SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
49 
The name in Anglo-Saxon was “ wide-winde,” a 
form it still retains in the country parlance of War¬ 
wickshire. Note also “ waywind ” for the small bind¬ 
weed. 
The remaining flower to be considered under this 
month is one of those, which are so doubtful that it 
will probably never be satisfactorily settled, namely, 
the paeony or peony. The verse runs : 
Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims, 
Which spongy April at thy hest betrims, 
To make cold nymphs chaste crowns. 
Tempest , IV. i. 65. 
According to Grindon, the words “ pioned and 
twilled ” are old words referring to the use of spade 
and mattock. Ellacombe thinks, however, or assumes, 
that the flower paeony is meant. But it is not an 
English plant, nor a riverside one, either, and it would 
seem but common-sense to paraphrase: the river with 
its banks hollowed out as by the work of man, and 
decked in April with greenery and kingcups, a fitting 
crown for a chaste water-nymph. 
If we turn from flowers to fruit, the fruit of the 
month is the strawberry, the delicious pseudocarp of 
Fragaria vesca, L., a native of the woodlands of Europe 
and North Africa, reaching eastwards to the Hima¬ 
laya. The fruit has been used by man from the 
Bronze Age, and is found, or, rather, its achenes are 
found, among the debris of Swiss lake-dwellings. It 
should be remembered that the strawberry is techni¬ 
cally an “ etaerio of achenes/’ and the edible part the 
enlarged thalamus. There are three references to 
the plant in the plays—to the excellence of the fruit 
in the Bishop of Ely’s garden (.Richard III., III. iv. 34); 
to their native habit : 
The strawberry grows underneath the nettle 
(Henry V., I. i. 60); 
4 
