•^ The zAromatic Herbs Qg> 



a week's standing.' I love seeing clumps of the old red 

 bergamot growing near lavender. Bergamot {Monarda 

 didyma) is one of the most gorgeous of the aromatic 

 herbs, with its tufts of glorious red flowers rising tier 

 above tier, and crowning every branch. No variety is 

 quite so attractive as the old red, and a great bowl of 

 them with horehound or lavender is a lovely sight. The 

 Monarda family are one of the treasures we owe to the 

 New World, and one of the first from that source to be 

 introduced into our gardens. ' Monarda,' it is interesting 

 to remember, takes its name from Nicolas Monarda, the 

 sixteenth century physician of Seville, who wrote the 

 first treatise on ' American ' plants, a book which raised 

 so much interest that it was translated by no less a 

 botanist than Charles de l'Escluse into Latin, and by less 

 eminent authorities into Italian, Flemish, French and 

 English. The English translation — Joy full Newes out of 

 the newe founde worlde wherein is declared the rare and 

 singular vertues of diuerse and sundrie Hearbes, 1577, went 

 through four editions before 1600. The original book 

 was written nineteen years before the defeat of the 

 Spanish Armada, and it is impossible to look at the old- 

 fashioned scarlet bergamot, still a favourite in our cottage 

 gardens, without thinking of the Spaniard after whom it 

 is named and whose book is so full of the pride of a 

 Spanish subject in the splendid overseas dominions of 

 his country, then the first empire in the World. It was 

 not till long after the Spanish Armada, however, that 

 bergamot was first introduced into England, John 

 Tradescant, the younger (son of John Tradescant, 

 gardener to Charles I), being the first to grow it. During 

 the eighteenth century a herb tea from this plant was 



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