Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil 



for love charms. The plants are hardy in this 

 country and easy to cultivate in shade and leaf 

 mould, to which it is well to add a little lime. They 

 seed freely, but seedlings take some years to flower. 



In our second passage Virgil treats the blossom as 

 a prophylactic against curses and ' overlooking.' The 

 Greeks used the powdered corm as a love charm. 



The lexicons will have it that ' baccar ' is the 

 foxglove, though, as a native, that plant does not 

 come nearer to Italy than Sardinia, and there seems 

 to be no evidence that it was ever cultivated. More- 

 over, it is not well suited for a chaplet. 



Visitors to Tivoli may find our plant on Monte 

 Catillo above the railway station. 



Flower : C. Europaeum, June to October. 

 C. repandum, April and May. 

 C. Neapolitanum, September and 

 October. 

 Italian names : Pan-porcino, Pan-torreno, and 

 Baccare. 



Beta. 



' late fundentes brachia betae ' {Mor. 72). 



The wild beet (Beta maritima) supplies nothing 

 that is useful to man, but under cultivation it has 

 developed what are called the roots of beet and of 

 mangel-wurzel. Our passage shows that in Roman 

 times the leaf also had increased in size, though 

 probably not to the length of a yard or so, as in 

 the modern variety known as Chilian beet. There 



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