18386. ] A Study of Garden Lettuce. 2 31 
in 1671. Vilmorin,! 1883, refers to this type of lettuce under the 
name Romaine asperge, Lactuca angustana Hort., and a variety L. 
cracoviensis Hort. L. angustana Allionii, 1785, seems to be of 
this form-species, and is recorded as found wild in Switzerland, 
and Martyn’s Millers Dictionary deems the Chicoreum constanti- 
nopolitanum of Parkinson, 1640, to have some affinity to it. 
The Cos lettuces are distinguished by the upright growth of 
the root leaves and the elongated and spatulate form of the leaf; 
they are also subject to a flattening of the stalk through fascia- 
tion. They were perhaps known to the ancient Romans, as wit- 
ness Pliny’s’ statement: “ Diligentiores plura genera faciunt : pur- 
purea crispas, Cappedocas,G . Longioris has folii, caulisque 
angusti, intubi similis.” Palladius’ men- 
tion of the process of blamehing can be also quoted: “ Candide 
fieri putantur, si fluminis arena vel litoris frequentur spargatur in 
medias, and collectis ipsz foliis alligentur.” The Cos lettuce is 
the Lactuca Romana dulcior, nigriore and Scariole hortensis 
folio, semine nigro of Pena and Lobel, 1 570. Bauhin in his 
Pinax considers this form to be the L. foliio obscurius virentibus 
nigra Plinio of Dodzenus,® the Z. nigra of Czsalpinus, 1583, and 
the Z. romana of Castor Durantes, 1585. In the sixteenth cent- 
ury the Cos form seems to have been less grown in Northern 
Europe than in the south, for Pena and Lobel® say it is rarely 
cultivated in France and Germany, more frequently in Italy, espe- 
cially at Rome. It reached France in 1 537. 
The class of cabbage lettuces are distinguished by the rounded 
and spatulate leaf which grows less upright than the Cos. Al- 
though the commentators of the sixteenth and seventeenth cent- 
uries deem this class to have been known to the ancient Greeks 
and Romans, and identify it with the Laconicon of Pliny and the 
Tartesian or Bætica of Columella, yet I am unable to find any 
certain evidence. The only word I find in Pliny which could 
Suggest this class is “crispa,” which may be translated “ wrin- 
kled,” and as a class the cabbage lettuces are more wrinkled or 
- 
~ 'Les Plantes Potageres. 
7 Nat. Hist., lib. xIx, c. 38. 
: ; De Re Rustica, Gb, ti; c. t4. 
_ Stirpium Adversaria Nova, Londini, 1570, p. 90. i 
Pemptades, 1621, p. 644. 
® Loc. cit 
" Heme. Lesve. Atim. i, p. v. : $ 
