Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil 



Columella in particular says it should be grown only 

 in districts where it commands a high price. 



The plant is sometimes grown in our gardens for 

 its blue flowers, but in beauty it is excelled by 

 L. Narbonense, a perennial, and a native of Liguria, 

 Lombardy, and Corsica. 



Flower, April and May. 

 Italian name. Lino. 



LOLIUM. / 



' infelix lolium ' {Ec. v. 37 ; Ge. i. 154). 

 Great poets often retain a sense of the original 

 meaning of words, and here Virgil's epithet, which 

 at first meant ' unsuckling,' evidently means ' un- 

 feeding.' Lolium temulentum, the drunken darnel, 

 as Linnaeus called it from its supposed effects, is 

 a grass near akin to rye, and is the plant which the 

 enemy in the parable sowed in the corn. It was an 

 ancient superstition among farmers that in a bad 

 season wheat seeds degenerated into darnel. The 

 qualities of the plant have long been matter of 

 dispute. Hooker describes it as very poisonous, but 

 the seeds have often been eaten with impunity. It 

 seems, however, to be liable to the attacks of a 

 minute fungus, which either is poisonous itself or 

 creates a toxic power in the host plant. In either 

 condition it so affects the eyesight as to create one 

 of the symptoms of intoxication. Arcangeli tells us 

 that in Italy it grows everywhere in the corn. With 

 us it is only a colonist and, though widely dis- 



70 



