120 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The carrot and parsnip, as well as the skirret, are not easily distin- 

 guished in the writings of the ancients. The Greeks had three words — 

 Sisaron, first occurring in the writings of Epicharmus, a comic poet 

 (500 B.C.); Staphylinos is used by Hippocrates (430 B.C.); and 

 ElapJioboscum by Dioscorides (1st century a.d.). The Latin writer, 

 Pliny (1st century a.d.), has the words Pastinaca, Daucus, and Sicer or 

 Siseruni. He thus writes: "There is one kind of wild pastinaca, 

 which grows spontaneously; by the Greeks it is known as S'taphylinos. 

 Another kind is grown either from the root transplanted, or else 

 from seed, the ground being dug to a very considerable depth for the 



Fig. 55. — Wild Carrot (annual). Quarter natural size. 



purpose. It begins to be fit for eating at the end of the year, but it is 

 still better at the end of two; even then, however, it preserves its strong 

 pungent flavour, which it is found impossible to get rid of." In 

 speaking of the supposed medicinal virtues, he adds, ''the cultivated 

 has the same as the wild kind, though the latter is more powerful, 

 especially when growing in stony places." 



Turning to Matthiolus' " Commentary on Dioscorides " (16th cen- 

 tury A.D.), under Staphylinos he figures three plants — Pastinaca 

 domestica (our parsnip), P. sylvestris (the wild carrot, Daucus 

 Carota, L.), and Carota (the cultivated carrot). This word is found 

 first in the writings of Athen?pus (200 a.d.), and In a book on Cookery 

 by Apicius Coelius (230 a.d.). 



