COTTAGE KOOF GARDENING 257 



cottage roof. The second half of the popular 

 name, leek, is from the Anglo-Saxon leac, a 

 plant. 1 We must not be tempted by Maplet into 

 the fatally easy suggestion that it is house-like 

 because it likes to live on houses ! An old name 

 for the plant is the aye-green, a popular version 

 of its botanical name. Several of the garden 

 species of Sempervivum are well worth cultivation. 

 In some, as in 5". arachnoideum, the surface of the 

 rosettes is covered with a light grey fibrous network 

 like cobweb, giving a very curious and striking 

 effect. A good florist will be prepared to supply 

 some thirty species on demand. 



One often admires in some old country village 

 the beauty of the cottage gardens, gay with a 

 profusion of blossom, but Nature's cottage-roof 

 gardening is often no less interesting. Given an 

 old bit of thatch, sinking in in places and thus 



1 The plants we still know as the leek (in Anglo-Saxon days 

 known as porleac), and garlic, Anglo-Saxon gar, a spear, a 

 leac, from its sharp, tapering leaves, are other illustrations of 

 the survival of the word. In Markham's book for House- 

 wives, written in 1638, we have a recipe given " to helpe the 

 stinging of a venomus beast, as Adder, Snake, or such like." 

 In this we are told to take horehound, tansy, and other 

 herbs as a preliminary, and amongst these we find porrets. 

 These are leeks, so called from the Latin word porrum. It is 

 curious that while the Anglo-Saxon is porleac, the leek plant, 

 in modern usage we drop the first half and call the vegetable 

 a leek, while Markham drops the second half and calls the 

 same plant a porret. 



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