PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 91 



Dioscoricles and Pliny speak of it under the names 

 of Petroselinon and Petroselinum} but only as a wild 

 medicinal plant. Nothing proves that it was cultivated in 

 their time. In the Middle Ages Charlemagne counted it 

 among the plants which he ordered to be cultivated in 

 his gardens.^ Olivier de Serres in the sixteenth century 

 cultivated parsley. English gardeners received it in 

 1548.^ Although this cultivation is neither ancient nor 

 important, it has already developed two varieties, which 

 would be called species if they were found wild ; the 

 parsley with crinkled leaves, and that of which the fleshy 

 root is edible. 



Smyrnium, or Alexanders — Svxyrniurn ohis-atruniy 

 Linn?eus. 



Of all the Umbellifers used as vegetables, this was one 

 of the commonest in gardens for nearly fifteen centuries, 

 and it is now abandoned. We can trace its bes^inuincr 

 and end. Theophrastus spoke of it as a medicinal plant 

 under the name of Ij^poselinon, but three centuries later 

 Dioscorides * says that either the root or the leaves 

 might be eaten, which implies cultivation. The Latins 

 called it olus-atrmn, Charlemagne olisatuni, and com- 

 manded it to be sown in his farms.^ The Italians made 

 great use of it under the name onacerone.^ At the end 

 of the eighteenth century the tradition existed in Eng- 

 land that this plant had been formerly cultivated ; later 

 Enojlish and French horticulturists do not mention it."^ 



The Smyrnium olns-atruni is wild throughout 

 Southern Europe, in Algeria, Syria, and Asia Minor.^ 



Corn Salad, or Lamb's Lettuce — Valerianella olitoria, 

 Linnaeus. 



> Dioscorides, 3Tat. Med., \. 3, c. 70 ; Pliny, Hht., 1. 20, ch. 12. 

 ^ The list of these plants may be found in Meyer, Gesch. der Bot., 

 iii. p. 401. 



^ Phillips, Companion to the Kitchen Garden, ii. p. 35. 



* Theophrastus, Hist., 1. 1, 9 ; 1. 2, 2 ; 1. 7, 6 ; Dioscorides, Mat. Med., 

 1. 3, c. 71. 



* E. Meyer, Gesch. der Bot., iii. p. 401. 

 ^ Targioni, Cenni Storici, p. 58. 



' English Botany, t. 230; Phillips, Companion to the Kitchen Garden; 

 Le Bon Jardinier. 



* Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 927. 



