THE SWEET CICELY— continued. 
there is no reason to doubt its indigenous character. Such names as Sweet Bracken 
and Sweet Fern , considering the finely divided leaves, which do undoubtedly 
resemble the fronds of some ferns, cannot surprise us when we constantly hear 
people speak of Meadow-rue and Asparagus as ferns ; while the name Roman Plants 
recorded by Messrs. Britten and Holland from Milnthorpe, Westmorland, suggests 
that in that neighbourhood the plant was not looked upon as indigenous, though it 
might only mean that as belonging to the hills it was unfamiliar to lowland folk. 
That our earlier botanical writers did not treat this species as truly wild resulted 
merely from the slight extent to which the hills of the north were explored until the 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 
The large fleshy root is sweet and aromatic like the rest of the plant : the 
leaves are still used in salads in Italy ; and the plant was originally known in 
southern England only as a pot-herb. Like the other arcmatic plants of this Family 
— Coriander, Anise, Dill, Cumin, and Caraway — it has some real value as a mild 
stimulant and stomachic. Among more curious uses to which it has been applied 
are the smearing of the insides of hives with the fruits in order to attract bees, and 
the polishing of oak furniture. 
Apart although, however, from such utilitarian suggestions, Sweet Cicely is well 
worthy of cultivation near shrubberies or in the wilder parts of the garden for its 
various graces of form and fragrance. The stem is furrowed and hollow and grows 
to a height of two or three feet ; and both it and the leaves are slightly downy with 
soft hairs. The tripinnate leaves are large, with sheathing bases and a whitish 
under surface, and are of a pleasingly bright shade of green ; while the light open 
compound umbels of small white flowers borne aloft above the foliage are graceful 
in themselves and are succeeded by large glossy fruits that turn from green to a dark 
brown. There is, as a rule, no involucre at the base of the main or primary umbel ; 
but whitish, ciliate, membranous bracteoles below the umbellules. Only the outer 
flowers are perfect and in them the stamens mature before the stigmas, all the flowers 
in an umbel being simultaneously staminate. The later-formed, inner flowers are 
staminate. The calyx is inconspicuous and the petals are obcordate with an inflexed 
point. The fruits reach an inch in length and are at first surmounted by two slender 
divergent styles. Its carpels separate from a Y-shaped carpophore and have five 
very prominent equal primary ridges which are hollow and often rough externally. 
The flowers, which appear in May and June, are fragrant ; and, as is generally 
the case, the aromatic properties of the plant occur in their most concentrated form 
in the seeds. 
The plant can be readily propagated either by division in early autumn or 
spring, or by seeds sown out of doors as soon as they are ripe, the seedling plants 
being afterwards pricked out in the spring. 
