CULTURAL DIRECTIONS 
203 
and England gathered the tender shoots of the wild 
.plants and sold them at the market places. For many 
hundreds of years stalks of mammoth size have been 
grown by gardeners in various countries. Asparagus has 
been a popular vegetable in America ever since the earli- 
est settlements were established. It was doubtless in- 
troduced by seeds or plants brought from European 
gardens. 
267. Botany. — There are about 150 species of the genus 
Asparagus, which belongs to the lily family. Although 
the shoots of a few other species are edible, Asparagus 
officinalis is the only one that has found a prominent place 
in the vegetable gardens of the world. The hardy, 
branching herbaceous plants are 3 to 7 feet high. The 
numerous filiform branchlets and the very fine delicate 
foliage make the tops valuable for decorative purposes. 
While the plant is herbaceous, the root stock or crown 
is perennial, making an annual growth of 1 to 3 inches. 
This extension is practically horizontal, although the 
rootstock or crown rises nearer the surface of the ground 
each succeeding year. The horizontal roots are fleshy, 
V% to Ft inch in diameter and light colored. The small 
feeding rootlets form on the large succulent roots, and 
the latter gradually become hollow and die and are re- 
placed by new roots. 
Flexamer (“Asparagus,” by F. M. Hexamer, p. 15) 
gives the following description of the flowers and the 
berries : “The asparagus flowers are mostly solitary at 
the nodes, of greenish-yellow color, drooping or filiform, 
jointed peduncles, perianth, six-parted, campanulate. 
Anthers, introrse ; style, short ; stigma, three-lobed ; 
berry, red, spherical, three-celled ; cells, two-seeded. 
While the flowers are generally dioecious — staminate and 
pistillate flowers being borne on different plants — there 
appear also hermaphrodite flowers, having both pistils 
and fully developed stamens in the same flower.” 
