although much older than several seed-catalogs indicate. 
The dandelion is mentioned by Omar Khayyam as “that green herb” 
and probably originally migrated from Asia, although wild forms have 
been found isolated on certain mountain groups of our western states, 
possibly stranded there by the glacial “floods.” Its use as food is com- 
paratively modern, our liking for it having developed through its asso- 
ciation with us as a medical herb. The chicories, including the endives, 
are still very wild looking, and show but slight effect from their 2,000 
years or more sojourn with man. The endive chicory is a common 
annual weed in Sicily and in the grainfields of Egypt, just as its blue 
flowered perennial cousin, the ancestor of the witloof endive, is a common 
weed in the United States. The two cresses, the garden and water, have 
come to us as vegetables through association with us as simples or medical 
herbs. The same is true of celery, the ancestor of which abounds as a 
marsh, brook and drainage ditch plant in England and other parts of 
Europe. Celery is said to have been first blanched about 1670. In ancient 
Rome and Greece, it was regarded as a sort of parsley and in Malta and 
many parts of the Near East, even to-day celery is not blanched but 
the leaves are used as flavoring or as garnish. One of the English 
herbalists some 400 years ago wrote “this is not woonted to be eaten, 
neither is it counted good for sauce.” The popular Giant Pascal variety 
originated about 1890. Rhubarb is still another plant that was first a 
medicine, and then a vegetable, for in Elizabethan times, the leaves were 
regarded as the finest sort of greens. Only since the beginning of the 
19th century has it been used for sauce, pies and tarts. The leaves are 
said to be unwholesome for some people, so they are rarely used for 
greens in these days. The ancestral wild type is common along the Volga 
River in Russia, while the mountains of eastern Asia are full of closely 
related species. 
Turnips, carrots, parsnips and radishes trace their ancestry back to 
a very weedy, “seedy” lot of forbears, which many of them tend to 
resemble even now when growing conditions are not of the best, as is 
the case with most of my neighbor’s radishes. Long, stringy, woody, wiry 
roots about an eighth of an inch in diameter with very large healthy tops 
are all that his arduous labor in amateur gardening has brought him. So 
that upwards of 3,000 years of cultivation have not done much for this 
vegetable. In the Far East are several queer forms of radishes, one 
known as rat-tail radish has seed pods often over a foot long, and these 
are pickled as capers. In Japan, the cost of living is partly deduced 
from the cost of daikon, the giant winter radish, which is one of the 
principal winter vegetables of the poor people. On the Great Pyramid 
of Egypt, there is said to be an inscription in Egyptian characters, telling 
how much was expended in radishes, onions, and garlic for the workmen. 
L\aucus Carota or Queen Anne’s Lace is the wild form of the cultivated 
carrot. Both it and parsnips are so variable that improved varieties 
have been obtained directly from wild plants by a few generations of 
selection. Giant rooted forms of carrot are known in the Orient. 
Perhaps in an account of this sort, one should not forget to give 
