PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
53 
Cloves. 
Biron. A Lemon. 
Longaville. Stuck with Cloves. 
Love s Labour’s Lost , v. 2, 633. 1 
As a mention of a vegetable product, I could not omit this 
passage, but the reference is only to the imported spice and 
not to the tree from which then, as now, the Clove was 
gathered. The Clove of commerce is the unexpanded flower 
of the Caryophyllus aromaticus , and the history of its dis¬ 
covery and cultivation by the Dutch in Amboyna, with the 
vain attempts they made to keep the monopoly of the profit¬ 
able spice, is perhaps the saddest chapter in all the history of 
commerce. See a full account with description and plate of 
the plant in “ Bot. Mag.,” vol. 54, No. 2749. 
Cockle. 
(1) Allons ! aliens ! sowed Cockle reap’d no Corn. 
Love s Labour s L^ost, iv. 3, 383. 
(2) We nourish ’gainst our senate 
The Cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition, 
Which we ourselves have plough’d for, sow’d, and scatter’d, 
By mingling them with us. — Coriolanus , in. 1, 69. 
In Shakespeare’s time the word “Cockle” was becoming 
restricted to the Corn-cockle (Lychnis githago ), but both in his 
time, and certainly in that of the writers before him, it was 
used generally for any noxious weed that grew in corn-fields, 
and was usually connected with the Darnel and Tares. 2 So 
Gower— 
1 ‘ ‘ But then his as full of drollery as ever it can hold; his like an 
orange stuck with Cloves as for conceipt.”— The Rehearsal , 1671, iii. 1. 
2 “ Cokylle—qusedam aborigo, zazannia.”— Catholicon Anglicum. 
