CULTURAL DIRECTIONS 203 



and England gathered the tender shoots of the wild 

 plants and sold them at the market places. For many 

 hundreds of years stalks of mammoth size have been 

 grown by gardeners in various countries. Asparagus has 

 been a popular vegetable in America ever since the earli- 

 est settlements were established. It was doubtless in- 

 troduced by seeds or plants brought from European 

 gardens. 



267. Botany. — There are about 150 species of the genus 

 Asparagus, which belongs to the lily family. Although 

 the shoots of a few other species are edible, Asparagus 

 officinalis is the only one that has found a prominent place 

 in the vegetable gardens of the world. The hardy, 

 branching herbaceous plants are 3 to 7 feet high. The 

 numerous filiform branchlets and the very fine delicate 

 foliage make the tops valuable for decorative purposes. 

 While the plant is herbaceous, the root stock or crown 

 is perennial, making an annual growth of i to 3 inches. 

 This extension is practically horizontal, although the 

 rootstock or crown rises nearer the surface of the ground 

 each succeeding year. The horizontal roots are fleshy, 

 % to y^ inch in diameter and light colored. The small 

 feeding rootlets form on the large succulent roots, and 

 the latter gradually become hollow and die and are re- 

 placed by new roots. 



Hexamer ("Asparagus," by F. M. Hexamer, p. 15) 

 gives the following description of the flowers and the 

 berries: "The asparagus flowers are mostly solitary at 

 the nodes, of greenish-yellow color, drooping or filiform, 

 jointed peduncles, perianth, six-parted, campanulate. 

 Anthers, introrse; style, short; stigma, three-lobed; 

 berry, red, spherical, three-celled; cells, two-seeded. 

 While the flowers are generally dioecious — staminate and 

 pistillate flowers being borne on different plants — there 

 appear also hermaphrodite flowers, having both pistils 

 and fully developed stamens in the same flower." 



