THE CELERY. 



077 



along with meat, or vvitli a sauce of butter and vinegar. In British gardens 

 it is only cultivated as a winter salad. It is sown in the end of June or 

 beginning of July, and treated like the endive, except that it is not blanched. 

 Instead of this process, the leaves are cut off the plants, but so as not to de- 

 stroy their hearts, about the beginning of October ; the roots are then dug up, 

 shortened, and planted in pots, or portable boxes, with the dibber, very close 

 together in rich soil, watered, and afterwards protected from the frost by a 

 light covering of litter, taken off in the daytime, or by any other convenient 

 means. In a week or two the plants will be established, and the pots or 

 boxes are then removed, as the produce is wanted, into the mushroom-house, 

 or into a cellar, or any other dark warm place where the light will be com- 

 pletely excluded ; or into any light warm place, and covered over so as to 

 force the production of leaves and the blanching of them at the same time. 

 In a few days the roots will push forth leaves which will be completely 

 blanched, and each leaf, when fully expanded, may be gathered separately 

 till the plants cease to produce any. These leaves in Belgium, and in the 

 North of Germany and Russia, are considered as forming the most agreeable 

 of all wdnter salads ; and by a sufficient number of roots, it may be had in 

 perfection from November till May. It is not even necessary to plant the 

 roots in pots or boxes : they may be left in the soil covered with litter, and 

 taken up to be forced as the salad is w^anted ; or they may be taken up and 

 preserved in sand ; or they may be pitted in the manner of potatoes ; portions 

 being regularly taken up, potted, and forced as wanted. The roots being 

 established in the pots before forcing is a matter of very little consequence, 

 as the leaves are supplied, not from the soil by means of the spongiolcs of the 

 fibres, but from the nutriment laid up in the roots. The temperature of the 

 mushroom-house, or other place in which the chiccory is forced, should be 

 between 55° and 60° ; but the roots will send up leaves if the temperature is 

 a few degrees above the freezing point. (See 1098.) No blanched produc- 

 tion is more beautiful than succory, as the leaves become of a pure white 

 with most delicate pencillings of crimson, when grown as above recommended 

 in a mushroom house. Aboard ship the roots of the succory are packed into 

 casks of sand, with their heads protruding through numerous holes pierced 

 in the sides of the cask, by which means a maximum of produce is procured 

 from a minimum of space. 



1512. An excellent substitute for the succory, both as a salad and a coffee 

 plant, may be found in the common dandelion, Leontodon Taraxacum L., 

 which is by many persons, and by us among the number, considered not infe- 

 rior to it for both purposes. 



SuBSECT, IV. — The Celery. 



1513. The celery, Apium graveolens L. (Celeri, Fr.^, is an umbelliferous 

 biennial, a native of Britain, by the sides of wet ditches, and in marshy 

 places, especially near the sea ; and though poisonous in a wild state 

 (when it is called smallage), yet by long cultivation it has become one of 

 our most agreeable salads. The part used is the blanched leafstalks, and in 

 the case of one variety the roots. Both stalks and roots are used raw in 

 salads from August till March, and also in soups and stewed. In Italy, the 

 points of the unblanched leaves are used to flavour soups ; and in Britain, 

 when neither stalks, leaves, nor roots can be had, the bruised seeds form a 

 good substitute. 



