Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil 



implies, the yew that gave the bitterness to Corsican 

 honey. 



Flower, March and April. 



Italian names, Bosso and Bossolo. 



Calamus. 



The Greeks, from whom this word was borrowed, 

 use it as a generic name for reeds, and distinguished 

 many species, among which are our own common 

 reed, Phraginites communis, sweet flag, Acorus 

 calamus, and the fine grass, sometimes known as 

 wood small-reed, Calamogrostis epigeios. Some 

 of the Roman prose writers on country matters 

 use the name generically of reeds and specifically 

 of the sweet flag. In the poets it seems also to 

 stand for the whole or part of the stem of a reed 

 as put to some use, or, like the English halm, of the 

 stem of some other plant, for instance, the lupin 

 (Ge. i. 76). Virgil uses it once of reeds used as vine- 

 props (Ge. ii. 358), once of an arrow (Ae. x. 140), 

 and some eight times of a musical pipe. Virgil can 

 hardly have failed to know the sweet flag, which 

 grows on the Mincio as a native, and seems to 

 have been imported for cultivation across the 

 Apennines. 



Caltha, or Calta. 



' mollia luteola pingit vaccinia caltha ' (Ec. ii. 50). 



By a mistake Linnaeus gave this name to the 

 marsh marigold, which, though a native of Italy, 



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