1 62 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



chestnut, and others. The plum mentioned 

 above was apparently not the sloe, as the 

 latter also occurs lower down in the catalogue ; 

 the palm was, of course, the common plant 

 which is popularly so christened, and does 

 duty for the real kind ; and the pear, like the 

 plum, must have been at this time very im- 

 perfectly cultivated here. It may be added 

 that in the two eleventh-century vocabularies 

 there are other plants and herbs, such as 

 mint, white clover, fern, foxglove, two or 

 three sorts of thistle, and mugwort, and 

 among trees box and ash. But as regards 

 many of the names the compiler seems not 

 unfrequently to have had confused and 

 erroneous notions of the Saxon equivalents 

 for the Latin denominations. The virtues of 

 mint were understood very early ; it is said 

 that in the time of Edward I. it was in vogue 

 as a condiment, much in the same way that 

 it is now, under the name of aigre-douce. 



The anonymous vocabulary of the succeed- 

 ing century adds sothern-wood, the rose, 

 the peony, linseed, gorse, the nettle, the 

 knee-holly, and many others, sufficient to 



