FRUCTUS CARUI. 305 



Southern Russia, Persia, and in Siberia. It appears as a wild plant in 

 many parts of Britain (Lincolnshire and Yorkshire), but is also culti- 

 vated in fields, and may not be strictly indigenous. The caraway is 

 found throughout the eastern part of France, in the Pyrenees, Spain, 

 Central Europe, Armenia, and the Caucasian provinces ; and it grows 

 wild largely in the high alpine region of Lahul, in the Western 

 Himalaya.^ 



But the most curious fact in the distribution of Carum Carvi is its 

 occurrence in Morocco, where it is largely cultivated about El Araiche, 

 and round the city of Morocco." The plant differs somewhat from that 

 of Europe ; it is an annual with a single erect stem, 4 feet high. Its 

 foliage is more divided, and its flowers larger, with shorter styles and 

 on more spreading umbels than the common caraway, and its fruit is 

 more elongated.* 



History — The opinion that this plant is the Ka'/oo? of Dioscorides, 

 and that, as Pliny states, it derived its name from Caria (where it has 

 never been met with in modem times) has very reasonably been 

 doubted.* 



Caraway fruits were known to the Arabians, who called them 

 Karaicya, a name they still bear in the East, and the original of our 

 words caraiuay and carui, as well as of the Spanish alcarahueya. In 

 the description of Morocco by Edrisi,' 12th century, it is stated that 

 the inhabitants of Sidjilmasa (the south-eastern province) cultivate 

 cotton, cumin, caraiuay, henna {Lawsonia alba Lamarck). In the 

 Arab writings quoted by Ibn Baytar,® himself a Mauro-Spaniard of the 

 13th century, caraway is compared to cumin and anise. The spice 

 probably came into use about this period. It is not noticed by St. 

 Isidore, archbishop of Seville in the 7th century, though he mentions 

 fennel, dill, coriander, anise, and parsley ; nor is it named by St. 

 Hildegard in Germany in the 12th century. Neither have we found 

 any reference to it in the Anglo-Saxon HerhaHura of Apulems, written 

 circa a.d. 1050,^ or in other works of the same period, though cumin, 

 anise, fennel, and dill are all mentioned. 



On the other hand, in two German medicine-books of the 12th and 

 13th centuries* there occurs the word Cumich, which is still the popular 

 name of caraway, in Southern Germany ; and Cumin is also mentioned. 

 In the same period the seeds appear to have been used by the Welsh 

 physicians of Myddvai.® Caraway was certainly in use in England at 

 the close of the 14th century, as it figures with coriander, pepper and 

 garlick in the Foi^Tn of Cury, a roll of ancient English cookery com- 

 piled by the master-cooks of Richard II. about A.D. 1390. 



The oriental names of caraway show that as a spice it is not a 

 production of the East : — thus we find it termed Boman (i.e. European), 

 Armenian, mountain, or foo'eign Cwmin; Persian or Andalusian 



^ Aitchison in Joum. of Linn. Soc, Bot., trad, par Dozy et M. J. de Goeje, Leyde, 



X. (1869) 76. 94. 1866, 75. 97. 150. 



^ Leared in Pharm. Joum. Feb. 8, 1873. ^ Sontheimer's translation, ii 368. 



623. 7 Leechdomg, etc. of Early England, i. 



^ I have cultivated the Morocco plant in (1864). 



1872 and 1873 by the side of the common *Pfeiflfer, Zwei deutsche Arzneibucher avs 



form. — D. H. dem xii. und. xiii. Jahrhundert, Wien 1863. 



■•Dierbach, Flora Apiciana, 1831. 53. 14. 



' Description de FA/rufue et de VEstpagne " Meddygon Myddfai, 158. 354. 



U 



