SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
121 
themums in our garden, and the trees have lost both 
leaf and fruit, save only the sturdy undying ever¬ 
greens, it may be as well to hear what the poet 
has to tell us of such species as he mentions. The 
catalogue is not a long one, and will not take long in 
the telling. 
In Love's Labour s Lost , V. ii. 651, we come to 
trenchant critiques of the players, and in one the 
omnipotent Mars is compared to—- 
Long. A gilt nutmeg. 
Biron. A lemon. 
Long. Stuck with cloves. 
The whole connection is suggestive of the small 
dried Seville oranges stuck with cloves given as a 
Christmas present, as, indeed, gilded nutmegs were 
given and considered also needful accessories of 
every china bowl of pot-pourri. 
The spice as sold to-day is, as then, the unopened 
flower-buds of a tree (Caryophyllus aromaticus , L.), a 
native of the Moluccas, first introduced into our 
English greenhouses in 1800. 
When these cloves were first an article of com¬ 
merce, the Dutch took every means, fair and unfair, 
to keep the trade in their own hands, and afford an 
example of double dealing and treachery unmatched 
elsewhere in the annals of trade. As a flavouring 
cloves have lost none of their popularity to the 
present day. With them the nutmeg is also men¬ 
tioned, and it also occurs as a colour in Henry F., 
III. vii. 20, where the Dauphine's horse is described 
thus by Orleans : 
He’s of the colour of the nutmeg. 
And again, in the Winter s Tale , IV. iii. 39, where 
