PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
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troabstools, see fliUSbrOOtnS. 
Uunttps. 
Alas ! I had rather be set quick i’ the earth 
And boul’d to death with Turnips. 
Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 4, 89. 
The Turnips of Shakespeare’s time were like ours, and 
probably as good, though their cultivation seems to have been 
chiefly confined to gardens. It is not very certain whether 
the cultivated Turnip is the wild Turnip improved in England 
by cultivation, or whether we are indebted for it to the Romans, 
and that the wild one is only the degenerate form of the 
cultivated plant; for though the wild Turnip is admitted into 
the English flora, yet its right to the admission is very doubtful. 
But if we did not get the vegetable from the Romans we got 
its name. The old name for it was ncep, nep , or ?ieps , which 
was only the English form of the Latin napus , while Turnip 
is the corruption of terra napus , but when the first syllable was 
added I do not know. There is a curious perversion in the 
name, for our Turnip is botanically Brassica rapa , while the 
Rape is Brassica napus, so that the English and Latin have 
changed places, the Napus becoming a Rape and the Rapa 
a Nep. 
The present large field cultivation of Turnips is of com¬ 
paratively a modern date, though the field Turnip and garden 
Turnip are only varieties of the same species, while there are 
also many varieties both of the field and garden Turnip. 
It is not very easy to speak of the moral qualities of Turnips, 
or to make them the symbols of much virtue, yet Gwillim did 
so: “Lie beareth sable, a Turnip proper, a chief or gutte de 
Larmes. This is a wholesome root, and yieldeth great relief 
