Virgil prescribes the root of the Amellus, boiled 
in wine, as restorative food for bees. He seems to 
have had great pleasure in these insects, and is very 
minute in his directions for the proper care and 
management of them. 
“A flow’r there is that grows in meadow ground, 
Amellus call’d, and easy to he found ; 
For from one root the rising stem bestows 
A wood of leaves, and vi’Iet purple boughs: 
The flow’r itself is glorious to behold, 
And shines on altars like refulgent gold : 
Sharp to the taste, by shepherds near the stream 
Of Mella found, and thence they gave the name. 
Boil this restoring root in gen’rous wine, 
And set beside the door, the sickly Stock to dine.” 
Virgil’s allusion to a golden flower with purple 
leaves, which he applied to the disk and the ray of 
the Aster amellus, is somewhat perverted in the 
above translation of Dry den. 
Our old English botanists were not unmindful of 
this supposed Classic Flower, for Gerarde gives us 
a laboured translation of Virgil; which Johnson, in 
his edition of Gerarde, has somewhat simplified. 
u In Meades there is a floure, Amello nam’d, 
By him that seeks it easie to he found, 
For that it seemes by many branches fram’d 
Into a little wood ; like gold the ground 
Thereof appears, but leaues that it beset 
Shine in the colour of the Violet.” 
Here Johnson evidently understood “Leaves” 
as applicable to the petals of the flower, which, most 
probably, Virgil intended. 
This plant requires no peculiar management. 
Hort. Kew. 2, v. 5, 54. 
