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The Museum Gazette 



GARDEN VEGETABLES FROM THE SEA-COAST. 



The ancestral forms of several of our best known and most 

 highly valued garden vegetables — asparagus, beet, sea-kale, 

 carrot and cabbage — may be found on our British sea-coasts. 



The wild asparagus [Asparagus officinalis) is a rare plant. A 

 Cornish station is mentioned for it in the ninth edition of 

 Babington's "British Botany;" which also records it as 

 occurring on the coast of Anglesea, Glamorgan, Pembroke 

 and Wexford. It was cultivated 200 years before the 

 Christian era in Rome, and perhaps at the same time in this 

 country. The generic name is derived from sparasso "to tear," 

 in allusion to the strong prickles arming some species. The 

 flowers are small and greenish-white. Fruit, a small red 

 berry. 



The Sea Beet {Beta mavitima) is common on the sea shore 

 in many places, being especially abundant on the West Coast 

 of Ireland. Bentham holds that white and red beet and the 

 mangel wurzel are cultivated varieties of the sea beet. Other 

 authorities maintain that cultivated beet was introduced into 

 this country in or about 1548. The generic name is from 

 the Celtic bett, red, in allusion to the red colour of the roots. 

 The flowers are green, single or clustered, arranged in long, 

 loose, terminal spikes, often branching into a leafy panicle. 



The Sea Kale (Cvambe mavitima) is abundant on sandy sea 

 shores. The coast dwellers of Devon, Dorset and Sussex, 

 have " from time immemorial been in the habit of procuring 

 it for their tables, preferring it to all other greens." It has, 

 however, been generally cultivated only within the past 

 century. In 1750 some roots were sent from Dorchester to 

 Covent Garden Market; the label was lost and the parcel 

 put aside as " some sort of poisonous root or other." Curtis, 

 writing in 1822, remarked upon the many ineffectual attempts 

 to introduce sea kale into the London markets. The generic 



