. 1390 by two 

 master cooks of King Richard II; nor in Ancient Cookery, a recipe book of 1381; nor at 

 the Inthronization Feast of George Neville, Archbishop of York, in 1504. The fruit 

 was, however, known in London in the time of Henry VI, for in a poem by John Lidgate, 

 who died about 1483, we find 



" Then unto London I dyde me hye. 



Of all the land it bearyeth the pryse ; 

 ' Gode pescode,' one began to cry 



' Strabery rype, and cherrys in the ryse.' " 



The strawberry is figured fairly well in the Ortus Sanitatis, 1511, c. 188, but th^re is 

 no mention of culture. Ruellius, however, 1536, speaks of it as growing wild in shady 

 situations, says gardens furnish a larger fruit, and mentions even a white variety. 

 Fuchsius, 1542, also speaks of the larger garden variety, and Estinne, 1545, (perhaps also 

 in his first edition of the De Re Hortensi, 1535), says strawberries are used as delicacies 

 on the table, with sugar and cream, or wine, and that they are of the size of a hazelnut; 

 he says the plants bear most palatable fruit, red, especially when they are fully ripe; 

 that some grow on the mountains and woods, and are wild, but that some cultivated 

 ones are so odorous that nothing can be more so, and that these are larger, and some are 

 white, others red, yet others are both red and white. 



Cultivated strawberries are also noted by many authors of the sixteenth century, as 

 by Mizaldus, 1560; Pena and Lobel in 1571; and in 1586 Lyte's Dodoens records, " they 

 be also much planted in gardens." Porta, 1592, regards them as among the delicacies of 

 the garden and the delights of the palate. Hyll, 1593, says " they be much eaten at all 

 men's tables," and that " they will grow in gardens unto the bigness of a mulberry." Le 

 Jardinier Solitaire, 1612, gives directions for planting, and Parkinson, 1629, notes a 

 number of varieties. As to size, Dorstenius, 1540, speaks of them as of the size of a hazel- 

 nut; Bauhin, 1596, as being double the size of the wild; the Hortus Eystettensis, 1613, 

 figiu-es berries one and three-eighths inches in diameter; Parkinson, in 1629, as " neere 



