^ The Scented Cjarden ^ 



command of one of Drake's ships, brought back the bark 

 from the Magellan Straits in 1578. Its smooth shoots 

 (reddish when young), its strongly aromatic leaves and 

 clusters of sweetly-scented, ivory-white flowers, are all 

 attractive, but it is, alas ! an evergreen which does well 

 only in fairly sheltered parts. In this part of Surrey it 

 does very well. D. aromatica is only suitable for sheltered 

 parts in Cornwall, etc. 



Sweetest of all leaf scents is that of sweet-briar. How 

 delightfully shrubs of it planted by the windows fill a 

 whole room with their clean, sweet fragrance, especially 

 after rain. The sweet-briar or eglantine (R. rubiginosa), 

 whose leaves are ' very greene and sweete in smell above 

 any other kinde of rose,' grows wild throughout Europe 

 and has been naturalized in the Eastern parts of the 

 United States of America. This is the ' eglantine ' im- 

 mortalized by Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare. Both 

 the former mention its sweet scent. Chaucer calls it 

 eglantere : 



* Where she sate in a fresh greene laurey-tree, 

 On that further side right by me, 

 That gave so passing a delicious smell, 

 According to the Eglantere full well.' 



Turner calls it Cynorhos, Sweet Brere, and Eglantyne 

 in his Libellus (1538). Lobel calls it Rosa sylvestris odorata 

 in his I cones (1581), and in Gerard's catalogue (1596) it 

 figures as the common sweet-briar. For centuries there- 

 fore this wild rose has been grown in our gardens. In 

 olden times the young shoots were candied and eaten as 

 a sweetmeat. We are grateful for the Penzance Briars, 

 but, alas, for the sweet-briars we have lost ! In the early 

 years of the nineteenth century there were numerous 



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