SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
So 
and last to their stain : 
Have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief 
Spotted with strawberries in your wife’s hand ? 
( Othello , III. iii. 434.) 
The Elizabethan gardeners knew the wild straw¬ 
berry,, and grew it well, and they had also ( F . 
virginiana ) from North America the parent of our 
Scarlet, but not the Hautbois, Chilian or Carolina. 
With regard to the name, “strawberry ” is derived 
from the Anglo-Saxon “ streowberrie,” either, Prior 
says, from its straw-like haulms, or from their lying 
strewn ( i.e., strawed) on the ground. Some, he adds, 
derive the name from the custom of selling wild 
strawberries threaded on straws, but the name is 
used before this custom is at all likely to have 
originated. 
A group of savoury herbs, denizens of the “ garden 
of herbes of sweet savour,” flower in this month, 
namely, balm, hyssop, parsley and rue. Of the former, 
at least two different plants are referred to: the greater 
number of references being to the balm of the 
apothecaries, the mysterious gum which Ellacombe 
says is exuded by the mastic, Pistacia lentiscus , L., 
or by the balm of Gilead, Balsamodendron gileadense ; 
but Grindon says merely that it is derived from trees 
of the order Amyridaceae, which he says 
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees 
Their medicinal gum.— Othello, V. ii. 350. 
Perhaps the most interesting references are those 
in which Shakespeare alludes to balm as one of the 
constituents of the sacred coronation oil, as in 
Richard II., III. ii. 54: 
Not all the water in the rough, rude sea 
Can wash the balm off from an anointed king. 
