246 OUR ROCK-GARDEN 



height of some four feet, with broad leaves and 

 several noble heads of yellowish-green flowers. It 

 is a plant of the waste grounds, and is often, no 

 doubt, an escape or survival, as in mediaeval days it 

 was largely cultivated, and hence one finds it still 

 amongst the ruins of old monastic buildings and 

 in the neighbourhood of houses. It seems, too, to 

 have a partiality for the neighbourhood of the sea. 

 From its black seeds and esculent value it was 

 known to the old herbalists as black pot-herb, and its 

 specific name olusatrum is identical in significance. 

 The English name is a somewhat curious one, as its 

 terminal letter gives it what one may call a plural 

 look. One could accept Alexander I as a much more 

 likely-looking plant-name. We do not, for example, 

 speak of a foxgloves or a thistles. Some tell us 

 that the name is a corruption of Olus astrum, the 

 monkish name, while others hitch on a theory that 

 it is so called because the plant was supposed to 

 have originally come, to suit this explanation, from 

 Alexandria, while yet others would instruct us that 

 it owes its name to the great medicinal benefit 

 derived from the use of the plant by Alexander the 

 Great. The plant is thus Alexander's herb. In 

 other words nobody knows, and so we may all start 

 any so-called explanation we please. 



Like many plants utilised by our forefathers it has 



1 Cotgrave we note calls the plant u Alexandre, the hearb 

 great parsley/' though he also gives the name as Alisaunders 



