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THE TREES, SHRUBS, AND PLANTS
OF VIRGIL

NEW YORK :

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., FOURTH AVENUE
AND THIRTIETH STREET

THE TREES, SHRUBS,
AND PLANTS OF VIRGIL

BY

JOHN SARGEAUNT

LATE MASTER AT WESTMINSTER

'Tantus amor florum '

OXFORD
B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET

MDCCCCXX

PREFACE

In the sixteenth century several botanists interested
themselves in the plants of the ancient Romans.
Among them were two able Italians, Pietro Andrea
Mathioli (1500-1577), whose name has been given to
the cruciferous genus of stock, and Andrea Cesalpini
(1519-1603), from whom is named the leguminous
genus of Caesalpinia. Over Dodoens or Dodonaeus
they had the advantage of being natives and in-
habitants of Italy. Their works were studied by
John Martyn, Professor of Botany in the University
of Cambridge, who in 1741 published an edition of
the Georgics with an English translation. His
works deal with the substance rather than with
the language of Virgil's poem. He had been for
some years in correspondence with Linne, from
whom he probably received help. Although Linne
was occasionally in error, a list of the scientific
names will show how skilfully he had studied the
ancient Roman writings. Martyn made two or three
bad blunders, but his book is a monument of clear
observation and sound common sense. It was
followed in 1749 by an edition of the Eclogues. At

4124^8

Preface

later dates several French botanists published Floras
of Virgil. In view of more recent discoveries their
conclusions cannot always be accepted, and, as their
works have long been out of print, there seems room
for the present little work.

The Flora Italiana of Dr. Giovanni Arcangeli
(2nd edition, Turin, 1896) is useful in its records of
the present geographical range of Virgil's plants. Of
later knowledge, perhaps the most notable discovery
is the difference between the Italian and the English
elms, but Arcangeli was able to accept incidentally
Boissier's identification of Virgil's phaselus with the
plant known in Italy as fagiolo dalV occhio. Although
Virgil directs the sowing of it in autumn, even
Martyn, followed by many editors, identified it with
the tender French bean, which probably did not find
its way to Europe before the days of Queen
Elizabeth.

It is to be regretted that Conington, who gave
much thought to Virgil, had little interest in natural
objects. His notes on plants are sometimes gro-
tesquely in error. It is, however, to another child
of the cloister that readers of the ancient pastoral
poems owe the information that birds follow the
plough in order to pick up the grain. Unless a
benevolent ploughman sowed it with his heels, the
birds must have made a poor living of it. Birds do
pick up grain, but not behind the plough. Perhaps
the obituary of the house of Grub could provide a
more mournful explanation.

I ought to say that with two or three plants on my

vi

Preface

list I am acquainted only through descriptions and
figures. On the other hand, I have nearly half of
them growing in my garden, and others are to be
found near at hand.

The addition of plants from Moretum and Copa
will, I hope, be welcome, and not be taken as
necessarily involving any view on the authenticity of
those poems.

Fair warp,

Sussex,
1919.

THE TREES, SHRUBS, AND
PLANTS OF VIRGIL

INTRODUCTION

By descent and birth Virgil was not an Italian but
a Gaul, and at the time of his birth his father was
not a Roman citizen. Nevertheless, Latin civiliza-
tion was already entirely at home in the plain of the
Po, and had brought with it the Hellenic strain
which runs through the whole of the Eclogues.
Thus Virgil was not afraid to call Italy his own
country, even without reference to the share of
Tuscan blood which he believed to be possessed
by the men of Mantova. Thus, when he came in
the second Georgic to celebrate the praises of Italy,
it hardly needed the extension of the franchise to
justify him in ignoring the boundary made by the
Apennines and the little brook of Rubicon. In his
encomium of Italian valour the Ligurian takes his
place beside the Marsian and the Samnite, and the
lakes of Como and Garda are no less Italian than
the Tyrrhene surge which sweeps into the haven of
Avernus.

In the youthful Virgil there were two characteris-

I B

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

tics which were not always at one. He had a native
love of observation and he had a young man's passion
for the beautiful language of the Greek pastoral
poets.

His power of observation may well have been
inherited, and we can hardly doubt that it was
encouraged by the parents who made a push to give
him a gentleman's education. It was not driven out
of him by the training in bad rhetoric which poisoned
for him the last days of his school life. He saw
natural objects with a clearness which in later days
sometimes deserted him when he came to describe
the scenes and incidents of an epic poem. We do
well to call the Aeneid his greatest work, but its
greatness is other than that of the Georgics.

Martyn calls attention to the exactness with which
his poet characterizes a group of willows, ' glauca
canentia fronde salicta.' 'The leaves,' as he says,
1 are of a bluish green, and the under side of them
is covered with white down.' This is not true of all
willows, but is true of the species which Virgil had
in mind. For a more detailed description and an
attempt to create an exact vocabulary reference may
be made to the article on ' Amellus.' For an attempt
to give on the authority of authors a clear account
of a tree of which he can have seen only the fruit we
may refer to the article on the citron.

Beside this power of observation, there is in Virgil's
earliest work the literary strain which is not always
in accord with it. Wordsworth has told us that
English poetry published between the years 1668

2

Introduction

and 1726 does not, with two exceptions, 'contain
a single new image of external nature.' One of the
exceptions is ' a passage or two ' in the earlier work
of Pope. Although Pope and Virgil were destined
to develop on very different lines, there was a touch
of likeness in their earlier works, and Pope's juvenilia
stand somewhat to Virgil's pastorals as Virgil's stand
to the works of Theocritus and Moschus. Virgil
seems at times to think less of the objects with
which he deals than of his desire to reproduce in
the graver, not to say heavier, language of Rome
the beauties of the Sicilian poets. My subject does
not call for any defence of the Eclogues. It might
else be necessary to contend that the pastoral form
of these poems is not to be accused of affectation
or falsehood. It is the vehicle by which a young
poet expresses his view of beauty and of the purpose
and passions of life.

Now when Theocritus tells us that the goat goes
in quest of cytisus and the wolf in quest of the
goat, we may well believe that he had seen the goat
browsing on the shrub and the wolf coming down
from the hills. But the shrub did not come within
many miles of Mantova, and, although the possi-
bility of Alpine wolves occasionally descending upon
the plain cannot be denied, we cannot be certain
that Virgil had yet seen one. If Virgil, when he
wrote the fourth Eclogue, had ever seen a tamarisk,
he would probably have chosen some other epithet
than humilis to represent the shrub as the emblem
of lowly poetry ; for the word might suggest that the

3

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

shrub itself is never tall, whereas sometimes it is
almost a tree.

It must be admitted that even in his more mature
work Virgil sometimes accepted statements from
others, and took no pains to see that they were true.
Thus he had heard that any scion could be success-
fully grafted on any stock. On the strength of this
information he fancied pear blossoms covering with
white the branches of the manna ash, and swept away
by his poetic fervour conceived of swine champing
acorns under an elm. Columella tried to save his
master's credit in this matter by showing how such
grafting could succeed. It is, however, manifest
that in Columella's subterranean grafting the scion
makes roots not in the stock, but in the ground, and
is, in fact, not a grafted scion, but a cutting.

The names of colours present great difficulties.
The colour sense, especially in reds and blues, seems
to have developed rather late in man's history. The
yellows are fairly clear, except that there seems to
be no word which clearly indicates the shining
yellow of the buttercup. Both croceus, which comes
from the stigmata of the saffron crocus, and luteus or
luteolus, which come from the dye of weld, seem to
have a dash of orange in them. Virgil in one place
combines them and speaks of saffron weld. The
yolk of an egg was always called luteum. Then comes
flavus, which is used most of fields of ripe corn, but
also of the yellow sands, an auburn head of hair, and
gold. Gold is also called fulvum, much as we speak of
red gold ; for of this hue is the tawny hide of the

4

Introduction

lion, and even the less red hide of the wolf. Last is
gilvus, which is dun, and is used of a horse.

Then there are white and black. It seems clear
that Virgil does not distinguish candidus and albus,
for he applies them both to the same objects. The
original meaning of candidus was white hot, and it
therefore implies a shining white, but Virgil applies
it to a beard and a poplar-tree. Nor can it be made
out that he distinguishes ater and niger except in
metaphorical uses. Properly ater seems to be the
colour of charcoal. There is also a wide extension
both of black and of white. Of two Sicilians one is
called black and the other white. A black flower
need be no darker than violet, and we may say that
in some contexts white means little more than not
black and black little more than not white.

Worst of all are the two words purpureas and
ferrugineus. As applied to flowers, the former ap-
pears to mean no more than bright, a meaning
which it retains when applied to the light of youth —
' lumen iuventae.' A contemporary of Virgil applied
the epithet to snow, and I cannot see that Virgil
ever uses it of a dark hue, not even when he applies
it to the breath or soul leaving the body in a violent
death. On the other hand, ferrugineus, which must
originally have signified the colour of iron rust, does
connote some darkness, and clearly Virgil uses it of
Tyrian purple. He also uses it of the darkness that
comes over the sun in an eclipse and of Charon's
boat. A character in Plautus tells us that it is the
colour of the sea, and as the sea displays so many

5

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

colours he was doubtless in part right. It seems,
however, that none of these uses would make it
impossible for a Roman to apply the word to some
shade of red. On the hyacinthus we cannot rule reds
out on the ground that Virgil writes of ' ferrugineos
hyacinthos.'

Another difficulty is that we are not always sure
whether Virgil's epithet applies to the whole of a
blossom or part of it, whether to the blossom at all
or to the leaves or some other part. Sometimes we
can see him using an epithet as we should not.
Thus to a Latin the important part of a poppy is
the seeds, and, because the seeds are small, Virgil
writes of the small poppy, though the plant will
out-top a man. Again, as we see in Theophrastus,
when the stamens and pistils of a flower were large
they were regarded as a second flower within the
other. The Greek writes thus, for instance, of the
lily and the rose. Thus when Virgil writes ' pur-
pureo narcisso ' he seems to me to refer to the
shining white of the outer perianth ; but to some
he seems to speak of the cup, which Arcangeli calls
scarlet, and Nicholson, perhaps more correctly,
scarlet-edged. There can be no doubt that in
' pallentes hederae ' the epithet applies solely to the
fruit.

From the writers on country affairs, especially
Pliny and Columella, some help is obtained on these
points. They also aid us to ascertain things which
were probably known to Virgil, though they are not
mentioned in his works.

6

Introduction

It is, perhaps, not superfluous to say that the
lexicons err at times, not only in their identification
of the plants, but also in the names of their parts.
Several examples will be found in the text. One
may be mentioned here. The lexicons say that both
palmes and pampinus mean a vine-tendril. In fact,
they have different meanings, but the meaning of
tendril belongs to neither.

It may be well to set forth the various meanings
of some of the Latin words used of plants, as the
lexicons are defective in this matter.

Folium usually means a leaf, but it also is used to
signify the petals of a polypetalous flower, such as
the poppy ; the ray-flowers of a composite, such as
the daisy ; and the divisions of the perianth in
monocotyledons, such as the lily. Further, it may
mean a spray or branchlet of any coniferous tree, or
the tunics of the bulb in such plants as squills.

Ramus normally means a branch or bough, but
Virgil also uses it of the male catkins of the walnut.

Filum, from its sense of a thread, comes to mean
the filament of a stamen. Since, by a metaphor
from weaving, it sometimes signifies the outline or
contour of a human or other figure, it is used for the
habit of a plant, and, it would seem, also for its stem.

Silva may signify the flowering stems of any plant
that has more than one, such as lupins and Michael-
mas daisies.

Cespes, which properly means a sod, may be used
of a stool — that is to say, a mass of roots in a plant
which makes offshoots, as the Michaelmas daisy.

7

THE TREES, SHRUBS, AND PLANTS
OF VIRGIL

Abies.

' casus abies visura marinos ' (Ge. ii. 68).

' pulcherrima . . . abies in montibus altis ' (Ec. vii. 66).

'nigra . . . abiete ' (Ac. viii. 599).

The red or silver fir (Abies pectinata) is common
on the Alps, and occurs, though seldom in great
quantity, through the range of the Apennines, where
Theophrastus notes that it grew to a great size.
Byron knew it, though not as Virgil's tree ; and in
the lines,

' But from their nature will the tannen grow
Loftiest on loftiest and least shelter'd rocks '

(C.H.P. iv. 20),

he naturalized its German name, a fact overlooked
by the N.E.D. In a note he adds that it is the
tallest mountain tree, a statement true of Europe.
It runs up to a hundred feet. The timber was used
in shipbuilding, and on account of its lightness pre-
ferred to all others for masts and yard-arms.

Since a large mass of this fir as seen in the
distance looks black, especially against the sky,
Virgil's epithet is justified. The Romans, however,
generally called evergreen trees black in contrast
with the usually lighter foliage of deciduous species.

Flower, March to May.

Italian name, Abete rosso.
8

Acanthus

Acanthus.

A. ' molli circum est ansas amplexus acantho' (Ec. iii. 45).

B. ' circumtextum croceo velamen acantho ' (Ae. i. 649).
' baccas semper frondentis acanthi' (Ge. ii. 119).

Here we have two distinct plants under one name.
The former is our garden bear's-breech (Acanthus
mollis), a scrofularious plant with a dull flower and
the large leaves which were long thought to have
suggested the Corinthian capital. In Theocritus the
carving is in relief on the body of the cup ; Virgil
transfers it to the handles, and perhaps meant it to
represent the flower spike. The epithet of ' mollis '
both alludes to the carver's skill, and distinguishes
the plant from a kindred species whose leaves end in
short spines.

Flower, March to July.

Italian names, Acanto and Brancorsina.

The other plant is gum arabic (Acacia Arabica),
which is not native in Italy, and with us is a green-
house tree. It is akin to the shrubs whose sprays
of yellow flowers are in spring imported from the
Riviera to London, and sold under the name of
mimosa. These are of Australian origin. The
flowers of our plant are in globular heads. By
1 baccas ' Virgil means either these heads or the
curious seed-pod, which resembles a string of beads.

In Ge. iv. 123 is the difficult phrase ' flexi vimen
acanthi,' referred by Martyn to the bear's-breech,
though neither the substantive nor the adjective well
fits this plant. He finds an explanation in a story

9

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

told by Vitruvius, who says that a basket covered
with a tile happened to be placed upon a root of
acanthus, and when the plant shot up in spring the
stalks came up round the basket till they were caused
by the tile to bend outward. The architect Calli-
machus, passing by, was struck by the effect, and,
having to make some pillars at Corinth, imitated it
in the capitals. The story, probably a fiction, may
have been known to Virgil, but is not satisfactory as
an explanation of our passage. It is better to refer
Virgil's phrase to the gum arabic, and to suppose
that in favourable spots in Italy, such as the
Corycian's garden at Taranto, the plant could be
grown in the open air with such protection in winter
as in the north was given to myrtles. With us it is
a greenhouse tree.

The robe which Leda made for Helen had a
woven border representing our plant.

Flower, spring.
Italian name, Acacia.

Acer.

'trabibus . . . acernis ' [Ac ii. 112; ix. 87).
' solio . . . acerno ' (Ae. viii. 178).

The maple (Acer campestre), both in Greece and
in Italy mainly a tree of the hills, disappears in
southern Italy, but is found again on the mountains
of Sicily. Virgil gives it, together with pine and
spruce, as supplying the timber for the wooden
horse, and he doubtless thought of them as trees of
Mount Ida. In our second passage 'trabibus' is used

10

Aconitum

of living trees, which form part of a sacred grove of
Cybele. The maple throne of Evander marks the
simplicity of the Arcadian exile's life. Silver and
gold he had none.

Maple wood is hard, and was used for the yokes of
oxen and for writing tablets. It was a favourite
material with the wealthy for tables, either entire or
veneered; and Pliny says it was second only to what
the Romans called citron — that is, the wood of
Juniperus oxycedrus.

Flower, April and May.

Italian names, Acero, Chioppo, and Loppo.

Aconitum.

' nee miseros fallunt aconita legentes ' {Ge. ii. 152).
'fallax herba veneni' [Ec. iv. 24).

Dioscorides has distressed the commentators by
saying that there were aconites in Italy, but the
species to which he refers were probably well known
as poisonous. Virgil is speaking of a noxious plant
which was liable to be confounded with a harmless
one, and probably means the pale yellow monk's-
hood (Aconitum anthora), a near relative of our
own blue and poisonous monk's-hood, which is some-
times mistaken for horseradish. Virgil might justly
say that his country was exempt from the danger of
this plant, for its only claim to a place in the Italian
flora is that it occurs in the mountains of Liguria.
There is nothing to show that Virgil had ever seen
the plant, but he had read of it in the Greek authors,

11

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

and learnt from them that there was no known
antidote.

Flower, July and August.
Aesculus : see Robur.

Alga.

' saxa frenunt laterique illisa refunditur alga' (Ae. vii. 590).
' proiecta vilior alga' (Ec. vii. 42).

This was a general name for various kinds of sea-
weed. They are not entirely worthless, for one yields
a red dye, and Palladius was aware of their value
as manure. Columella also recommends its use in
transplanting cabbage. Dulse appears to have been
unknown. Since much of the seaweed cast up on
the shore was wasted, and that which was used cost
no more than the labour of moving it, seaweed came
to be a synonym for what is worthless.

Alium.

'alia serpyllumque herbas contundit olentes ' (Ec. ii. n).

That Virgil is justified in the epithet which he
assigns to garlic (Allium sativum) no one who has
sat beside an Italian or Sicilian driver will care to
dispute. The plant is Asiatic, but early found its
way into Greece and Italy, and in both countries
it was regarded as giving both courage and strength
to him that ate it. In our passage the leaves are
bruised together with thyme for the reapers' midday
meal. This salad included flour and cheese with oil

12

Alnus

and vinegar. Its name was ' moretum,' and the
poem with that title, ascribed to Virgil, supplies this
work with some names of plants.

Flower, June and Jury.
Italian name, Aglio.

Alnus.

' crassis . . . paludibus alni | nascuntur ' (Ge. ii. no).
'tunc alnos primum fluvii sensere cavatas ' (Ge. i. 136).

The alder (Alnus glutinosa) is a common tree along
river-banks in most parts of Europe, and goes up to
three thousand feet above sea-level on the Apennines.
It is akin to the birch, which in Italy is confined
to sub-alpine districts and is not mentioned by
Virgil. The hollowed trunk supplied an early, though
perhaps not the earliest, form of a boat. It is
plentiful on the Po, where it seems still to have been
used for boat-building in Virgil's days : ' innatat
ainus missa Pado ' (Ge. ii. 451). The flowers and
fruits are in a somewhat inelegant catkin, which
appears before the leaves. Hence the jilted shepherd,
in praying for an inversion of Nature, desires that
the blossoms of the poet's narcissus may appear
upon the alder: 'narcisso floreat alnus' (Ec. viii. 53).
Virgil notices the very rapid growth of alder shoots
in spring {Ec. x. 74).

Flower, March.
Italian name, Ontano.

*3

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

Amaracus.

' mollis amaracus ilium j floribus et dulci adspirans com-
plectitur umbra' (Ae. i. 693).

The sweet marjoram (Origanum majorana) is a
North African herb, which has been in our gardens
since the days of Elizabeth. As it will not stand
our winters, it is treated here as an annual. It is
naturalized in Italy, and Virgil may have known it
as a garden plant. Since, however, the passage
deals with a miracle of Venus; we need not assume
this. The plant was used for wreaths.

Our plant seems to be Shakespeare's sweet mar-
joram, though our old writers ascribe sweetness and
other virtues to the native species also. They belong
to the labiate order, and are akin to thyme and mint.

Flower, June and July.

Italian names, Maggiorana and Persia.

Amellus.

' est etiam flos in pratis cui nomen amello
fecere agricolae, facilis quaerentibus berba j
namque uno ingentem tollit de cespite silvam ;
aureus ipse, sed in foliis, quae plurima circum
funduntur, violae sublucet purpura nigrae.
saepe deum nexis ornatae torquibus arae.
asper in ore sapor : tonsis in vallibus ilium
pastores et curva legunt prope flumina Mellae.'

(Ge. iv. 271 sqq.)

Here we have Virgil describing solely from his
own observation a plant of his own district with
what we may presume to be a Gallic name. It does

14

A melius

not extend into southern Italy, and it is clear that
Columella never saw it, and mistook Virgil's descrip-
tion of it. There seems to be no certain mention of
it in any other ancient author.

The plant is the Aster amellus of Linnaeus, one of
the many species to which our gardeners have given
the name of Michaelmas daisies. Virgil had no
technical vocabulary for botanical descriptions, but
in this case he almost creates one. The flower is a
composite, the head consisting of disk flowers and
ray flowers. His name for the disk is flos ipse, and
his name for the ray flowers is folia, a word which
Ovid applies to the petaloid perianth of a lily, just
as (fivWov is one name for a petal. What gardeners
call the stool — that is, the mass of roots and sub-
terranean stems — is ' cespes,' and the stems which
rise from it are the ' ingens silva.' When Virgil
says that in the ray flowers purple shines under dark
violet, he seems to indicate a particular shade of
purple or violet for which there was no name. Our
earlier translators made sad work of a passage which
is as clear as Virgil's vocabulary could make it.

The Mella is a tributary of the Po, which rises
in the mountains above Brescia, and Virgil here
refers to its upper course, for the plant does not
descend into the plains. It grows on the sides of the
valleys, and is conspicuous in August and September,
when the grass has been shortened by mowing or
grazing. We may take ' tonsis ' in either sense, for
the effect is the same. The latter sense seems more
likely, for, although the plant is not full grown at

15

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

the time of the hay harvest, it is tall enough to be
topped by the scythe. Moreover, it affects the slopes
rather than the level ground.

Under cultivation and through hybridizing amellus
has developed many varieties. In many of them
the disk has taken the colour of the rays.
Whether it ever does this in the wild state I do
not know.

Virgil recommends boiling the roots in wine as
a remedy for bee disease. The taste, as he says,
is rough, and the Brescian bee-keepers may have
known their business when they gave the root to the
sick bees.

Flower, July to October.
Italian names, Amello and Astro.

Amomum.

' ferat et rubus asper amomum ' (Ec. iii. 89).
' Assyrium . . . amomum ' (Ec. iv. 25).

Virgil cannot have known this East Indian shrub,
which is akin to the banana and the plantain,
though he knew the balsam which it produced. It
is cardamom (Amomum cardamomum), and the
spice yielded by its seed capsules fetched a high
price at Rome. It has been cultivated in our stoves
for nearly a hundred years, but its brownish flowers
are not very attractive.

Flower, summer.

Italian name, Cardamomo.

16

Anethum

Anethum.

1 florem bene olentis anethi ' (Ec. ii. 48).

' vetus adstricti fascis pendebat anethi ' (Mor. 59).

In our first passage Virgil follows the Sicilian
poets, and probably did not know what plant he
meant. In Greek the name usually meant dill; but
it may well be doubted w7hether in Sicily, where
this plant was not native, the name was not applied
to the nearest native species. This was fennel (Foeni-
culum vulgare), a common plant in the lower ground
of Italy and Sicily. When it was gathered the
bunches were dried in the sun and used in cookery.

In Pliny and other writers our name means ' dill '
(Anethum graveolens). The dried leaves were used
to flavour soups.

Flower, July and August.
Italian name, Finocchio (fennel).
Aneto (dill).

Apium.

1 virides apio ripae ' (Ge. iv. 121).

1 apio crines ornatus amaro ' (Ec. vi. 68).

The lexicons call this plant parsley, but they are
certainly wrong, as Virgil's epithet alone should
have shown them. His plant is smallage or celery
(Apium graveolens), the Greek aiXivov, which gave
its name to the Sicilian city. Celery likes to grow,
where Virgil puts it, with its toes in water ; while
parsley, nowhere known as a wild plant, naturalizes
itself, as Hooker says, ' on castle walls and in waste

17 c

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

places.' In a wild state celery is rank, coarse, and
unwholesome ; but it has been much improved by
cultivation, and the bitterness, to which Virgil
refers, is annulled by blanching the leaf-stems. For
this purpose we earth it up, but Columella and
Palladius recommend the use of a ' cylindrus,' which
in this context clearly means a sea-kale pot or some-
thing like it.

The leaves were used in garlands and chaplets.
An Italian scholar has in his possession a wreath
taken from the heart of a mummy made in the
fifteenth century B.C. It is composed of alternating
leaves of celery and buds of the blue water-lily of
the Nile.

Theophrastus refers to what seem to be cultivated
varieties, and regards the plant as an effective
remedy for the stone.

Flower, June.
Italian name, Sedano.

Arbutus.

1 arbutus horrida' (Ge. ii. 69).

1 vos rara viridis tegit arbutus umbra ' (Ec. vii. 46. Cf .
Ec. iii. 82 ; Ge. i. 148 ; ii. 69, 520 ; iii. 301 ; iv. 181).

The arbute (Arbutus unedo) is a tree of the
Mediterranean region, which extends northwards
to Killarney. It is called the strawberry-tree from
a superficial resemblance in the scarlet fruit, called
by Lucretius ' puniceus ' ; but the tubercles on the
surface are not, as in the strawberry, the seeds.

18

Arbutus

Pliny's name of ' unedo ' was supposed to mean that
he who ate one would never eat another, but Italian
peasants do eat it when it is quite ripe. Both leaves
and fruit seem to have been a favourite food of
goats — ' dulcis depulsis arbutus haedis ' (Ec. iii. 82).
Virgil makes bees feed on it (Ge. iv. 181), but the
flowers come too late in the year to be of much use
for honey. The bark of the stems is very rough,
and to this Virgil's epithet alludes. Hurdles were
made of the wood (Ge. i. 166).

In our gardens the tree will grow to the height
of ten feet, and in autumn displays both flowers and
ripe fruits.

Flower, autumn.

Italian names, Albatro and Corbezzolo.

AVENA AND AVENA STERILIS.

' urit enim campum lini seges, urit avenae ' (Ge. i. 77).
4 steriles nascuntur avenae ' (Ec. v. 37).
' steriles dominantur avenae ' (Ge. i. 154).

The two plants are of different species, but the
Romans gave them one name, and held that the
wild oat (Avena fatua) was a degeneracy from the
cultivated oat (A. sativa), or from barley.

The oat is not a plant of southern climates, and in
the central peninsula was probably cultivated only
in Cisalpine Gaul, where Virgil, as a boy, must have
seen it, and on the northern slopes of the Apennines.
He was thus able to confirm the observation of
Theophrastus that it ' runs ' or exhausts the soil.

19

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

Columella says it should be cut green for fodder or
hay. In comparing it to a wild plant the Greek
authority does not mean that it was not cultivated,
but refers to what he calls the many husks of the
seed. The wild oat occurs all over Europe, and has
increased in our cornfields since the beginning of
the war. It is probable enough that the name of
' avena ' was used of other grasses.

Although the straw of the oat can be made into
a musical instrument, it is probable that our poets
in dealing with it have not always had their eyes on
the object. It was enough for them that Virgil used
' avena ' of the pastoral instrument. Hence Spenser
speaks of the shepherd who broke ' his oaten pipe,'
Shakespeare of shepherds piping on ' oaten strawes,'
and Milton of ' the oaten flute.' Of these three poets
Milton was the most musical, and in this case the
most inaccurate. A single straw could not be made
into a flute, and even as a pipe could hardly make
the woods resound in praise of Amaryllis. The fact
is that ' avena ' as a musical instrument is the pan-
pipe, the accompanist in this country of the now,
alas ! obsolescent Punch and Judy show. This
consisted of seven pipes, sometimes perhaps oaten
straws, but more often reeds or kexes — ' septem
compacta cicutis fistula ' (Ec. ii. 36). The single
pipe was despised by a shepherd of musical powers,
and left to those whose use it was ' stridenti
miserum stipula disperdere caronen ' (Ec. iii. 27), or
to ' grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.'

Within the memory of men living half a century

20

Avena and Avena Sterilis

ago pan-pipes of straw were still made in remote
parts of Oxfordshire, but even at that time the
Punch and Judy men seem always to have employed
reeds.

Italian name, Vena.

Baccar.

hederas passim cum baccare ' (Ec. iv. 19).
' baccare frontem cingite' (Ec. vii. 27).

The name covers at least three species of cyclamen,
only one of which, C. repandum, flowers in the
spring. The other two species are autumnal, and
geographically seem not to overlap, C. Europaeum
not growing south of Lombardy and C. Neapoli-
tanum not north of the Apennines. In Lombardy
the former still bears the name of ' baccare,' but
in the Apennines the only name I have ever got
from the peasantry for either of the other species
is ' scacciabile,' which doubtless refers to the purga-
tive power. An allied species, C. hederaefolium,
with a paler flower, is naturalized here and there
in southern England. There is still considerable
confusion in the nomenclature of these species.

The blossoms of the sowbreads, to give them their
English name, are still made into nosegays and
wreaths, not only in Italy, but also in the Tyrol,
where children throw bunches of them into coaches
and carriages and look for a reward. It is possible
that there are districts where the flowers and the
tubers are used, as they were in Theophrastus' time,

21

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

for love charms. The plants are hardy in this
country and easy to cultivate in shade and leaf
mould, to which it is well to add a little lime. They
seed freely, but seedlings take some years to flower.

In our second passage Virgil treats the blossom as
a prophylactic against curses and ' overlooking.' The
Greeks used the powdered corm as a love charm.

The lexicons will have it that ' baccar ' is the
foxglove, though, as a native, that plant does not
come nearer to Italy than Sardinia, and there seems
to be no evidence that it was ever cultivated. More-
over, it is not well suited for a chaplet.

Visitors to Tivoli may find our plant on Monte
Catillo above the railway station.

Flower : C. Europaeum, June to October.
C. repandum, April and May.
C. Neapolitanum, September and
October.
Italian names : Pan-porcino, Pan-torreno, and
Baccare.

Beta.

' late fundentes brachia betae ' (Mor. 72).

The wild beet (Beta maritima) supplies nothing
that is useful to man, but under cultivation it has
developed what are called the roots of beet and of
mangel-wurzel. Our passage shows that in Roman
times the leaf also had increased in size, though
probably not to the length of a yard or so, as in
the modern variety known as Chilian beet. There

22

Beta

were two kinds, of which the red must have been
like our beet and the white like our mangel. As
a vegetable neither was held in much account.
What was most valued was the leaf of the species
now called B. cicla. Columella describes this species
as having green leaves and a white root.

Flower, July and August.
Italian name, Bietola.

Buxus.

' undantem buxo spectare Cytorum ' (Ge. ii. 437).
' torno rasile buxum ' (ib. 449).

The box (Buxus sempervirens) is a rare native of
Italy, as of England, but was largely grown in
gardens, and suffered much from the topiary art.
Virgil's line seems to imply a preference for it in
its natural state, though he knew the woods of
Cytorus, a mountain in Paphlagonia, only through
his Greek authorities.

The slow-growing and hard wood is useful for
various purposes. Virgil speaks of it as made into
a frame for ivory (Ae. x. 136), and into a top
(Ae. vii. 382); while the 'buxus Berecyntia matris
Idaeae ' (Ae. ix. 619) is a musical pipe. The cheapest
form of writing tablets was made of boxwood and
wax. Dennis mentions an Etruscan wreath of box
sprays which was found in a tomb, but the Greek
authorities do not seem to refer to box as a coronary
tree.

It seems to have been the box and not, as Virgil

23

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

implies, the yew that gave the bitterness to Corsican
honey.

Flower, March and April.

Italian names, Bosso and Bossolo.

Calamus.

The Greeks, from whom this word was borrowed,
use it as a generic name for reeds, and distinguished
many species, among which are our own common
reed, Phraginites communis, sweet flag, Acorus
calamus, and the fine grass, sometimes known as
wood small-reed, Calamogrostis epigeios. Some
of the Roman prose writers on country matters
use the name generically of reeds and specifically
of the sweet flag. In the poets it seems also to
stand for the whole or part of the stem of a reed
as put to some use, or, like the English halm, of the
stem of some other plant, for instance, the lupin
(Ge. i. 76). Virgil uses it once of reeds used as vine-
props (Ge. ii. 358), once of an arrow (Ae. x. 140),
and some eight times of a musical pipe. Virgil can
hardly have failed to know the sweet flag, which
grows on the Mincio as a native, and seems to
have been imported for cultivation across the
Apennines.

Caltha, or Calta.

' mollia luteola pingit vaccinia caltha ' (Ec. ii. 50).

By a mistake Linnaeus gave this name to the
marsh marigold, which, though a native of Italy,

24

Caltha, or Calta

cannot be Virgil's plant. Corydon's nosegay, of
which it forms a part, could hardly be gathered at
any one season, and gives us no guide to the flower-
ing time of our plant. Not much is said of ' caltha '
by our early authorities. For Virgil's epithet Colu-
mella substitutes flammeola, with a reference to the
fiery orange tint of the bridal veil. From Pliny we
learn that our plant had a strong scent, both in the
leaves and in the blossom. All this points to the
common pot marigold (Calendula officinalis), an
African, brought early into cultivation for its use
in condiments. The yellow ray flowers are still
used in soups, and the plant has naturalized itself
here and there both in Italy and in England.

Flower, July and August.

Italian names, Calendula and Fiorrancio.

Carduus.

' segnisque horreret in arvis | Carduus '

{Ge. i. 151 ; cf. Ec. v. 39).

Thistles are reckoned by Virgil among the plagues
sent by the gods into the cultivated fields in order
that the farmer might not have too easy a life. It
is probable that several species are covered by the
name, but in Italy, as with us, the worst enemy is
the common field thistle (Carduus arvensis). It
increases rapidly by means of stolons, and is hard
to eradicate, because any broken bit of them will
produce roots and stems. It is well that the flowers
are often barren. Thus we may put aside Dr. Wood-

25

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

ward's calculation that a thistle three years old
might have five hundred and seventy-six million
grandchildren.

Another candidate is Centaurea solstitialis, St.
Barnaby's thistle, a yellow -flowered annual very
common in Italian cornfields. It is occasionally
found in England, where the seeds have been intro-
duced with those of lucerne. This, however, seems
to be ' Tribulus,' q.v.

Pliny and other later writers give the name of
1 carduus ' to the esculent cardoon (Cynara cardun-
culus).

Flower, summer.

Italian names: Astone (Carduus).

Spino giallo (Centaurea).

Carex.

'carice pastus acuta' (Gt. iii. 231).
' tu post carecta latebas ' {Ec. iii. 20).

Possibly several of the larger sedges are included
in this name, but the best claim to be Virgil's plant
is owned by that which still bears the names of
' carice ' and ' caretta.' This is Carex acuta, which
is common in Italy and its islands. The flowering
stems are some three feet long, and the leaves equal
them. It is rather common on the Thames and
other English rivers, and, as Virgil implies, no satis-
factory food for cattle.

Flower, April and May.

Italian names, Carice, Caretto, and Nocca.

26

Casia
Casia.

A. ' humiles casias ' (Ge. ii. 213).

1 casiae virides ' [Ge. iv. 30 ; cf. Ec. ii. 49).

B. 'nee casia liquidi corrumpitur usus olivi ' (Ge. ii. 466).

The two plants are quite distinct. The first is
a spurge -laurel (Daphne Gnidium), akin to the
spurge-laurel and the mezereon of our gardens. It
is a native of Italy, but seems not to occur on the
eastern side of the Apennines. It has a white flower,
which Virgil commends to bee-keepers, and a small
red berry, very acrid, but used in aperient pills under
the name of ' granum Gnidium.' The flowers were
used in garlands.

The second plant is the cinnamon of the Bible
(Laurus cinnamomum). It is an Oriental plant, and
was not cultivated in Italy, but the aromatic bark
was imported. It was used as a scent by men who
liked scent, with oil when used as an unguent, and
together with myrrh in funeral pyres.

Flower of Daphne, July to September.
Italian names of Daphne, Dittinella and
Erbacorsa.

Castanea.

'altae castaneae' (Ge. ii. 14).
' castaneas molles ' (Ec. i. 82).
1 castaneae hirsutae ' (Ec. vii. 53).
'castaneas . . . nuces ' (Ec. ii. 52).

The sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) is a tree of
uncertain provenance, for the fruit of which the

27

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

Latins had no single name. Pliny says, with some
reason, that it should rather be classed with the
glandes than with the nuces. The epithet of ' hirsutae
refers to the prickly covering and ' molles ' to the
roasted kernel, which was a common article of food.
Pliny thought little of it, and was surprised that
Nature had taken so much pains to protect so poor
a fruit. The best variety was known as Corellia,
and was supposed to have originated from a graft,
in which both stock and scion were of the same tree.
Chestnut bread was especially eaten by women at
fasting seasons.

In autumn the large leaves completely cover the
ground under the trees, whence comes Milton's
comparison :

' Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Vallombrosa.'

The chestnut was largely used for cutting in a
young state, the growth renewing itself rapidly, and
the stakes being much used as props for vines in
a ' vinea.' We still grow it in this way as material
for fences.

The timber of full-grown trees was useful in build-
ing, but some Roman architects objected to its
excessive weight.

Flower, June.

Italian name, Castagno.

28

Cedrus
Cedrus.

' odoratam stabulis accendere cedrum ' (Ge. Hi. 414).
'effigies . . . antiqua e cedro' (Ae. vii. 177).

The cedar of Lebanon was not known to the
ancient Italians, and did not come to England until
the year 1683, though it seems that before that the
name was given to some other conifer. Virgil's tree
is Juniperus oxycedrus, a native of central and western
Italy, and is hardly more than a shrub, though it
sometimes runs up to twelve feet. In early days wooden
statues were made of it. The purpose of burning
it in stables was to keep away snakes. Circe worked
at her loom by the light of a fire of perfumed juniper
(Ae. vii. 13). Virgil also couples the wood with
cypress as building and other timber (Ge. ii. 443).
The shrub refuses to grow satisfactorily in our
climate.

Flower, February.
Italian name, Appeggi.

Cepa.

1 cepa rubens . . . famem domat ' (Mor. 83).

The onion, Allium cepa, is probably a native of
Beluchistan, and had broken into several varieties
before the time of Aristotle. Its Italian uses were
much as ours. As a vegetable it was sometimes
served in a thick fish-sauce.

Flower, June.
Italian name, Cipolla.

29

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil
Cerasus.

' pullulat ab radice aliis densissima silva | ut cerasis '

{Ge. ii. 17).

Virgil makes no mention of the cherry which is
indigenous in the woods of Italy. This is the gean,
a tree without suckers, and with a dark and some-
what harsh fruit, from which is descended the
morello. Virgil's cherry is Prunus cerasus, which
produces many suckers, is rather a bush than a tree,
and affords a red and juicy fruit. It is the origin
of most of our cherries. The Romans held that it
was introduced into this country by Lucullus in
73 B.C., but it seems never to have taken rank as
a first-rate fruit. It was thought that they were
best gathered with the morning dew on them.
Eaten stone and all they were accounted a remedy
for the gout.

Flower, April.

Italian name, Visciolo.

Cerintha.

' cerinthae ignobile gramen ' (Ge. iv. 63).

Honeywort (Cerinthe aspera) is a common plant
in Italian fields and woody places, and is still called
1 cerinta.' It is allied to our garden lungworts, and
like some of them has leaves spotted with white.
The flowers are yellow, with a purple base. Virgil
joins it with balm as material for an ointment in-
ducing a swarm of bees to settle in a hive.

The epithet applied to it is difficult, for in habit

30

Cerintha

and blossom the plant seems no more to deserve
it than many others which he names. It has been
explained as an allusion to the general distribution
of the plant, but this is unsati.-factory. It seems
possible that Virgil refers to the little account made
of honeywort in the works of the Greek botanists.
One is reminded of 'the little northern plant, long
overlooked,' which Linnaeus chose to bear his own
name.

Flower, April and May.

Italian names, Cerinta, Scarlattina, and Erba-
tortora.

Cicuta.

1 disparibus septem compacta cicutis | fistula' (Ec. ii. 36).
'fragili cicuta' (Ec. v. 85).

Umbelliferous plants are notoriously difficult to
identify, and Virgil may have used our word of any
plant of that type which Shakespeare and North-
amptonshire folk call kexes — any large plant of the
order with hollow stems. It seems likely that what
was used for executions at Athens was not hemlock
but cowbane, to which Linnaeus gave the name of
Cicuta virosa. This cannot well be Virgil's plant,
for it is rare in Italy, and confined to the lands north
of the Apennines. The Latin cicuta was, however,
a poisonous plant, and may well have been what we
call hemlock (Conium maculatum). If so, Linnaeus
has transposed the names, giving to hemlock the
Greek name for cowbane and to cowbane the Latin
name for hemlock.

31

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

Hemlock is found throughout Italy and Sicily.
In a luxuriant state its stems would be too large for
a pan-pipe, but the smaller stems were of the right
size. Technically cicnta came to mean the piece
of stem between two joints of reed.

The plant is sometimes six feet high, and may
usually be recognized through the purple blotches
on the smooth stem.

Flower, June and July.
Italian name, Cicuta.

Colocasium.

' tellus | mixta . . . ridenti colocasia fundet acantho '

(Ec. iv. 20).

The caladiums, as our gardeners call them, of
which Virgil's species is Colocasia antiquorum, the
Indian taro, are akin to the arum or ' lords and
ladies ' of our woodlands. In Virgil's time they
were grown in Egypt, and the esculent roots im-
ported to Rome. They are not very good eating,
and Dioscorides recommends boiling them to make
them less sharp to the palate. According to Pliny,
the large leaves were made into the drinking cups
which Horace and Didymus call ' ciboria.' In later
days the plant was introduced into Italy, but, except
in the extreme south, it had to be protected with
mats against hard weather. In Sicily it has estab-
lished itself by the sides of streams.

Some of the American caladiums appear in state
at the Royal Horticultural Society's shows, and have

32

Colocasium

a violent sort of beauty, which commends them to
the stoves of Dives, but they do not excite the envy
of a mere Corycian. They have, however, some
value in sub-tropical gardening.

Flower, spring.

Italian name, Colocasia.

CORIANDRUM.

'exiguo coriandra trementia filo' (Mor. 90).

Coriander (Coriandrum sativum) is an umbel-
laceous plant, a native of the East, and cultivated
in very early times for the sake of its seeds. These
seeds are mentioned in the Book of Exodus. They
were used medicinally and in cakes. The word
* filum ' is used of the habit of a plant or possibly
of the stem. Our plant has a slender stem, and the
poet's description contrasts it with such stout kins-
men as ' ferula.'

Flower, May and June.

Italian name, Coriandola.

Cornus.

' lapidosa . . . corna' (Ae. iii. 649 ; Ge. ii. 34).

The cornelian cherry (Cornus mas), near akin to
our dogwood, is a native of Greece and Italy. It
grows to the height of fifteen feet, and in March its
yellow flowers are conspicuous on the leafless boughs.
It seems to have been for the sake of its flowers that
it was first cultivated, for Theophrastus tells us that

33 D

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

the fruit of the wild form was sweeter and better.
It is good for preserving, but in my garden is usually
cut off by frost.

Virgil's epithet cannot mean more than that the
fruit has a stone. He can hardly mean to speak ill
of it, for he says, though here he must be in error,
that it was sometimes grafted on the sloe. It is true
that in our first passage the marooned Achaemenides
complains that he had to live on ' victum infelicem,
bacas lapidosaque corna ' ; but it must be remem-
bered that he might regard even a fairly good fruit
as unnourishing when it was his only food. The
boy who plays the micher and eats blackberries,
though he likes them well enough, would be sulky if
on his coming home at night his mother said there
was nothing in the stew-pot. Pliny, indeed, had no
great fondness for cornels, for he says that they were
dried in the sun, like prunes, just to show that there
was nothing not created for man's belly.

In the early days of Rome the stem of the tree,
' bona bello cornus ' (Ge. ii. 448), was made into a
lance shaft. Hence in poetry ' cornus ' sometimes
means a lance (Ae. ix. 698, xii. 267). Better material,
such as the ash, was afterwards employed. Usually
the timber was too small for anything but wedges
and the spokes of wheels. For these its hardness
made it fit.

Flower, February.

Italian names, Corniolo and Crogniolo.

34

Corylus
Corylus.

' inter densas corylos ' (Ec. i. 14).
1 edurae coryli ' (Ge. ii. 65).

The hazel, Corylus Avellana, gets its specific name
from the Campanian town of Abella, where possibly
the filbert was first grown. The slopes of Palestrina
were also famous for nuts, which were therefore
often called ' nuces Praenestinae.' Virgil makes no
mention of the fruit, but Theophrastus compares its
flavour to that of olive-oil.

The tree was grown for firewood, and in Tuscany
you may still see women carrying home large faggots
of it standing upright in baskets bound to their
backs. Virgil forbids the planting of it among vines
(Ge. ii. 299). The reason is that its roots spread
and take much out of the soil. When the goat was
sacrificed as an enemy to the vines (ib. 390), the
spits on which the entrails were roasted were made
of hazel wood, and it may be supposed that these
spits also, as the product of an enemy to the vine,
were afterwards consigned to the flames.

Catkins, winter ; female flower, March.
Italian name, Nocciuolo.

Crocus.

' crocum . . . rubentem ' (Ge. iv. 182).
1 picta croco . . . vestis ' {At. ix. 614).

Of the crocus a dozen species are found in
Italy, but Virgil's plant is only the saffron (Crocus
sativusj, which gets its name from an Arabic word

35

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

for yellow. The perianth of the flower is purplish,
but the stigmata, from which the dye comes, are, as
Martyn says, of the colour of fire. It must, I think,
be to the stigmata that Virgil's epithet applies. The
dye is too distinctly yellow, and a yellow blush would
exceed even the ancient capacity for confounding
colours.

As a native plant the saffron extends from Kurdi-
stan to the Mediterranean, and some botanists regard
it as a native of Italy. Arcangeli, however, says
that it is only naturalized in his country, and Virgil
seems to hold that opinion, for he says that the
saffron perfume came from Tmolus, a range of
mountains in Lydia. Theophrastus, however, holds
that the best was made in Aegina and in Cilicia,
but he adds that the plant was plentiful about
Cyrene in North Africa. The Cilician brand was
generally preferred at Rome.

The product of the stigmata had three uses : as
a scent, as a dye, and as an ingredient in cookery.
As a scent it is coupled in the Song of Solomon with
spikenard, and at Rome mixed with wine it was
used as a spray in the theatres and on the floors
of rooms. Jt was also put into a pot-pourri. As
a dye for clothing it was regarded as somewhat
Oriental and luxurious. Virgil makes the fierce
Numanus, a primitive Italian, taunt the followers of
Aeneas with their yellow and purple robes : * Vobis
picta croco et fulgenti murice vestis ' {Ac ix. 614).
Nevertheless, Virgil must often have seen women
at least wearing it. For its abiding use in cookery

36

Crocus

we may refer to the clown in The Winters Tale,
who must have saffron, he says, to colour the warden
pies, but nowadays it seems to be supplanted by
cochineal.

Tennyson's line,

1 And at their feet the crocus brake like fire,'

must refer to C. aureus, which is not found in Italy.
It is the parent of our yellow crocuses. Our large
purple crocuses come from C. versicolor, which
grows in the hills by Nice and Mentone.

Flower, autumn.
Italian name, Zafferano.

Cucumis.

' tortus . . . per herbam j cresceret in ventrem cucumis '

(Ge. iv. 121).

The cucumber (Cucumis sativus) was of Eastern
origin and in early cultivation, and a lodge in a
garden of cucumbers is the Oriental equivalent of
Tony Weller's pike. Virgil's phrase is precise.

Some kind of garden frame, ' speculare,' was used
by Roman gardeners, but it is not clear whether as
early as Virgil's time. Columella says that frames
gave Tiberius his cucumbers in winter, and Martial
(viii. 14) implies that these ' specularia ' were no
rarities under Domitan.

Flower, summer.
Italian name, Cetriolo.

37

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil
Cucurbita.

'gravis in latum demissa cucurbita ventrem' (Mor. 76).

The original country of the pumpkins and gourds
is in some doubt. The kind named in our line is
perhaps Cucurbita Pepo, which was brought from
the Levant to England in the reign of Elizabeth.
By Columella's time there were several varieties in
Italy, perhaps some species and others hybrids.
Pumpkins were cheap food, and an economical or
niggardly entertainer could make of one fruit a dozen
different dishes by cutting it into different shapes
and cooking the sections in different ways.

Flower, summer.
Italian name, Zucca.

CUPRESSUS, OR CYPARISSUS.

' coniferae cyparissi ' (Ae. iii. 680).

' Idaeis . . . cyparissis ' (Ge. ii. 84).

'vittis atraque cupresso ' (Ae. iii. 64).

'ferales . . . cupressos ' (Ae. vi. 216).

' quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi ' (Ec. i. 26).

The cypress (Cupressus sempervirens) seems to
have travelled westward from the Taurus moun-
tains, and Virgil may be right in taking it for a
native also of the Caucasus (Ge. ii. 443). In speak-
ing of cypresses of Ida (ib. 84) he seems to have in
mind the belief of Theophrastus that the tree was
native in Crete. In travelling by railway in Italy
you may often descry on the hillside a square en-
closed by cypresses, whose fastigiate growth makes

38

Cupressus, or Cvparissus

them easy to recognize at a considerable distance.
The square is a cemetery, and you remember that
Virgil's epithet for the tree is ' feralis ' (Ae. vi. 216).
The association of the cypress with funerals seems
to be unexplained, for we can hardly accept Varro's
view that the trees sheltered the mourners from the
smell of the burning body. The timber was used in
house-building (Ge. ii. 443).

The cypress is probably a long-lived tree. When
Mrs. Piozzi visited the famous garden at Verona in
the year 1785 she asked how old the cypresses were,
and was told between four and five hundred years.
On visiting the garden some twenty years ago I put
the same question to the custodian and received the
same answer. To such consistency as this a change-
able mortal can but make a humble bow.

The meaning of ' coniferae,' as applied to our tree,
was disputed by the ancient commentators. Some
were for the obvious sense of cone-bearing. The
cones of the cypress, which are about an inch in
diameter, though less arresting than those of a fir,
are distributed over the whole tree. Other authori-
ties, pointing to Ovid's ' metas imitato cupressus,'
considered Virgil to mean that the leafy part of the
tree was shaped like the turning-post in a chariot race.

The cypress was sometimes grown to support
vines. In that case it was recommended to plant
the vine at some distance from the tree and train
it accordingly.

Flower, April.
Italian name, Cipresso.
39

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

Cytisus.

'florentem cytisum ' (Ec. i. 78, ii. 64).

' sic cytiso pastae distendant ubera vaccae' (Ec. ix. 31).

' nee cytiso saturantur apes' (Ec. x. 30).

'tondentur cytisi ' (Ge. ii. 431 ; cf. Ge. iii. 394).

Virgil's plant (Medicago arborea) is not wild in
the Cisalpine, and he probably made his first ac-
quaintance with it in the poems of Theocritus. In
Sicily it is somewhat common, and Theocritus
mentions it as food for goats. The plant, however,
is a native of Tuscany, and, as it was evidently con-
sidered valuable, it may have been cultivated in
Virgil's country. It is a tallish shrub, akin to the
clovers. Virgil's epithet seems to imply that as food
for goats it is best in the flowering season, which is
from May to July. Theophrastus says that it is
destructive even to trees, and it seems to have
hungry roots.

The fourth passage suggests that, as cattle and
goats are fond of the plant, farmers do well to
grow it.

Flower, May to July.

[I have never heard and cannot find any Italian
name for this plant. The name of citiso has been
transferred to the laburnum.]

Dictamnum.

1 dictamnum . . . puberibus caulem foliis et flore coman-
tem I purpureo' (Ac xii. 412).

Here we have a plant which Virgil can hardly

have seen, and whose description he took from

40

Dictamnum

others. The plant is Origanum dictamnus, a little
shrub with pink flowers, which is akin to marjoram.
The leaves, as Virgil says, are covered with thick
wool. Theophrastus was informed that they spoke
truth who said that if goats ate it when they had
been shot it ejected the arrow. With more truth
Pliny says that the leaves had some power to cure
wounds.

The plant was brought from Crete to England in
the reign of Edward VI., but our winters are too
hard for it, and it is not in general cultivation.

Flower, summer.
Italian name, Dittamo.

Ebulus.

' sanguineis ebuli bacis ' (Ec. x. 27).

The danewort, or dwarf elder (Sambucus ebulus),
is a very common weed in Italy, and still bears the
name of ebbio. It is rather like the elder, but is an
herbaceous plant, not a tree. The reddish-black
berries give a blue dye, but their colour, when
smeared on fresh, might be called red. It is said
that statues of Pan were painted red.

The plant has established itself here and there in
England, whither legend says it was brought by the
Danes. It is supposed to have been used by them
like woad as a dye for the human skin.

Flower, June.

Italian names, Ebbio, Lebbio, and Colore.

4i

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil
Eruca.

' venerem revocans eruca morantem ' (Mor. 85).

This little cruciferous plant, though called rocket
in some books, really has no English name. In
actual use the name of rocket is applied to some
species of brassica and hesperis. Our plant is Eruca
sativa, which in early spring bears a whitish flower
tinged with violet. It grows in fields and open
places, and its leaves are gathered for use in salads.
In this country it seems not to be in cultivation.

Flower, February to May.

Italian names, Rucola and Ruchetta.

Ervum.

1 quam pingui macer est mihi taurus in ervo ' (Ec. iii. 100).

This species of vetch, Vicia ervilia, is closely akin
to the lentil, but its flowers are pinkish, while those
of the lentil are white and smaller. Unlike the
lentil, it is regarded as a native of Italy, and is
cultivated there as fodder for cattle.

Flower, June.

Italian names, Mochi, Capogirlo, and Zirlo.

Faba.

' vere fabis satio ' (Ge. i. 215 ; cf. Ge. i. 74).

On the season for sowing the field bean (Vicia
faba) Virgil is not at one with the ancient Italian
authorities, who commend October or November.

42

Faba

But Virgil was a Gaul, and in the land of the Po
the bean was sown in February.

Italian botanists believe the bean to be of Asiatic
origin, while other authorities hold that it was de-
veloped from some native vetch. In Sicily the
young seeds are regarded as a fruit and eaten raw,
the outer skin being first removed.

Virgil recommends that in the rotation of crops
wheat should follow beans, ' laetum siliqua quassante
legumen.' The advice is sound, for it is now known
that leguminous plants have the property of fixing
the nitrogen of the air.

The meaning of 'siliqua quassante' is disputed.
I believe Martyn to be right in seeing a reference
to the method of threshing beans. The halms are
laid on the edge of the threshing-floor, and pushed
across it by the feet of three or four men, who as
they go beat the halm with sticks. The beans drop
on to the floor, the halm is bundled at the other end
of the floor, and winnowing is needless.

Beans were ground into meal, on which swine and
other beasts were fed. As food for man it took the
lowest rank, though it seems to have been frequently
eaten by artisans.

Flower, April to June.
Italian name, Fava.

Fagus.

' patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi '
(Ec. i. i ; cf. Ec. ii. 3, iii. 37, ix. 9; Ge. i. 173, ii. 71).

This name is etymologically identical with beech,
and in Latin and English keeps its meaning, which,

43

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

if it be connected with (fxiyelv, refers to the esculent
mast. In Greek the name was transferred to the
Valonia oak.

The beech (Fagus silvatica) is native to a trian-
gular region of which the points are Cilicia, Spain,
and Norway. Theophrastus says that in Latium
the beeches were splendid, and from them was
named the spur of the Esquiline called Fagutal.
Virgil's epithet is well illustrated by the great tree
at Knowle with its diameter of over a hundred feet.

The wood is used for carpentry and carpenter's
tools and for bowls and cups. Menalcas prizes the
beechen cups carved by Alcimedon, possibly a friend
of Virgil, whom he took this occasion to compliment
(Ec. iii. 37). When Cowley and Wordsworth speak
of the beechen bowl as characteristic of country life,
they probably follow Virgil, for in England the
maple was mostly used for this work. The fruit
or mast of the tree is included under the name of
' glans,' which also covers the fruit of all oaks. The
strength of the timber causes Virgil to recommend
the use of it for the staff of the plough. Thin planks
of it can, however, be bent, and thus it was the
usual wood for making the circular bookcases called
* scrinia.'

Groups of beech-trees were sometimes allowed to
stand until the trees were old and as timber worth-
less. We may hope that the love of beauty was in
part the cause of this uneconomic course, and regret
that it now has less force in Italy. Although Virgil
habitually blends Sicilian and Cisalpine scenery, it

44

Fagus

looks as though ' the old beeches, now broken tops,'
of the ninth Eclogue were a landmark on his Man-
tovan estate. Against this view it must be admitted
that nowadays the tree does not descend to so low
a level above sea. The shepherd in the fifth Eclogue
disfigures a young beech by cutting his song on it,
words and tune, and Gallus in the tenth may be sup-
posed to use the same tree for his

' Woeful ballads
Made to a mistress' eyebrow.'

Beech bark could be used as writing material, and
some editors think that the shepherd so used it.

Flower, April.
Italian name, Faggio.

Far.

'robusta . . . farra (Ge. i. 219).

'flava . . . farra' (ib. 73).

'farre pio . . .' (Ae. v. 745).

'mola . . . testatur deos ' (Ae. iv. 517).

'adorea liba' (Ae. vii. 109).

Spelt (Triticum spelta) is an inferior variety of
wheat (T. vulgare). The legend that wheat was the
invention of Osiris may perhaps mean that wheat
was developed from spelt in Egypt. Spelt was the
original corn of the Romans, and was never sup-
planted by wheat in ceremonial and sacrificial use.
Hence ' confarreatio ' was the original and remained
the most binding form of marriage. The grain was
called ' ador,' and the cakes made of it had associa-
tions like those of our pancakes and hot-cross buns.

45

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

Coarsely ground, partly roast, and mixed with salt,
it was called mola, and used in sacrifices and incan-
tations (Ec. viii. 84). In our third passage Virgil,
like Horace, uses ' far ' in the sense of mola. From
the latter comes the verb ' immolo,' to sacrifice.

Spelt is still cultivated in Italy on soils where
wheat fails. The covering of the grain is as ad-
hesive as that of barley.

The ' donatio adorea ' was in old agricultural
Rome the reward of a soldier for gallantry. Thus
1 adorea ' came to mean victory, and is so used in
a fine line by Horace, who calls the day of Metaurus

that

1 qui primus alma risit adorea.'

Like other esculent grasses, spelt broke into
several varieties. The best and whitest was grown
about Chiusi, but another white kind gave a heavier
crop. The kind called 'rutilum' had of course a
reddish grain, and was held in less account.

Italian name, Spelta.
Ferula.

'florentes ferulas et grandia lilia ' (Ec. x. 25).

This splendid umbelliferous plant (Ferula com-
munis), though not very common in Italy, is widely
distributed over the lower altitudes. The dark
green and finely divided leaves make a fine mound
in spring, and the flowering stem rises to six feet
and in cultivation much more. It was held that
this stem was the means by which Prometheus con-

46

Ferula

veyed fire from heaven, and the pith of it is still
used as tinder. Like the lily, it is in flower from
May to July. It grows well in our gardens, though
the earliest leaves are apt to be damaged by frost,
and it becomes a little ragged before the summer
is gone.

Pan's garland in our passage is one which a man
of little courage would hardly wear, but a god had
the appropriate stature. Images of Silvanus repre-
sent as large a chaplet.

In a dried state the stem was the school cane,
the mildest instrument of corporal punishment, the
climax being ferula, scutica, flagellum. It was also
an old man's walking-stick, and, if it was so used in
Greece, perhaps ought to supplant the clouded cane
in the Westminster Play.

Flower, April to June.
Italian name, Ferula.

Filix.

• filicem curvis invisam . . . aratris ' (Gc. ii. 189).

The bracken (Pteris aquilina) was as common in
Italy as it is with us. The stout rhizomes go very
deep and increase very fast. Though a modern
plough would make little of them, they could
doubtless be an obstacle to that which Virgil de-
scribes, and which is still used in the backward
districts of southern Italy.

Bracken was useful as litter for sheep (Ge. iii. 297)
and probably also for cattle, as it still is in Sussex

47

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

and other parts of England. Pliny says that the
rhizomes were given to swine to fatten them.

Italian name, Felce aquilina.

Fragum.

' humi nascentia fraga ' (Ec. Hi. 92).

The wild strawberry (Fragaria vesca) is abundant
in the hilly districts of Italy and Sicily. Although
the large strawberry had been developed before
Linnaeus assigned the specific name to our plant,
it seems not to have been a Roman plant. The
fruit of the wild kind was valued below its merits.
Of all table fruits it grew closest to the ground.

Flower, April and May.

Italian names, Fragola and Fravola.

Fraxinus.

' fraxinus in silvis pulcherrima ' (Ec. vii. 65).
'ingens | fraxinus' (Ge. ii. 65).
'fraxineae . . . trabes' (At. vi. 181).

The ash (Fraxinus excelsior) deserves Virgil's
epithet and its specific name, for it out-towers the
manna ash, and is sometimes nearly a hundred feet
high.

The timber had many uses. Poles of the younger
growth were used as supports for vines.

The leaves, like those of the elm, were habitually
stripped as food for cattle (Ec. ix. 60), as they still

48

Fraxinus

are in some parts of northern England. In Italy
the hot summers often cause a lack of herbage.

Flower, March and April.
Italian name, Frassina.

Frumentum.

Ge. i. 134, 150, 176, 189, ii. 205, iii. 176 ; Ae. iv. 406.

This is a general name for corn, especially spelt
and wheat, and when used without qualification
usually means wheat. Etymologically the word
seems to stand for frugimentum, and so is connected
with frux, fruor, fructus, and fruit.

Genista.

1 lentae . . . genistae ' {Ge. ii. 12).
'humiles . . . genistae' (ib. 434).

The fine yellow flowers of the Spanish broom
(Spartium junceum) have long been an ornament to
our gardens. It is common in southern Italy, and
and is found also in the north. It grows on the
plains and on dry and stony river banks. Virgil
counts it among bee plants. The rush-like and
almost leafless branches were used for withs to tie
up bundles and stalked fruits. Pliny adds that it
yields a yellow dye like its near kinsman, the dyer's
greenweed, which abounds in the Weald of Sussex.
Since the shrub grows to the height of eight feet,
a group of it might afford shade to the shepherd,
as it does in our second passage.

It is possible that the name may include also

49 *

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

the common broom (Cytisus scoparius), which is
common in the lower ground of Italy, and especially
magnificent round the ruins of Veii. It is highly
probable that it also includes the dyer's greenweed
(Genista tinctoria), which must certainly be the
plant of the ' Pervigilium Veneris.' All leaves have
flowers like enough in shape and colour to justify
the Romans in giving them one generic name.

Flower, April to July.

Italian names : Ginestra and Maggio (Spar-
tium).
Amareccioli, Estrici, Rug-
giulo, and Ginestra de'
Carbonaj (Cytisus).
Baccellina, Braglia, Cerretta,
and Ginestrella (Genista).

Harundo.

' fluvialis harundo ' (Ge. ii. 414).

' hie viridis tenera praetexit harundine ripas | Mincius '

(Ec. vii. 12).
' harundine glauca' (Ac x. 205).

'agrestem tenui meditabor harundine Musam ' (Ec. vi. 8).
' letalis harundo ' (Ac iv. 73).

Under this name there seem to be included two
species, Phragmites communis, the common reed,
and Arundo donax, the great reed. The former
covers large tracts of ground in most temperate and
some tropical regions, and it is a frequent fringe to
river banks. When Virgil calls his river green he
may be thinking not only of the banks but of the

50

Harundo

reflection of the reeds in the water. The reddish
panicle of the reed turns grey in autumn, as is im-
plied in our third passage.

Of the reed could be made pan-pipes and the
shafts of arrows. Plautus and other writers refer to
the use of it as thatch. Pliny seems to say that it
was so used mainly in the north, while other authori-
ties give the bulrush as the plant used for this
purpose in the south.

There were other uses for which the great reed
was more in demand. It formed the middle bar in
the loom, not, as some lexicons give it, the comb.
Pens were made of it and probably also thatch.
The long stems were used as supports for vines,
for knocking down olives which were too high on
the tree to be gathered by hand, and for fishing-
rods. Plashed alleys and pergolas were sometimes
constructed of it. For these purposes it is still
cultivated in Italy. In the warmer parts of England
it succeeds in gardens, but on cold soils it cannot
bear our frosts.

Flower, August and September.
Italian names: Canna (A.rundo).

Canna di palude (Phragmites).

5i

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil
Hedera, or Edera.

1 hederae nigrae ' (Gc. ii. 258).

1 hedera pallente' (Ec. iii. 39; cf. Ge. iv. 124).

' hedera formosior alba' (Ec. vii. 38).

' errantes hederas ' (Ec. iv. 19).

1 hedera crescentem ornate poetam '

(Ec. vii. 25 ; cf. Ec. viii. 13).

The ivy (Hedera helix) as an evergreen was sacred
to Bacchus, and, since wine was a source of in-
spiration, became one of the emblems of the poet.
Virgil claims it especially for the woodland poet,
who does not claim rank with Homer or Pindar.
He hopes that Pollio will place his protege's spray
of ivy among his own victorious bays. The berries
of the common ivy are black, but those of a rare
variety, H. chrysocarpa, are yellow, and Pliny says
that these were preferred for the poet's crown.
Virgil implies that the Corycian grew this variety in
his garden. According to Arcangeli, it grows in the
Neapolitan district and near Rome and Florence.
The gardener may have got it from Naples, whether
for the sake of its rarity and beauty or to give honey
to his bees. As it does not flower until September,
it would perhaps not be very valuable for the latter
purpose. Columella, however, says that ivy supplies
bees with very much honey, though it is not of the
best quality. It may be doubted whether Virgil
when he wrote the Eclogues had yet seen the yellow
fruited variety. He probably owed his knowledge of
it to Theocritus.

It is difficult to see why Virgil reckoned the

52

Hedera, or Edera

presence of ivy as a sign of a wickedly cold soil.
In such ground ivy flourishes, as may be seen in the
deep clay of some of our woodlands. It is true that
it flourishes as vigorously on limestone and other
warm soils.

Theophrastus says that dry sticks of ivy are the
best for lighting a fire, and they are. To obtain the
sacred spark of fire the Romans recommend the
rubbing of a piece of bay wood on a piece of ivy.

Flower, September.

Italian names, Edera and Ellera.

Helleborus.

' helleboros . . . graves ' (Ge. iii. 451).

The plant of which Virgil gives the Greek name
had also a Latin name, which Linnaeus gave to
the genus. Our species is lyngwort (Veratrum
album). Visitors of the Apennines and the Alps
are struck by its large plaited leaves and liliaceous
spike of flowers or, in August, of seeds, and it some-
times figures in our gardens. The poisonous quali-
ties of the thick rhizome were well known to the
ancients, though Lucretius and Pliny, while admit-
ting that this was mortal to man, held that the
leaves were fattening to goats. From my own ob-
servation I should say that they are always left un-
cropped. A decoction of the rhizome was accounted
a cure for madness. The recipe for it was possessed
by the inhabitants of Anticyra, an island in the
Malian gulf. Hence Horace's ' naviget Anticyram '

53

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

is a suggestion that his man is mad. Theophrastus,
however, held that the best variety grew on Mount
Oeta. Virgil, whose epithet refers to the poisonous
quality of the plant, recommends its use in a sheep-
dip, which by competent authorities is held to be
a very good one. Modern gardeners. use the pow-
dered rhizome to kill caterpillars.

Flower, June and July.

Italian names, Veladro and Elabro bianco.

Hibiscum.

' baedorum . . . gregem viridi compellere hibisco '

(Ec, ii. 30).
'gracili fiscellam texit hibisco' (Ec. x. 71).

From Dioscorides and Theophrastus we find that

our plant had three names : one that used by Virgil,

another that adopted by Linnaeus, while the third

was wild mallow. We call it the marsh mallow

(Althaea officinalis), and find it in sea marshes of

southern England. Its light pink flowers much

resemble those of its kinsmen, the mallows. The

flowering stem is sometimes four feet high, and

could be used as a wand in driving kids. It yields

a long and strong fibre, out of which the shepherd

in our second passage weaves a pliant basket, such

as we use for carrying fish. Virgil sometimes uses

an adjective where we use a noun. As he writes

' tenue aurum/ meaning threads of gold, so here he

writes ' gracili hibisco,' meaning fibre of mallow.

54

Holus

The basket would serve for letting whey out of
curdled milk.

Flower, May to July.

Italian names, Altea, Benefisci, and Mal-
vaccione,

Holus.

' rarum . . . holus ' (Ge. iv. 130).

This is a general name for kitchen garden stuff,
and ' holitor ' was a greengrocer. Virgil's epithet
means that the plants were set in rows.

In Italy, especially in the south, vegetables play
a larger part in the people's diet than with us. The
volcanic soil round Naples grows them excellently,
and in Taranto I have seen a heap of lettuce eight
feet high. Virgil names endive, celery, garlic,
cucumber, and caladium. Among others that he
must have known would be cabbage, turnip, lettuce,
nettle, onion, and globe artichoke. One of them
might be alexanders, whose bright green leaves
are conspicuous on the Dover cliffs. Little more
than a century ago Abercrombie gave directions
for growing and blanching it, but it has now dropped
out of use. Having tried it, I can hardly say that it
deserved a better fate.

Hordeum.

* fragili . . . hordea culmo ' (Ge. i. 317; cf. ib. 210).
Barley (Hordeum vulgare) was probably of Eastern
origin, and must have come early into cultivation.
In Palestine it was made into bread, and the tcpiOtvbs

55

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

olvos, which Xenophon came across in Asia, must
have been some kind of ale. The Greeks held that
barley bread strengthened the senses, and especially
the eyesight.

Pearl barley was made into a coarse porridge
called ' polenta,' a name afterwards transferred to
the finer porridge made of ground chestnuts, and
now used of the porridge made of maize. Pliny,
if his text be right, implied that the finer porridge
made of lentil meal was the earlier use of Italy, and
that they took the coarser porridge from the Greeks,
whose word for it is xovBpos.

Barley was given to mules as we give oats to
horses, but draught cattle were said to have no
liking for it.

Virgil accepts the Greek belief that barley, if ill
cultivated, would degenerate into darnel (Ec. v. 36).
His epithet contrasts the stem with the stronger
stem of wheat.

Italian name, Orzo.
Hyacinthus and Vaccinium.

' suave rubens hyacinthus ' (Ec. iii. 63).

' ferrugineos hyacinthos ' (Ge. iv. 183).

' latus niveum molli fultus hyacintho ' (Ec. vi. 53).

1 ille comam mollis iam tondebat hyacinthi ' (Ge. iv. 137).

' vaccinia nigra leguntur ' [Ec. ii. 18).

' et nigrae violae sunt et vaccinia nigra ' (Ec. x. 39).

It seems probable that ' vaccinium ' is the Latin
form of vaKivQoSy and in our last passage it takes its
place, Virgil following the line of Theocritus,

56

Hyacinthus and Vaccinium

<al to 'iov fieXav eVrt nal a yparrra vdnivdos.

Pliny's ' vaccinium ' is an entirely different plant.
He calls it a shrub, and it may possibly be the bilberry.

No ancient flower has stirred more controversy
than this, and it cannot be said that the identifica-
tion even now is beyond dispute. Columella has
caused some complication by speaking of hyacinths
not only as ' ferrugineos,' wherein he merely followed
Virgil, but also as ' vel niveos vel caeruleos ' and as
1 caelestis luminis.' We may, however, leave out of
account this sky-blue hyacinth, possibly the two-
leaved squill, for beyond doubt it is not the same
plant as Virgil's. It may, however, be well to bear
in mind that the Greeks applied the name to several
flowers, which do not greatly resemble each other,
and that probably among them are the squill, already
mentioned, the larkspur, and the flower which we
know as the hyacinth.

Let us start with the passage of Ovid in which, as
Martyn says, ' the form of the hyacinth is particularly
described.' The poet is describing what followed
the death of the youth Hyacinthus :

' Ecce cruor, qui fusus humi signaverat herbam,
Desinit esse cruor, Tyrioque intentior ostro
Flos oritur formamque capit quam lilia, si non
Purpureus color his, argenteus esset in illis.
Non satis hoc Phoebost, is enim fuit auctor honoris.
Ipse suos gemitus foliis inscribit, et ai ai
Flos habet inscriptum, funestaque litera ductast.'

Now, if this passage contained all our information,
there could be no doubt about our plant. There

57

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

is only one Italian species so near to the white lily
as to justify Ovid's word. This is Lilium bulbiferum,
with its variety, as Arcangeli ranks it, L. croceum,
which the Romans are not likely to have distin-
guished from the type. The figures in Curtis's
Botanical Magazine (L. candidum 278, L. bulbi-
ferum 1018, and L. croceum, given with a wrong
name, 36) show the likeness of these plants in habit
and perianth. The objection that nothing very like
letters can be found on them applies, I believe,
equally to any other Italian lily. I cannot resist
the conclusion that Ovid meant what our forefathers
called the red lily.

It does not, however, follow that Virgil's plant
is the same as Ovid's. Martyn supposed himself
to find both in the purple martagon, L. martagon
{B.M., 893). He sinks, as Johnson would have
said, the wide differences between this plant and
the white lily. In the latter the perianth is erect
and its divisions but little reflexed, while the mar-
tagon belongs to the Turk's-cap group, in which the
perianth is cernuous, and its divisions very much
rerlexed. The stem leaves of the martagon are in
distant whorls, while those of the white lily are
irregular and even crowded. It is hard to believe
that the martagon is Ovid's plant.

On the question of colour Virgil does not give us
much help, for his ' suave rubens ' and * ferrugineus '
have too wide a range. He applies both to the dye
of the Tyrian shell-fish. The ram in the fourth
Eclogue has his fleece coloured ' suave rubenti

58

Hyacinthus and Vaccinium

murice,' and in the Aeneid (xi. 772) the priest
Chloreus is described as ' peregrina ferrugine clarus
et ostro,' a phrase which must be taken as hen-
diadys. The Tyrian dye was probably both red
and purple, and ' rubens ' will cover both ; while
1 ferrugineus,' which is applied to objects of less cheer-
ful hue, such as Charon's boat (Ae. vi. 303) and the
gloom in the sky after Caesar's death (Ge. i. 467), not
only covers both but includes the tint of a dull and
lowering purple. That ' fulgor ' is ascribed to the
hyacinth (Ae. xi. 70) is rather against the martagon.
Last comes the matter of the inscription. In our
last passage Virgil omits the jpaTrrd of his original,
but he has a reference to it in the shepherd's riddle
(Ec. iii. 106),

1 Die quibus in terris inscripti nomina regum
Nascantur flores,'

to which the answer seems to be Afa?, who is Ajax.
Martyn says that on the martagon the dark spots
run together in such a manner as to form the
letters Al, ' which,' he naively adds, ' I have caused
to be represented in the figure.' It seems clear that
these marks had not run together on the specimen
supplied to Cole, who drew the illustration, for the
addition is stiff and unnatural. It may be com-
pared with Sowerby's figure in English Botany,
where the dark marks are drawn naturally. I grew
the martagon as a boy and I grow it now, and never
in half a century have I seen on it anything like
the letters which our good professor ' caused to be
represented.'

59

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

One objection that may be made to the claim of
the martagon applies equally to the red lily, if its old
name may still be used. It seems that neither of
them grows wild in Sicily. It is of course possible
that they become extinct, but in the case of the
martagon this is unlikely. As Mr. A. Grove says in
his monograph on the genus, it is the one lily that
will grow wherever the seed happens to fall. In
a copse at Mickleham it has so completely estab-
lished itself, southerner though it is, as to obtain
admittance to the English flora. It seems unlikely
that the martagon can be the written hyacinth of
Theocritus.

There is, moreover, a Sicilian flower the inside of
whose perianth bears marks, which do frequently
take the form of an A, with a smaller blotch after it,
which one could plausibly 'cause to be represented'
as an I. This is the corn-flag (Gladiolus segetum).
Of many specimens which I gathered near Selinunte
and near Catania almost all had marks, and about
one in five had the marks described above. A figure
of a kindred species, G. communis, is given in Eng-
lish Botany, but this has no marks that resemble
letters. It is against the corn-flag's claim and some-
what in favour of the martagon's that the shepherds
in Theocritus seek the hyacinth in the hills.

Flower: Lilies, July and August.
Corn-flags, April to July.

Italian names : Giglio Rosso (Lilium bulbi-
ferum).

60

Intubum

Italian names : Spaderello, Coltellaccio, Pan-
caciolo (Gladiolus).
Martagone (Lilium marta-
gon).

Intubum.

'amaris intuba fibris ' {Ge. i. 120).

1 potis gauderent intuba rivis' {Ge. iv. 120).

There is some uncertainty about this plant, but it
is probably endive, and some botanists hold that
endive is a cultivated form of Cichorium divaricatum,
a Mediterranean plant which is a rare native of
Italy. It is a salad plant, and being harder than
lettuce is of special value in the winter. It is best
blanched, since otherwise the bitterness of the leaves
is excessive. The same bitterness is found in the
root, and Columella may refer to the root or to the
leaves when he says that it is a stimulant to a torpid
palate. The plant is closely allied to succory or
chicory, of which various forms are grown both for
the root and for the blanched leaves. The form
of endive mostly grown in our gardens is said to
have been produced in China.

Flower, April to June.

Italian name, Endivia.

Ilex.

' ilice sub nigra' {Ec. vi. 54).
'sub arguta . . . ilice ' {Ec. vii. 1).
' opaca I ilice ' {Ae. vi. 208 ; cf. Ae. xi. 851).

The holm or holly-oak (Quercus ilex) is one of the
finest of Italian trees. There is a magnificent line

61

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

of them along the Galleria di sopra near Albano,
but the tree does not go high into the Apennines.
The leaves are much darker than those of the
common oak and usually untoothed, and the tree
is evergreen. In a wind there is a harsh rustling
in the leaves. The acorns, which are small but
plentiful (Ge. iv. 81), are food for swine {Ge. ii. 72 ;
Ae. iii. 390). The wood was used for making water-
troughs {Ge. iii. 330). Bees, says Virgil, sometimes
establish themselves in the body of a decaying holm-
oak {Ge. ii. 453).

In England the tree has been grown since Eliza-
beth's time, and attains full stature, but is apt to
divide into two or more stems. Perhaps the finest
specimen is one in the town of Uckfield.

The gall, ' coccum,' which yields a scarlet dye,
seems to be most common on Q. coccifera, but our
ancient authorities say that it was also found on the
holm-oak.

Flower, April and May.
Italian name, Elice.

Inula.

' malvaeque inulaeque virebant ' {Mor. 73).

Elecampane (Inula Helenium) is found here and
there in Italy as in England, but appears to be
nowhere very common. My own plants generally
produce a few self-sown seedlings. It was cultivated
for its bitter root, which were used both as a table
vegetable and as a medical remedy. It was boiled

62

Inula

with vinegar. The plant is worth growing in rough
places for the sake of its large leaves and bold com-
posite heads of yellow blossom, but it goes ragged
rather early.

Flower, July and August.
Italian name, Elenio.

Juncus.

' limoso . . . palus obducat pascua iunco ' {Ec. i. 49).
' aiiquid . . . quorum indiget usus | viminibus mollique
paras detexere iunco' (Ec. ii. 71).

Under this name are included our common plait-
ing rushes, Juncus effusus and J. conglomeratus, and
probably other species. Both kinds are too common
in the marshy lands round Mantova, and, although
the first Eclogue gives us a deliberate confusion of
Cisalpine and Sicilian scenery, it is probable that
Virgil's father had to fight against a w7eed which
cattle will not eat. In the passage of Theocritus
which Virgil follows the rushes are woven into
baskets. They were also used for making ropes,
the use of hemp fibre being unknown. Larger ropes
were made of flax.

Flower, June and July.
Italian name, Giunco.

Juniperus.

' stant et iuniperi ' (Ec. vii. 53).
' iuniperi gravis umbra' [Ec. x. 76).

The common juniper (Juniperus communis), as it
grows on the South Downs, is a somewhat scrubby

63

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

object, but in favourable positions becomes a shapely
tree eighteen or twenty feet high. It is very common
in Italy and attains this height in the lower country.
It owes its name, which means Juno's pear, to its
sweet and fragrant fruits, which do not ripen until
the second summer. The seeds, which in later
times flavoured gin, may also have been eaten.

The Italians have a proverb, ' Dove non viene il
Sole, non viene la Santa.' This applies to the
houses, and out of doors the hour after sunset, to
which our second passage refers, is accounted un-
healthy. I know no reason why the shade of the
juniper should be accounted especially baneful.

Flower, February to April.

Italian names, Ginepro and Zinepro.

Labrusca : see Vitis.

Lactuca.

' grata . . . nobilium requies lactuca ciborum ' (Mor. 76).

The lettuce (Lactuca sativa) is held by Italian
botanists to have been developed out of their native
species, L. scariola. In earlier Roman days it
ended the meal, but afterwards was hors d'ceuvre at
the beginning, and was accounted an appetizer. As
with us, lettuces were blanched. This, however, was
done, not by tying up, but by putting stones on the
plant, much as we treat endive. There were at
least two varieties, of which one had a brownish leaf.

Flower, July to October.

Italian name, Lattuga.

64

Lappa and Tribulus
Lappa and Tribulus.

' lappaeque tribulique' (Ge. i. 153, iii. 385).
It is clear from Pliny that ' lappa ' is the airapivq
of Theophrastus, and it is clear that Theophrastus'
plant is goose-grass or cleavers (Galium Aparine),
and not burdock, as it figures in lexicons. Virgil
might well recommend its extirpation where sheep
were kept for wool. Not only the globular seed-
heads but even the stems and leaves cling to a
fleece. It was to protect the fine fleeces against
cleavers as well as against marruca and other thorns
that the Tarentine farmers clothed their sheep with
coats of hide. Greek irony stamped its clinging way
with the name of the philanthropic plant. With us
it grows mostly in hedges and waste places, but
Pliny notes that it was a pest in cornland.

In both our passages it is coupled with 'tribulus,'
which is the star thistle (Centaurea calcitrapa). In
this plant the involucral bracts end in long spines
capable of doing much damage, and it owes its
specific name to its likeness to a caltrop. The
spines remain when the flower has faded, and made
Pliny say that the plant is peculiar in that the fruit
as well as the flower is spinous. The plant, common
in Italy, occurs occasionally in southern England,
as on the coast round Dover.

Flower : Lappa, April to September.
Tribulus, July and August.
Italian names : Speronella, Attacca-mani, At-

tacca-veste (Galium).
Calcatreppola, Ippofesto,
Ceceprete (Centaurea).
65 F

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil
Laurus.

' Parnasia laurus ' (Ge. ii. 18).

' virgulta sonantia lauro ' (Ae. xii. 522).

In our gardens the name of laurel has been
usurped by an evergreen cherry, which came from
the Levant in the days of Charles II. The true
laurel is the bay (Laurus nobilis), from which we
get camphor and cinnamon. Associated with the
legend of Daphne, its name in Greek, it became
sacred to Apollo (Ae. iii. 82, 360). A soldier bore
it in a triumph to indicate that he was sanctified
from the pollution of blood. Sprays of it were
burnt in incantations and to get omens from the
crackling (Ec. viii. 83). It was also valued for its
aromatic scent, and Corydon joins it in his nosegay
with the myrtle (Ec. ii. 54). Virgil tells the farmer
to gather the berries in the winter (Ge. i. 306) ;
they yield a scented oil.

The bay is not uncommon in southern Italy, but
I do not know any thickets of it such as are de-
scribed in our second passage as victims of a forest
fire. It is propagated by suckers (Ge. ii. 18).

Flower, March.
Italian name, Alloro.

Lens.

' Pelusiacae lentis ' (Ge. i. 228).

The lentil (Vicia lens), a small blue -flowered
vetch, was one of the first leguminous plants to be
cultivated. Its native country is uncertain, but

66

Lens

Italian botanists think that Virgil may be right in
assigning it to Egypt. Others hold that it was
developed in Italy out of some other vetch with
smaller and less valuable seeds. Ancient authorities
agree with Virgil that it should be sown in Novem-
ber, but those who wish to grow it in England
would do well to wait till March and choose a warm
spot. In our climate it is of less value than the
Dutch brown bean and other varieties of Phaselus
which we owe to America. The seeds are imported
in considerable quantities for use as a vegetable and
in soup.

The turn of Virgil's phrase must imply either that
lentils are of less value than corn or that their culti-
vation is so easy that a scientific farmer might leave
it to less able hands.

Flower, July and August.

Italian names, Lente and Lenticchia.

LlGUSTRUM.

' alba ligustra cadunt ' {Ec. ii. 18).

It were much to be desired that our English
gardeners shared Corydon's contempt for the privet
(Ligustrum vulgare), against which Mr. William
Robinson has waged a righteous war almost in vain.
The wretched shrub claims the power of resisting
London smoke, and one is minded to wish that it
could not. However much it is planted, perhaps no
one chooses to gather its sickly smelling flowers.
The shrub is closely akin to the olive and the ash,

67

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

who, it must be allowed, do their best to hide their
relationship to their ugly cousin. Regretfully I feel
bound to quote Tennyson :

' A skin
As clean and white as privet when it flowers.'

Martyn endeavoured to identify our plant with the
great bindweed (Convolvulus sepium), whose large
white and bell-shaped flowers adorn our hedges, and
whose throttling stems are sometimes a pest in
gardens. But this plant appears in Pliny under the
name of convolvulus together with a synonymous
worm or caterpillar, and it seems clear that Ligus-
trum was a shrub. It is a pity, for the flowers of
the bindweed are much of a size with those of the
red and white lilies, and, if ' hyacinthus ' or ' vac-
cinium ' be the red lily, Virgil's contrast is better
than one between privet and martagons or corn-flags
or aught else.

Flower of privet, June.
Italian name, Ligustro.

Lilium.

' alba lilia' (Ge. iv. 130; Ae. xii. 69).

' Candida lilia ' (Ae. vi. 709).

' Ac-rentes ferulas et grandia lilia ' (Ec. x. 25).

Lilium candidum, which some call St. Joseph's
lily, is equally conspicuous in Italian paintings and
in English cottage gardens, though of late a
scoundrel fungus has done it much harm. It occurs
sparingly in Italy, but may well have been more

68

Lilium

common in ancient days, and it is the only lily
which is a native of Sicily. Virgil names it as a
bee plant (Ae. vi. 709).

Flower, May to July.
Italian name, Giglio.

Linum.

' urit enim campum lini seges ' (Ge. i. 77).
' velati lino ' (Ae. xii. 120).

The reading in the latter passage is doubtful, and
many editors accept ' limo.'

The manufacture of linen dates back to prehis-
toric times. The earliest linen seems to have been
made of flax supplied by the fibrous bark of Linum
angustifolium, a native of the Mediterranean region
and of north-west Europe. This plant is some-
times annual, sometimes perennial, but is inferior to
L. usitatissimum, an annual, which was perhaps a
native of Asia Minor, though now it seems to occur
only in cultivation or as a relic of it. In Italy it
seems to have been grown to no great extent and
only for the oil of its seeds, linen being imported
from the East. Another product of flax is cambric,
and both this and linen were and are used in the
vestments of priests. Fishing nets were made of
the fibre (Ge. i. 142).

Virgil's observation that flax ' runs ' the soil is
confirmed both by ancient and by modern observa-
tion, and some of the Roman authorities would on
that account dissuade farmers from growing it.

69

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

Columella in particular says it should be grown only
in districts where it commands a high price.

The plant is sometimes grown in our gardens for
its blue flowers, but in beauty it is excelled by
L. Narbonense, a perennial, and a native of Liguria,
Lombardy, and Corsica.

Flower, April and May.
Italian name, Lino.

Lolium.

'infelix lolium' (Ec. v. 37; Ge. i. 154).

Great poets often retain a sense of the original
meaning of words, and here Virgil's epithet, which
at first meant ' unsuckling,' evidently means ' un-
feeding.' Lolium temulentum, the drunken darnel,
as Linnaeus called it from its supposed effects, is
a grass near akin to rye, and is the plant which the
enemy in the parable sowed in the corn. It was an
ancient superstition among farmers that in a bad
season wheat seeds degenerated into darnel. The
qualities of the plant have long been matter of
dispute. Hooker describes it as very poisonous, but
the seeds have often been eaten with impunity. It
seems, however, to be liable to the attacks of a
minute fungus, which either is poisonous itself or
creates a toxic power in the host plant. In either
condition it so affects the eyesight as to create one
of the symptoms of intoxication. Arcangeli tells us
that in Italy it grows everywhere in the corn. With
us it is only a colonist and, though widely dis-

70

Lolium

tributed, nowhere a common plant. It may be well
distinguished from rye-grass by its annual duration
and its long awns.

Italian name, Loglio.

Lotus.

' genus haud unum . . . loto ' (Ge. ii. 83).
'lotos ' (Ge. iii. 394).

It was recognized by Theophrastus that many
plants called lotus had nothing in common but the
name, and our passages refer to very different
species. The first is an enumeration of trees whose
genera have more than one species, and the tree
named is the nettle-tree (Celtis Australis). Though
closely akin to the elm and the nettle, it has for its
fruit a blackish drupe the size of a pea. Ovid and
Martial call it aquatic, but according to Arcangeli
its usual habitat is the debris of rocks. It has
somewhat ovate leaves with pubescent under-
surfaces. The wood was used for ' cardines ' — that
is, the uprights to which the planks of a door were
fastened, and which seem to survive in the pin of
a hinge. What tree Virgil classed with it there is
nothing to show.

The ' lotus ' of our second passage is described as
good food for milch ewes. It probably covers
several species which still bear its name, and, if it
is the plant of Theophrastus, especially L. tenuis
and L. ubiginosus. These are of the same genus
as the bird's-foot trefoil or butter-and-eggs of our

71

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

fields. This is commended as fodder by agricultural
authorities, and some think that it is Virgil's plant.
Martyn took it for the white water-lily, but it seems
unlikely that this would be eaten by sheep, and
Martyn was misled by the mention in Theophrastus
of another ' lotus,' which has been identified with one
of the Nile water-lilies, which is not found in Italy.

Flower : Celtis, April and May.
Lotus, May and June.
Italian names : Arcidiavolo, Spaccasassi, and
Lotu (Celtis).
Mullaghera (Lotus).

LUPINUS, OR LUPINUM.

' tristis . . . lupini . . . f ragiles calamos silvamque sonantem '

(Ge. i. 75).

The common lupin (Lupinus albus) is of uncertain
origin, but is possibly wild in some parts of the
northern Apennines, and has long been cultivated
in the Mediterranean region.

The epithet of ' tristis ' may refer to the slight
bitterness of the seeds, but possibly implies a false
etymology. Virgil may, in spite of the quantity of
the vowel, have derived lupin from Xinrrj, pain.
There can, however, be little doubt that the word
must be classed with foxglove and harebell and the
many plant names which come from beasts. It is
the plant of ' lupus,' the wolf.

The lupin is grown both for the seeds and as
fodder, and thus, as Pliny says, is eaten both by

72

Lupus, or Lupinum

man and by beast. Moreover, like other leguminous
plants, it was grown for the manurial value of the
nitrogen which it secretes. Palladius recommends
sowing it in September and ploughing the crop in.
It is still largely grown in Campania.

Virgil had observed that, when the crop is har-
vested, the seeds rattle in the large pod.

Our garden lupins are mostly American, and have
been much hybridized and improved under culti-
vation.

Flower, April and May.
Italian name, Lupino.

Lutum.

' aries . . . mutabit vellera luto' {Ec. iv. 43).

The common dyer's weed or weld (Reseda luteola)
is to be found in many parts both of Italy and of
England. It is nearly akin to mignonette and may
be recognized by the likeness in flower and seed
vessel. ( It yields a yellow dye, which is obtained by
boiling the whole plant when in flower, though the
colouring matter is strongest in the seeds. In com-
merce the dye is known as Dutch pink. Blue cloths
dipped in it turn green. /

Flower, May and June.

Italian names, Biondella and Guaderella.

Malus.

The general word for fruit was ' poma.' This
included 'mala,' the larger fleshy fruits, * nuces,' all

73

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

nuts, and also what we call bush fruits and others,
such as plums, for which there was no divisional
name. Virgil uses ' malus ' of three trees, two of them
belonging to the natural order of Rosaceae and the
third to Aurantiaceae, and possibly of a fourth.

A. Apple: Pyrus malus.

' mutatam . . . insta mala | ferre pyrum ' {Ge. ii. 34).
1 steriles platani malos gessere valentes ' (ib. 70).

These passages probably refer to the apple. In
Italy it seems to bewray a foreign origin by its
dislike for the hot summers. It could be grafted
on the pear but not on the plane, to which it is not
akin. The earliest apple was musteum or melimelum,
our summering, the best keeper the amerine.

B. Quince : Pyrus cydonia.

'malo me Galatea petit' (Ec. iii. 64).
1 aurea mala ' (ib. 71).

The former of these passages may refer to the
apple, but, as the quince was sacred to Venus and
the thrown apple is a challenge to love, it may well
be the quince. Virgil took his phrase here from
Theocritus. At Athens, as is pretty clear from
Aristophanes, this method of making love was con-
fined to Doll Tearsheet and her kind. A modern
quince of the pear-shaped type would be a clumsy
pellet in a girl's hand, but the fruit may well have
grown larger under cultivation. The ancient authori-
ties mention several varieties, and with us one is
occasionally found which has an apple-shaped fruit.

74

Malus

The association of the quince with love was not
destroyed by Christianity. It may be that the
quinces, for which the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet
said they were calling in the pantry, were appro-
priate to the impending marriage, though throwing
them was out of fashion, and indeed Romeo had no
need of missile hints.

The quince came westward by way of Crete, and
its name is derived from kvScoviov, the apple of
Cydonis, the Cretan city.

There are other passages in Virgil of which we
must say that he may have meant either apples or
quinces or both. Such are the jilted lover's wish for
an inverted world, ' mala ferant quercus ' (Ec. viii. 54),
and the reference to ' malifera Abella ' (Ae. vii. 740),
The town, now Avella Vecchia, is in Campania, and
had a renown for nuts as well as for soft fruit. The
fruit of the Hesperides (Ec. vi. 61) were probably
thought of as quinces, and Ovid calls them ' aurea
poma.' He also describes the leaves as ' fulva,' a
poetic exaggeration, which shows that his fruit had
in it a touch of the mythical.

The phrase ' roscida mala ' has been variously
interpreted. Conington and other editors, following
Servius, see a reference to the morning dew, while
others take the epithet to be specific of a distinct
fruit. The former interpretation is supported by
the phrase of Theocritus, ra p68a ra SpocroevTa, and
more decisively by the Roman belief, mentioned by
Pliny, that some fruits were best gathered with the
morning dew on them. Moreover, when Propertius

75

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

speaks of ' roscida poma ' (I. xx. 36) he seems to mean
fruits splashed by the fountain into which Hylas was
drawn by the nymphs.

Of the phrase in Ec. ii. 51, ' cana legam tenera
lanugine mala,' it is difficult to make anything. The
editors say quinces, but this ignores ' cana.' There
were, however, three varieties of the quince, and one
of these may have had a more hoary skin than the
chrysomela. Our own pear-shaped fruit has a lighter
skin than the apple-shaped and the Portuguese
varieties, both cultivated in this country. The
peach, which Virgil's description might suit, seems
to have been of later introduction.

C. Citron : Citrus medica (Ge. ii. 126-135).

The Latin name for the citron was usually Malus
medica and sometimes Malus Persica, a use which
has caused some confusion with the peach. Virgil's
account of it is his one attempt to describe from
literary sources a tree of which he can have seen
only the imported fruit. The tree is of Persian
origin, and one variety of it is well known as the
West Indian lime, of which Mrs. Soorocks gave one
withered specimen to Bailie Waft. Virgil took most
of his description from Theophrastus, but adds one
or two touches whose origin I have failed to trace.
Moreover, his text had one corrupt word, which is
correct in the extant manuscripts, but corrupted in
some which were seen by Athenaeus, who mistook
the corrupt for the correct.

The points which Virgil takes from Theophrastus

76

Malus

are that the tree is fragrant, that it is a remedy
against poison, and that it sweetens the breath.
The taste of the fruit probably came from his own
observation, though it was not regarded as esculent.
The points which he adds are that the leaves are not
shaken off by the wind and that the petals are slow
to drop. The point in which he followed the false
reading in Theophrastus is the comparison of the
leaves to those of the bay. The right reading is not
hdcfivris, the bay, as Virgil and Athenaeus found it
in their copies, but avSpdxXrjs. This is Arbutus
Andrachne, a Greek tree with oblong and blunted
leaves like the citron's, whereas the leaves of the
bay are acute. Thus Virgil's mistake enables us to
restore to his copy of Theophrastus a reading not
found in the extant manuscripts and not correct.

From Theophrastus and Macrobius we may add
that the fruit was placed among clothes to protect
them from moths, and Macrobius ventures to
surmise that Homer's OvcoBea 'Feifiara owed their
scent to the citron.

In Imperial times the citron was grown in Italy,
but in winter it was necessary to protect the trees
with mats stretched over pillars as lemon-trees are
now protected at Said on the Lake of Garda.

Flower of Apple and Quince, May.
Italian names : Melo (apple) ; Cotogno
(Quince) ; Cedro (Citron).

77

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil
Malva.

' Malvaeque inulaeque virebant ' (Mor. 73).

Of the eight species of mallow native to Italy
more than one may be included under this name,
but it is chiefly applied to our common roadside
plant, Malva silvestris. The leaves of it were used
as a salad and a pot-herb, and were accounted
among the most digestible of foods. The Greeks
did not eat it uncooked. English children are fond
of the nutty unripe seeds, which from their shape
are called cheeses, but I know no evidence of a like
fondness in Italy. Horace, if the stanza be not
spurious, couples mallow with chicory as the food
of a man of simple tastes.

Flower, March to October.
Italian name, Malva.

Medica {Ge. i. 215).

Lucern (Medicago sativa) appears to be native on
dry banks in the Apennines, though according to
Hooker it is known only in cultivation. He suggests
that it may be a cultivated form of M. falcata, a
yellow-flowered medick which has established itself
in East Anglia. The flower of lucern is blue or
purple. Its name of MtjSlkt] refers to a supposed
Persian origin of the plant, but I do not find that
it occurs in Asia either wild or cultivated. It is still
the chief fodder crop in some parts of Italy. The
plant is perennial and was sometimes allowed to
stand for ten years. It had the further value that it

78

Medica

could be mown six times or in favourable seasons
even ten times a year.

Flower, May to September.
Italian name, Erba Medica.

Melisphyllum.

' adsperge . . . trita melisphylla ' (Ge. iv. 63).

Balm (Melissa officinalis) is a labiate plant, native
in Italy and long in cultivation. It has a scent like
that of the citron. Virgil enjoins the mixing of its
pounded leaves with honeywort to induce bees to
swarm, and it is still sometimes used in the South
of England to smear on a skep. The plant sup-
plies a tonic oil which at one time was much used
in drink for a sick person. Largely grown for this
purpose it has naturalized itself here and there in
southern England. Its scent is like that of the
sweet verbena (Aloysia citriodora). Anne Page bids
her elves scour the chairs of Windsor Castle with
juice of balm, and the plant was common in the
monastic gardens of the Middle Ages.

Flower, July to September.
Italian names, Appiastro, Cedronella, and
Citraggine.

Milium.

'milio venit annua cura' {Ge. i. 216).

Millet (Panicum miliaceum) came from the East,
but probably, unlike wheat, not from the great
plains, for it does better on hilly ground, and can

79

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

withstand much drought. It is still cultivated in
Italy in dry and hilly fields. It will be remembered
that it is one of the six components of the bread
of which, according to Ezekiel (iv. 9), the Israelites
were to eat for three hundred and ninety days.

Italian name, Miglio.

Morus.

' sanguineis frontem mods et tempora pingit ' (Ec. vi. 22).

The black mulberry (Morus nigra) is an Asiatic
tree, which was early in cultivation, and may well be
the tree in whose tops King David was to hear the
sound of marching. It came into England in the
reign of Edward VI. The colour of the berries is
near enough to that of blood to justify Virgil's epithet,
and indeed is ascribed by Ovid to the blood of
Pyramus, who killed himself under a mulberry, as
he does in A Midsummer-Night's Dream.

The word ' morum ' is applied to other like berries,
such as the blackberry. In modern Italy the name
of ' moro ' has been transferred to the white mul-
berry, whose fruit is a very pale red. This was a
tree of later introduction, but is now much the more
common in Italy. It is planted as food for silk-
worms, and in some parts of Emilia, perhaps also
elsewhere, it supports the vine.

Flower, April and May.
Italian name, Moro.

80

M uscus
Muscus.

'stagna virentia musco ' (Ge. iv. 18).

' muscosi fontes ' (Ec. vii. 45).

' flumina, muscus ubi et viridissima gramine ripa '

(Ge. iii. 144).

The name seems to be applied especially to the
larger mosses and their kindred, sphagnum and
others, which grow in damp ground.

Myrica.

' ilium . . . etiam flevere myricae ' (Ec. x. 13).

1 te nostrae, Vare, m)rricae, | te nemus omne canet '

(Ec. vi. 10).
' humiles . . . myricae ' (Ec. iv. 2).

The tamarisk (Tamarix Gallica) is a familiar
object on the Sicilian coasts, and figures as such in
Theocritus. From him Virgil must have taken it,
for he is not likely to have seen the shrub in his
youth, though it is occasionally found by inland
marshes. Another species of the genus was sacred
to Apollo, and doubtless Virgil alludes to this. Thus
he takes it as the emblem of the pastoral poet, coup-
ling it with the vineyards whereof he sings. In
Ec. viii. 54 the shepherd refers to tamarisks pro-
ducing amber as a thing that could not be.

In Cornwall the shrub is used for hedges, its
slender leaves enabling it to defy the Atlantic gales.

Flower, April and May.

Italian names, Tamarice and Brula.

81

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil
Myrtus.

' Paphiae . . . myrtus ' (Ge. ii. 64).

' amantes litora myrtus ' (Ge. iv. 124).

The graceful habit and pleasing scent of the
myrtle (Myrtus communis) brought it early into
cultivation, and the Hebrew poets made it supplant
the thorn and the brier in the new earth. Indeed,
though now well established in Italy, it is possibly
of Oriental origin. In Theophrastus' time there
were already several varieties, and he notes that the
one which grew on the Tyrrhene coast was of dwarf
habit. This is possibly the Tarentine or small-leaved
variety, which is still in cultivation. The tree seldom
exceeds twelve feet in height, and Sir Arthur Hort
does Theophrastus an injustice in making him say
that some myrtles are large trees.

The myrtie is common on south Italian coasts,
and between Taranto and Reggio often makes a con-
siderable scrub, though it is sometimes swept away
by the spring floods of the fiumicini. Its liking
for the shore perhaps accounts for its dedication to
Venus, to whose temple at Paphos Virgil's epithet
alludes. To compliment Octavian on his supposed
descent from Aeneas Virgil makes the world crown his
temples ' materna myrto ' (Ge. i. 28), with the favourite
sprays of his divine ancestress. Even in Hades
luckless lovers live in a grove of myrtle (Ae. vi. 443).

In early days the myrtle, like the cornel, supplied
shafts for spears, ' validis hastilibus ' (Ge. ii. 447),
but for this purpose it was supplanted by the ash.
When Virgil makes Camilla carry ' pastoralem prae-

82

Myrtus

fixa cuspide myrtum ' (Ac vii. 817) he perhaps implies
that as a warrior the Volscian damsel, for all her
gallantry, was something of an amateur.

Virgil in his boyhood can have known the myrtle
only as a cultivated plant, for the winters of Mantova
are too severe for it to grow without protection, and
Menalcas has to defend it against the frosts with
mats (Ec. vii. 6). Even at Rome the two trees in
the sanctuary of Quirinus, known as the patrician
and the plebeian myrtle, may sometimes have called
for like protection. The Sicilian Corydon, who joins
it in his nosegay with the bay (Ec. ii. 55), could leave
it undefended.

The skin of the berry is blackish, but the vinous
juice is near enough in colour to blood for an ancient
to call the berries ' cruenta ' (Gc i. 306). They were
gathered in winter and mixed with wine as a remedy
for the colic and for toothaches.

Flower, July.
Italian name, Mirto.

Narcissus.

' sera comantem | narcissum ' (Ge. iv. 122).
' purpurea narcisso ' (Ec. v. 38).
'narcissi lacrimam' (Ge. iv. 160).

This name covers several species, and it is prob-
able that the ' purple ' narcissus is the pheasant's
eye, N. poeticus, or poet's narciss, the epithet having
the same sense us in Shelley's ' purple swans.' The
tear is that of the youth who was changed into the

83

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

flower, though in fact the plant has nothing that
can be called lacrima. Evidently the word is taken
from Bd/cpvov, which means a bulblet formed in the
axles of the leaves as in the tiger-lily. Virgil says
that the bees use this tear for the foundation of the
combs or, as Mr. Royds interprets it, the propolis
by which the comb is glued to the hive. Here the
poet cannot have been writing from his own observa-
tion, but he returns to it when he adds that the bees
also use glue gathered from trees.

The flower of our first passage can be certainly
identified through two statements of Theophrastus.
He says that the plant blossoms in autumn and that
the scape appears before the leaves. The only species
which answers to this statement is N. serotinus. It
agrees also with the rest of Theophrastus' descrip-
tion. It has a white perianth with a yellowish cup,
and it blossoms in September. Virgil's phrase im-
plies that there are vernal species as well.

The plant is not common in Italy, but it is found
near Otranto, and the old Corycian may well have
got it thence. Virgil does not actually state that
his acquaintance grew it, but he seems to imply as
much.

Flower, April and May (N. poeticus) ; Sep-
tember (N. serotinus).

Italian names, Fior-magga, Narciso, Giracapo,
(N. poeticus).

(The autumn narcissus is nowhere common enough
to have received a popular name.)

8+

Nasturtium

Nasturtium.

' trahunt acri voltus nasturtia morsu ' (Mor. 84).

Cress (Lepidium sativum) is an Egyptian plant
which came early into cultivation for use in salads.
Its name it got from the pungency which twists the
nostril. We avoid an excess of pungency by eating
the plant in a young state.

Flower, spring and summer.
Italian name, Crescione.

Nux.

' contemplator item cum nux se plurima silvis
induet in florem et ramos curvabit olentes ' (Ge. i. 187).
' sparge, marite, nuces' (Ec. viii. 31).

It is evident from many passages, and Macrobius
expressly tells us that ' nux ' as the name of a fruit
applied to any that had hard shells. As the name
of a tree it stands with a qualifying adjective for
several species, but used without an epithet it means
the walnut (Juglans regia), still in Italy called noce.
The Greeks recognized that the tree was of Persian
origin, but it must have been early in cultivation,
and the Roman name of ' iuglans,' which is ' Iovis
glans,' Jove's acorn, like ' Iuniperus,' which is Juno's
pear, must have been an early formation.

The flowers of the walnut are unisexual, the male
in catkins and the female in clusters. Virgil's
' ramos curvabit ' picturesquely describes the droop-
ing catkins. The strong scent which he mentions
is said by Pliny to strike into the very brain of who-

85

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

soever encounters it, and other authorities describe
it as poisonous to neighbouring trees. This seems
to be a mistake, but of course its thick shade would
be bad for an apple or pear growing to the north of it.
Those who think that Virgil's tree is the almond
have to face insuperable difficulties. No passage is
quoted in which the name without an epithet ex-
pressed or implied means anything but the walnut.
The almond is ' Nux Graeca ' or ' Nux Amygdalina.'
Tibullus, speaking of the dyeing of grey hair with
walnut juice, says, ' viridi cortice tincta nucis,' and
Pliny expressly states that the ' nuces ' which the
bridegroom threw to the boys for a scramble were
walnuts, while the ' nuces ' used as children's play-
things were admittedly walnut shells. It has been
objected that Virgil would not describe the walnut
as bending its scented boughs, but he does not, for
' ramos ' clearly refers to the catkins. In no case
would his words suit the almond, for the almond
blossom does not curve the boughs. It is true that
the flowers of the walnut are not conspicuous, but
they are numerous, and Virgil tells his farmer to
examine them for a special purpose.

Flower, April.
Italian name, Noce.

Oleaster, or Olea Silvestris.

' foliis oleaster amaris ' (Ge. ii. 314 ; Ae. xii. 766).

The wild olive (Olea Europaea) is either a native
or at least a well-established denizen in southern

86

Oleaster, or Olea Silvestris

Italy. It has shorter and stiffer leaves than the
cultivated variety, and their under-surfaces soon
lose the heaviness which in the other is permanent.
The berry is small and worthless.

Virgil finds a use for the tree as a shade for a
beehive, and as a tree of grazing ground it was
sometimes, as in our second passage, consecrated
to Faunus, whom the Roman poets identified with
Pan. Mr. Fowler, however, views Faunus as essen-
tially a god of the wild.

The oleaster was used as a stock on which to
graft the olive. To this practice Virgil objects
(Ge. ii. 302-314) on the ground that, if there be a
fire in the oliveyard, the trees will be burnt below
the grafting point, and as the olives are not on their
own roots, ' non a stirpe valent,' only the oleaster
will remain. Palladius meets this objection by
saying that the graft must be made below the sur-
face of the ground, in which case the olive will
survive the fire. Our gardeners practise this sub-
terranean grafting with the clematis, the Moutan
peony, and other plants.

Unfortunately, in this passage either Virgil was
careless in his arrangement or, more probably, there
has been some dislocation in his text. The lines,
as they stand in the manuscripts, come in the middle
of his account of the vine. Hence some editors
have supposed him to mean that oleasters should
not be planted in a vineyard. This interpretation
agrees neither with the Latin, for 'insere' must
mean graft, nor with reason, for the fire would be

87

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

equally fatal to the olives whether they were planted
among vines or not. It is clear that Palladius
understood the passage in the only possible sense.

The crook on which the shepherd leans (Ec. viii. 16)
is of the wild olive, for the word in Theocritus, whom
Virgil followed, is aypieXaiw. It may well be doubted
whether, when the poem was written, Virgil had yet
seen an olive. There cannot have been any near
Mantova.

Flower, July and August.
Italian name, Oleastro.

Oliva, or Olea.

' pingues . . . olivae ' (Ge. ii. 85).
' pallenti . . . olivae ' (Ec. v. 16).

Of all Italian trees the olive (Olea sativa) was
naturally held of most account, and could be called
'the tree' without qualification, as in Horace's
' arbore nunc aquas culpante.' It is a cultivated
variety of O. Europaea, which perhaps has no
native claim to its specific designation. Its Latin
names probably came from the Greek iXala, the
form ' oliva ' from a dialect in which the digamma
was still spoken, and ' olea ' from one from which
the digamma had disappeared. This seems to
point to a somewhat late introduction into Italy,
and it may have been brought by the earliest Greek
colonists. The tree is too tender to grow at high
altitudes or, except on warm coastlands, in the north
of Italy, and the parts in which it flourishes are
known as the region of the olive.

88

Oliva, or Olea

The lanceolate and pointed leaves at once dis-
tinguish our tree from the oleaster, and the heaviness
of the under-surface does not disappear with age as
it does in the wild form. The panicles of small
white blossoms appear in August. The green fruit
ripens into black, and the first gathering is late in
November. There was, however, one variety which
was gathered unripe to provide green oil for salads.
It was harvested in September.

In Italy the tree broke into varieties, of which
Virgil selects three for his verse {Ge. ii. 86). Cato
names ten and Columella ten or possibly eleven,
each list including Virgil's three. The kind called
1 orchites,' which Virgil for the convenience of his
verse calls 'orchades,' bears a title like that which
Queen Gertrude's liberal shepherds gave to the long
purples, and in shape it must have resembled the
tuber of an orchid. On its qualities Pliny and
Columella are at issue, the one holding that it gave
abundant oil and the other that it was fit only for
eating. Martyn seems to err in identifying it with
the modern ' olivola/ which is small and round.
The kind called ' radius,' from its resemblance to
a weaver's shuttle, is still known as 'raggaria,' an
oblong olive, producing a very sweet oil, but in small
quantities. The third kind was called ' pausia,' or
in the popular speech ' posea,' a name of which the
derivation does not appear. This was the kind that
gave the green oil. Virgil does not mention the kind
called ' Sergia,' which produced the largest amount
of oil. It was named after a member of the house

89

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

of Sergius, and is one of the sixteen varieties named
by Macrobius.

Two methods of propagation mentioned by Virgil
are still in vogue. One (Ge. ii. 63) is much like what
Shirley Hibberd calls the currant-tree method of
propagating roses. A small branch, not more than
two inches in diameter at its thickest point, is sawn
off the tree, care being taken not to jag the bark.
The lower part of this branch is cut into lengths
of a foot or a foot and a half. These cuttings or
truncheons, ' trunci ' or ' taleae,' are then pointed at
both ends and buried nearly their whole length in
the nursery. It takes five years before they can be
transplanted to their places in the oliveyard. Some-
times they are not set in the nursery for transplanta-
tion, but set in the yard at once. In this case they
were cut to the length of three feet.

The second method (ib. 30) has the advantage
that the transplanting can be done after three years,
but the trees were thought to be not so good. The
trunk of an old tree is cut into small pieces with
a strip of bark at one side. These are planted like
the truncheons and soon produce roots. The mul-
berry shares with the olive this power of producing
roots from old wood. Pliny tells stories, not, as
some of his stories are, impossible, of olive wood
sprouting even after it had passed through the
carpenter's hands.

With grafting I have dealt in the previous article.

Virgil tells us that when olive-trees are once estab-
lished they need no more cultivation (ib. 420), but

90

Oliva, or Olea

this must not be taken quite literally. In his day,
as now, the ground under the branches was dug
every year, every few years manure was applied, and
every eighth year some pruning was done. Virgil
means that all this was nothing to the many labours
of the vineyard.

Concerning the use of olives and oil for food, for
cookery, for an unguent, and for artificial light, there
are a few touches in the poems. There is the oil
lamp that sputters as a sign of coming rain
(Ge. i. 393) ; there is the slippery oil with which
above the cliffs of Actium the Trojan athletes
anointed themselves to celebrate their escape from
their Greek foes (Ae. iii. 281) ; and there is the fling
at the town exquisite who spoils his unguent with
perfumes (Ge. ii. 466). The victors in the games
are crowned with olive blossoms, which drop upon
their yellow pollen (Ae. v. 309). The victim on the
altar burns the quicker for the oil that is poured
over it (Ae. vi. 254). Nor does the use of oil cease
with a man's life. Together with frankincense and
food it has its place on the funeral pyre (ib. 225).

Just as in Bentley's phrase the very dust of
Pearson's writings is gold, so the watery part of
the olive (amurca) was valuable for steeping seeds
(Ge. i. 194), for use in a sheep dip (Ge. iii. 448), and
for other purposes.

In face of all these uses it seems strange that for
a farm of sixty acres Cato gives the olive only the
fourth place. First comes the vineyard and then
the irrigated garden and the willow bed.

91

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

It might be thought that the trees were too
precious to be cut as timber, but Theophrastus
mentions some uses of it, one of them the fuel for
a furnace. Possibly, like the shepherd's staff, this
was the wood of the oleaster. It may be surmised
that the same explanation will hold of ' viridi ' as
applied to the wreath given to Mnestheus, as it
seems, for being second in the boat race (Ae. v. 493),
the winner's wreath being of bay. Virgil would
hardly apply the epithet to a wreath of the grey
olive, unless indeed he means that the spray had
a few green berries on it. Horace's allusion in
' viridi Venafro ' is to the berry, not, as some editors
suppose, to the leaves.

There was yet another part played by the olive in
a world too well acquainted with war. The Romans
adopted the legend that Athena was the inventor of
the olive (Ge. i. 18), but it hardly needed this associa-
tion with the queen of arts and crafts to make the
rich olive the emblem of peace. It is the envoy's
white flag (Ae. vii. 154, 751, viii. 116), and Aeneas
in the vain hope of a peaceful reception in Italy
crowns himself with olive leaves when on leaving
Sicily for the second time he makes his offering
of wine and entrails to the powers of the sea
{Ae. v. 774).

Flower, July and August.
Italian names, Olivo and Ulivo.

92

Ornus
Ornus.

'nascuntur steriles saxosis montibus orni ' (Ge. ii. in).

Columella says that this tree is a wild ash with
broader leaves. It is the manna ash (Fraxinus ornus),
which is with some reason regarded by the Latin
poets as the typical hillside tree of central and
southern Italy. Handsome and free flowering, it is
of much less stature than its cousin tree. Virgil
makes Linus say that Hesiod's pipe would draw the
manna ashes down from the mountains {Ec. vi. 71).

The wood is said to be pliant, and Theophrastus
says it was employed for elastic bedsteads, for
some carpenter's tools, and, it would seem, for the
curved parts of merchant ships. Virgil happens to
mention it several times together with other timbers
in connection with funeral pyres, but it may be sup-
posed that for this purpose men took what they
could get.

The tree is not much planted in England, but
grafted on the common ash it will flourish even in
large towns.

The supposition that Ornus was the rowan is
quite groundless.

Flower, May.

Italian name, Orniello.

Paliurus.

' spinis surgit paliurus acutis ' (Ec. v. 39).

The death of Daphnis, which apart from allegory
is the murder of Caesar, is supposed by Virgil to

93

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

give to the noxious wildings a mastery over the
flowers worthy of a garden. Few plants are more
masterful in occupying land than what is known as
Christ's thorn (Paliurus aculeatus . The plant is
common in Palestine, and disputes with Zizyphus
Spina Christi the claim to have supplied the crown
of thorns at the Crucifixion. Its so-called thorns
are in fact stipular prickles. In the decay of Etruria
the plant went ahead to such an extent that in war-
fare it could play the part now assigned to barbed
wire, for it is probably the shrub through whose
thickets Polybius tells us the Gauls could not pass
to attack the Romans until they had stripped off
their clothes ::. 28). Dennis, who refers to this
passag. himspJf kept away by the shrub from

the walls of Rusellae. but had not the curiosity to
learn its botanical name. ' The area of the city and
the slopes around it are densely covered with a
thorny shrub called " marruca." which I had often
admired elsewhere for its bright yellow blossoms and
delicate foliage ; but as an antagonist it is most for-
midable, particularly in winter, when its fierceness is
unmitigated by a leafy covering. Even could one
disregard the thorns, the difficulty of forcing one's
way through the thickets is so great that some of the
finest portions of the walls are unapproachable from
below/ It will be seen that Columella had reason
in recommending the shrub for hedges.

The natural order to which ' marruca ' belongs
is represented in England by the two buckthorns, one
of which has formidable spines, and in America is

-

Paliurus

planted for hedges. The vine also is a kindred
plant, but has always preferred vengeance to self-
defence.

Flower, May and June.
Italian name, Marruca.

Palma.

1 mittit . . . Eliadum palmas Epiros equantm* (Ge. i. 59).

' ardua palma ' (Ge. ii. 67).

' primus Idumaeas referam tibi Mantua palmas ' (Ge. iii. 12).

Although there are many genera and species of
palms, one of which, Chamaerops humilis, is a
native of Sicily, Virgil refers only to the date palm,
Phoenix dactylifera. The epithet of ' ardua,' which
Virgil applies to it, must refer to the great length of
the stem, at the top of which is the foliage and the
fruit. It must have been imported at an early date
into Sicily and southern Italy. In Virgil's days,
although Selinunte, ' palmosa Selinus ' (Ae. iii. 705),
was already a ruined city, there must have been
palms planted along its sea front, as there still are
some thirty miles off at Trapani. At both places
you may find Chamaerops, on the sides of the Eryx
in great abundance, but only as a stunted shrub.

In Arabia and parts of Africa the date was much
used for food, while in Palestine, Greece, and Italy
the leaves were early regarded as a symbol of peace
and victory. Virgil's reference to the palms of
Edom is allegorical and difficult. His probable
meaning is that he hopes some day to celebrate
the victories of Octavian and the pacification of the

95

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

world. When the time came for him to do this he
shrank from the task, and, although he accomplished
it in the Aeneid, he avowed that he must have been
mad to undertake it.

Flower, summer.

Italian name, Palma da datteri.

Panacea.

'odoriferam panaceam ' (Ae. xii. 419).

The plant here is clearly mythical, though there
is a Greek plant of the name which has been identi-
fied with a near relative of the parsnip. These
plants are of a sugary and scented tribe, and panacea
cannot be answerable for its kinswort. Still it is
better to keep the parsnip, like the hatter, at a dis-
tance from epic poetry. It shall therefore be judged
that Virgil's plant is not that of Theophrastus, but
a child of his own fancy. There are no fields of all-
heal ' on this side of the grave.'

Papaver.

' campum . . . urunt Lethaeo perfusa papavera somno'

(Ge. i. 78).
' Cereal e papaver' (lb. 212).

umida mella soporiferumque papaver' (Ae. iv. 486).
1 summa papavera carpens ' (Ec. ii. 47).

Although there are six species of poppy native to
Italy, Virgil probably deals only with the opium poppy
(Papaver somniferum) and its varieties. Pliny speaks
of three kinds, the white, the black, and the erratic,
which, he says, the Greeks call 'rhoeas.' The last

96

Papaver

seems to be the round prickly-headed poppy of our
chalk fields, while his black poppy is our common
scarlet poppy, with the globose and smooth seed
vessel.

Of the opium poppy there are two varieties still
cultivated in Italy, but in ancient days, while both
were grown for their seeds, perhaps only one was
grown for opium. It is not clear whether it was
grown for this end in Italy, for the drug seems
generally to have been imported. This kind, known
as P. officinale, has an ovoid capsule and white
seeds. It is not, I think, common in our gardens.
The other variety, P. hortense, has a globular cap-
sule and black — or at least dark — seeds. This kind
is common in our gardens, and has established itself
about Cobham and elsewhere in Kent. In a wild
state both varieties have white petals slightly tinged
with lilac, and carrying a purple blotch at the base.
Under cultivation the flowers often are red or crimson
on pure white and frequently double.

Our plant is probably a native of Mediterranean
Europe and spread eastward with unhappy results.
The capsules abound in opium or hashish, which is
obtained through incisions made in them as they
ripen, the juice coagulating in the night. The seeds,
for which the Romans grew the plant, have no nar-
cotic properties, and their oil could be a substitute
for the juice of the olive. Unground they were used
like our caraway seeds in cakes. This may be one
reason for our poet's epithet of ' Cereale,' but no
doubt he was thinking also of the frequent repre-

97 h

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

sentation of poppies in the statues of Ceres. The
current explanation was that she ate the seeds to
console herself for the loss of Proserpine. A more
plausible account would be that she had recourse
to hashish. A more important use of the seeds was
their conjunction with honey as the normal sweetener
in days when there was no sugar cane or sugar beet.

The meaning of ' vescum ' was at one time dis-
puted, but Munro proved that it must mean small.
The reference is to the size of the seeds. We should
not apply an epithet in this way, but the vetch seems
to be called ' tenuis ' by Virgil for the same reason.

In our fourth passage Virgil has fallen into one
of those confusions to which we are all at times
liable. He doubtless meant that the priestess of
the Hesperides fed her watch-dragon with cakes of
honey and poppy seeds. The seeds, as we have
seen, are not soporific ; but Virgil was so much in
the habit of thinking of the drowsy poppy that in
this passage he transfers the epithet from the capsules
to the seeds, and makes his priestess put her watch-
dragon to sleep. In the same way Horace puts into
Juno's mouth the phrase ' quietis ordinibus deorum '
at the very moment when she is emphasizing a rest-
lessness in herself which has lasted for centuries.
A like inattention was that of the modern nobleman,
who said, ' If we cannot move the Church we must
appeal to the Dissenters : " flectere si nequeo superos,
Acheronta movebo." '

Flower, April and May.
Italian name, Papavero.

98

Phaselus
Phaselus.

'vilem . . . phaselum' (Ge. i. 227).

English editors of Virgil have gone much astray
on this plant, most of them identifying it with
the kidney bean or scarlet runner. Even if they
did not know that these plants are American, they
should have been warned by Virgil's advice to sow
the plant in November, for the kidney bean will bear
no touch of frost, and we do not sow it in the open
until May. Virgil's plant is Dolichus melanoph-
thalmus, an Asiatic, still common in Italian eating-
houses under the name of ' fagiolo dall' occhio,' the
eye bean. The ancients ate the whole pod as we do
French beans. Virgil's epithet is perhaps unduly
derogatory to a useful vegetable.

The boat called ' phaselus ' is supposed to have
got its name from a resemblance to the fagiolo
dall' occhio.

Flower, summer.

Italian name. See above.

Picea.

'nigranti picea ' (Ae. ix. 87).

' Naryciae . . . picis lucos' (Ge. ii. 438).

' Idaeas . . . pices' (Ge. iii. 450).

Although the identification of this tree has been
disputed, there are truths which seem to point to
a definite conclusion. It was the tree which pro-
duced the best pitch, and the best pitch came from
the mountains of the extreme south. The tree of

99

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

those mountains is the Corsican pine (Pinus Laricio),
easily distinguished, as Veitch says, ' by its strict,
erect habit, by its shortened branches, which some-
times show a tendency to curve in a direction round
the tree and upwards, and by its large, twisted, glau-
cous foliage.'

Naryx is a town of the Opuntian Locri in Greece,
of which people the Italian city of Locri was held to
be a colony, and it is to the Italian city that Virgil
refers. It lies under the great range of Sila, which
he makes the scene of the fight of bulls (Ae.
xii. 715, sqq.). Doubtless pitch was largely exported
from Locri to other parts of Italy. Farmers did not
usually make their own pitch, few of them having
trees at hand, but bought it in the market towns and
melted it into tar (Ge. i. 225). It was used, as with
us, for a preservative of timber, for an ingredient in
a sheep-wash (Ge. iii. 450), and for marking corn-
sacks (Ge. ii. 263). It was also smeared on the
corks of wine-jars, as we put wax on the corks of
bottles. Nowadays in the Apennines the wine that
is kept for domestic use is often put into bottles.
These stand upright, and, instead of corks and tar,
a few drops of oil are put on the top. When the
wine is to be drunk the oil is sucked up by means of
a little cotton-wool.

The tree was well fitted to make a funeral pyre,
but when in our first passage Virgil makes Aeneas
employ it for the cremation of Misenus he must
have forgotten that the tree did not grow near the
sea-level.

100

Picea

The trunk of this pine was largely used for sub-
terranean water-pipes, as under the ground it did
not decay. For pipes above ground other material
had to be employed.

Flower, February and March.
Italian name, Pino di Corsica.

Pinus.

' pulcherrima pinus in hortis ' (Ec. vii. 65).
' nautica pinus ' (Ec. iv. 38).

It is clear that at least two species are included
under this generic name. One is a tree of the south
and the lowlands, the other of the north and the
hills. The first is the stone or parasol pine (Pinus
pinea), a familiar object in the scenery of central
and southern Italy, but not coming much north of
the famous forest which it makes near Ravenna.
This is the tree of our first passage. The other is
our own Scotch fir (P. silvestris), which is chiefly an
Alpine, but occurs in the Genoese Apennines, and
as far south as the Parmesan district. This must be
the tree of the Vesulan woods which concealed the
wild boar (Ae. x, 708), and also that which the bee-
keeper is enjoined to bring from the high hills
(Ge. iv. 112). The stone pine is easily recognized
by its habit and large round cones.

Pines were sacred to Cybele, Attis, and Pan or
Faunus. Pan's home was Mount Maenalus in
Arcadia, which always has ' argutumque nemus
pinosque loquentes ' (Ec. viii. 22). The trees make
their own music in the wind and also echo the notes

101

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

of Pan and the Shepherds. Sir James Frazer sug-
gests that one reason for the association of the pine
with Attis may have been the value of its seeds
as food. They are still gathered in Italy and sold
and eaten as fruit.

Pine wood was used not only for shipbuilding but
also for fuel. Sprays of the trees were used for
skimming pots of must or fermenting grape juice
(Ge. i. 296). Virgil's word for the spray is ' folium,'
and Pliny tells us that this word meant a spray of
a coniferous tree.

It should be added that the dominant pine on
Mount Ida appears to be neither of Virgil's species,
but one which is found in some sea-coast districts of
southern Italy. This is the Aleppo pine (P. Hale-
ponsis), which, according to Theophrastus, was the
chief shipbuilding tree of Cyprus. It is probably
included under Virgil's name. It is a slender tree,
not growing to a great height.

Flower, February to April.
Italian names : Pino da pinocchi (Stone pine).
Pino di Scozia (Scotch fir).

Pirus.

' insere nunc, Meliboee, piros ' (Ec. i. 13 ; cf . Ec. ix. 50).

'ornus . . . incanuit albo | flore piri ' (Ge. ii. 71).

' in versum distulit . . . eduram . . . pirum ' (Ge. iv. 144).

Virgil's pear seems to be Pyrus domestica, which
may or may not be a cultivated form of the wild
pear (P. communis). It had already developed into
several varieties, of which Virgil mentions the Syrian,

102

Pirus

the Crustumine, and the Volemum (Ge. ii. 88). Ac-
cording to Pliny and Columella the second was the
best, but none were accounted very wholesome unless
stewed in wine. The Syrian, called also the Taren-
tine, may be the bergamot. The third kind is said
to get its name from ' vola,' the palm of the hand,
which one fruit would fill, and is perhaps the same
as Pliny's ' librale ' or pound pear. Martial men-
tions a good kind, which ' docta Neapolis creavit,'
and Naples retains its renown for good horticulture.

The pear-tree was used, as it still is, for a stock
on which to graft apples (Ge. ii. 33). Virgil held
that the pear itself could be grafted on the manna
ash, but there is no kinship between the two.

The wild pear sometimes makes large woods, as
on some of the lower slopes of Soracte, which in
spring are white with its blossom.

Flower, April and May.
Italian name, Pero.

Platanus.

' platani steriles ' (Ge. ii. 70).

The plane (Platanus Orientalis), as a native tree,
does not come west of Greece, though Theophrastus
held that it was native to one Adriatic island. Pliny,
however, says that it was planted there. It was,
however, extensively planted and has established
itself along the rivers and the fiumicini of Calabria.
It seems to have taken a long time to become accli-

103

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

matized, for the same Greek authority says that the
trees planted at Reggio by Dionysius never attained
any size. One would, however, gather that in
Augustan times it was a fine tree in much more
northerly situations. In our days there are magni-
ficent trees at Bologna.

It seems to owe its name to its broad leaves
(irXarvs), and it was planted only for its beauty and
for shade. Its habit of shaling its bark made it
unfit to support the vine, and it was hence called
1 caelebs,' the bachelor tree. It also seems doubtful
whether it would survive the treatment which the
elm and the willow underwent when they were used
in the vineyard. The size of its leaves is sometimes
assigned as a reason, but this would hardly count
if it were reduced to a single shoot.

It was customary in summer to hold the sym-
posium under its shade, and the old Corycian was
able to transplant it when it was already large
enough for this end, ' ministrantem platanum potan-
tibus umbras ' (Ge. iv. 146).

The London plane is a variety w7hich seems to
have been developed in the great city itself. Its
liking for a city life used to be ascribed to the shaling
of its bark, but it is now recognized that London
dirt does its harm not through the bark, but through
the buds and leaves, in which point the plane is no
better off than its fellows. Its fruit, which breaks up
in the spring, has come under some suspicion as a
contributory cause of catarrh. It had this reputation
with Dioscorides, and London newspapers have

104

Platanus

lately admitted correspondence on the subject. The
guilt of the tree seems to be unproved.

The inhabitants of Cos show a tree whose trunk
has a diameter of six yards, and they profess to
believe that it is old enough for Hippocrates to have
sat under it.

Flower, April and May.
Italian name, Platano.

POPULUS.

' Candida populus ' (Ec. ix. 41).

' bicolor . . . populus ' (Ae. viii. 276).

' populus iii silvis pulcherrima ' (Ec. vii. 65).

'populus Alcidae gratissima' (lb. 61).

Whether the abele or white poplar (Populus alba)
be a native or an importation from eastern Europe,
it was at any rate well established along the water-
courses and in the wet woods of Italy. The young
shoots are very white and cottony, and the leaves
are green above and white beneath. The tree is
sometimes nearly a hundred feet high. Its wood is
useful wherever lightness and whiteness are desired.

Hercules, on his return from the lower world,
made himself a chaplet of poplar leaves, and Homer's
name of appeal? marks the tree as a denizen of
Hades.

Both the black poplar and the aspen must have
been known to Virgil, but he makes no direct men-
tion of either. It is from the former that bees get
much ' fucus,' the rosinous substance used for pro-
polis (Ge. iv. 39).

105

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

The white poplar is not a native of England, and
does not often make a good tree in this country. In
popular parlance its name is often transferred to the
grey poplar (P. canescens), which is a native both
here and in northern Italy. It may be distinguished
by the colour and by the toothed and angled leaves
of the suckers. Virgil's eye must have seen the
difference between these two trees.

Where the climate was too hot for the oak, as at
Olympia, the abele took its place as a coronary plant.

Flower, March and April.

Italian names, Alberello and Gattice.

Porrum (Porrum capitatum).

' capiti nomen debentia porri ' (Mor . 74).

The leek (Allium porrum) is an Oriental plant,
which very early came into cultivation. Except for
an increase of size, it seems to have changed little
since Roman times. Columella says that the best
were grown at Ariccia at the foot of the Alban hills,
a town famous for other vegetables as well.

The other Roman porrum, called ' sectile,' was
chives (A. schoenoprasum), is also common in our
gardens, and is interesting to us by reason of its two
isolated stations in this country, one in Cornwall,
the other along a basaltic dyke in Northumberland.
It has no Continental station in western Europe.

Flower, June and July.
Italian names: Porro (leak).

Cipolline (chives).
106

Prunus and Spinus
Prunus and Spinus.

' cerea pruna ' (Ec. ii. 53).

' spinos iam pruna ferentes ' (Ge. iv. 145).

The plum (Prunus communis) is divided into
several sub-species, and of these one at least had
broken into so many varieties that Pliny could say,
'ingens turba prunorum.' This is P. domestica,
of which the wild fruit is very dark. In cultivation
the blue plums were less valued than the yellow or,
as Virgil calls them, the waxen, such as our golden
drop.

Virgil's 'spinus' is the blackthorn or sloe, under
whose thickets the Sicilian lizards take refuge from
the midday heat (Ec. ii. 9). It was used as a stock
for grafting the plum, while the wild plum itself and
the bullace (P. insititia) were used as stocks for the
cornel (Ge. ii. 34). The blackthorn is a common
hedge shrub in Italy, but the wild plum seems to be
found only in cultivation. It should be said that
Arcangeli's P. communis is the almond. His name
for the plum, which he makes a distinct species, is
P. domestica.

Flower, March and April.
Italian names : Susino (plum).

Prugnolo and Vegro (sloe).

Robur, Quercus, Aesculus.

The two forms of the English oak are so closely
allied that modern botanists refuse them specific
rank, and class them as varieties. The botanical

107

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

differences are that in Quercus pedunculata, the
common oak, the leaves have no stalk, while the
acorn has a long one ; whereas in Q. sessiliflora, the
durmast oak, the characters are reversed, the leaf
having a stalk, and the acorn so short a one as
hardly to count. The gardener distinguishes the
latter as having a straighter and more regular stem
and larger and more numerous leaves. Experiments
seem to show that the durmast oak can boast the
tougher timber, and an old belief that it was less
lasting seems to have no foundation.

Small as the differences may be, Virgil clearly dis-
tinguished the two varieties —

' Nemorumque Iovi quae maxima frondet
Aesculus, atque habitae Graiis oracula quercus '

{Ge. ii. 15).

The difference of size, upon wThich he here fixes,
probably refers to the appearance of the trees in leaf,
for it seems that in the diameter of the trunk and
the dimensions of the limbs neither tree has any
advantage over the other. It is the density of leafage
that magnifies the bulk of the durmast. Nor is this
all, for its leaves are less liable to disease and to the
ravages of caterpillars, frequent causes of disfigure-
ment to its less fortunate congener. On the other
hand, the comparative uprightness of its branches
detracts somewhat from its dignity.

The favourite habitats of the two varieties differ
in Italy as they do in England. The durmast, as
Mr. Robinson tells us, inhabits plateaux and slopes
of hills and mountains, while the common oak is

108

Robur, Quercus, Aesculus

best in heavy soils and lower ground. Arcangeli
makes a like remark concerning their habits in Italy-
Nor in Italy are the two varieties, as with us, geo-
graphically interspersed. The durmast is rare in
the north and the common oak hardly to be found
in the south.

Just as we use the name of oak indiscriminately
of either variety, so Virgil and the Latins generally
use the name of ' quercus ' and the Italians the name
of ' querce.' When a distinction is made the modern
usage differs from Virgil's, the name of 'eschio'
(aesculus) being applied to the common oak, while /
the durmast is known as ' rovere ' (robur).

The striking of an oak by lightning was of course
accounted an omen (Ec. i. 17), and in fact makes
a wonderful sight. Some years since a very fine but
quite sound oak in Tewkesbury Park was so struck,
and only about six feet of the huge trunk left stand-
ing. Round the tree a circle with a diameter of a
hundred yards was covered with branches great and
small, a blow from which might well have killed
a man if he had been within the range. The
peasantry avowed that timber so struck would not
make fuel, but this was easily disproved.

The bier, feretrum, on which a dead body was
laid for burning, was made of cypress and oak
{Ac xi. 65).

It should be added that Pliny uses robur as the
name of a distinct species. This is the Turkey oak,
Q. cerris, whose acorn, as he rightly says, is bitter
and rough, and bristly like a chestnut. The Romans

109

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

held that the shingles which roofed the houses of
early Rome were made of this tree.

Flower, April and May.

Italian names : Eschio and Farnia (Quercus
pedunculata).

Rovere (Q. sessiliflora).

Cerro (Q. cerris).

Ros, or Ros Marinus (Ge. ii. 213).

The rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) gets its
name from its liking for sea coasts and spray. In
the inland parts of Italy it is found only in cultiva-
tion. Virgil speaks of it as a bee plant on thin
gravel soils, and implies that it will hardly grow
on them. There is, however, no difficulty in culti-
vating it, and in this country it was once in high
repute. It was grown for its scent and for the tonic
oil supplied by its tops, and accounted a cure for
headaches. Its long flowrering season may make it
useful for the yield of honey.

There seems to be no ancient authority for its
association with remembrance, but Ophelia's phrase
was an old one in England.

Flower, March to October.

Italian names, Ramerino and Rosmarino.

no

Rosa

Rosa.

' puniceis . . . rosetis ' (Ec. v. 17).

' mixta rubent ubi lilia multa | alba rosa ' (Ae. xii. 69).

'biferi . . . rosaria Paesti ' (Ge. iv. 119).

Virgil was probably acquainted with three exotic
and several native species of the rose, and the
foreigners had already broken into varieties and
produced double or at least semi-double flowers.

The cabbage or Provence rose (Rosa centifolia)
has a specific name, which Linnaeus took from
Pliny, and which refers to the double flower, which
is a product of cultivation. Mr. Pemberton calls
this rose a native of the south of France, but this
statement seems to be without warrant, and the
higher authority of Nicholson is doubtless right in
assigning to it an Asiatic home. Travellers still find
it in the Caucasas, from whence it came to Greece.
In Greece it is said to have naturalized itself, but
not so in Italy. Theophrastus knew the flower in
its single state, for he says that it has a flower within
a flower, the inner being in fact the stamens and
pistils. He compares its colour with the oleander
and the rosy petal-tips of the so-called Egyptian
bean of Pythagoras. It may be distinguished from
the damask rose by its spreading sepals and less
rigid leaves. From it descend our cabbage and
moss roses.

Of the damask rose (R. Damascena) Mr. Pem-
berton remarks that it was first brought to the
notice of Europeans by the Crusaders, but there

in

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

seems no reason to doubt that it was known to the
Romans. It may be Pliny's Milesian rose, which he
describes as having the brightest colours, but not
more than twelve petals. The gardeners of Miletus
probably imported it from Damascus, where King-
lake in Eothen speaks of it as growing to an
immense height. Some of its varieties are extremely
vigorous in this country. I have a specimen of the
kind called Lady Curzon, some ten years old, which
is fifteen feet through and still spreading.

This must be the rose of our third passage, for
none other known to the Romans could in any way
be said to bloom twice. Of its descendants the Red
Monthly and the White Monthly. Mr. Pemberton
says that both produce ' a second and even a third
crop of flowers in favourable seasons.' Some com-
mentators speak of an autumnal crop of roses at
Pesto, but this crop is of their own invention. No
ancient authority knows anything of autumnal roses,
and the interval between the two crops of the damask
is very brief. Considering how short the normal
time of blossoming is, we need not wonder that the
Romans, who valued the flower so highly, welcomed
any lengthening of its season. By Domitian's time
they had learnt the art of hastening the flowering
season by growing their roses in greenhouses or
frames, ' specularia,' which had already been used
to give Tiberius cucumbers all the year round.
There is, however, no mention of these devices in
Virgil's time. The so-called greenhouse of Maecenas
on the Esquiline, even if it did contain plants, a thing

112

Rosa

by no means certain, was, as any gardener can see,
in no sense a forcing house.

Virgil's third rose (R. Gallica) claims, though not
undisputedly, to be a native of Italy, and is recog-
nized as such by Arcangeli. Its name of the Provins
rose comes from the town near Paris where it was
cultivated for the manufacture of conserves. What-
ever its origin, it has got a strong footing in Europe,
and spreads so fast by suckers as to become in some
cases a pestilent weed. It is the rose of Assisi,
where it fills the garden at Porziuncula, and the red
fungus which sometimes stains its leaves has given
rise to the fantastic legend that it displays the blood
of St. Francis. It has no large prickles, and one
could roll in it with little damage. Those who
desire torture may get it better from the damask.
The best-known representative of the Provins rose
in our gardens is the double red and white Rosa
Mundi.

Of these roses Pliny and others mention a good
many varieties, but it seems impossible to identify
them, or to be sure that they remain in cultivation.

To come to native roses, we cannot suppose that
Virgil failed to observe the white and fragrant
blossoms of R. sempervirens, a hedge plant in all
the lower grounds of Italy. We know it best in the
double form called Felicite et Perpetue. To this
our list must add at least the dog rose and the
Scotch brier.

Of the uses of the rose Virgil says no more than
that the dried petals make a medicine for sick bees

U3 I

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

(Ge. ii. 466). From poets of a more festive spirit
and stronger constitutions we learn that roses were
worn on the head at dinner and scattered about the
floor, or dropped, as in Nero's golden house, from
a reversible ceiling. The luxurious would lie on the
petals, and the Sybarite complain when these were
laid edgeways. If a Roman died in the flowering
season they were strewn upon his tomb.

Columella's recipe for forcing roses may tempt
some adventurous spirit. At a little distance from
the stem you make a circular, shallow trench as soon
as the flower-buds show, and occasionally fill it with
warm wTater. It may be presumed that the tempera-
ture must be less than that which proved fatal to the
plantings of Triptolemus Yellowlees.

Flower, May.
Italian name, Rosa.

Rubus.

' rubus asper ' (Ec. iii. 89).

' rubos horrentes' (Ge. iii. 315).

' nunc facilis rubea texatur fiscina virga5 (Ge. i. 266).

In the brambles or blackberries we have a con-
fusing genus, and of the species Rubus fruticosus
Baker recognized more than thirty varieties in this
country. Arcangeli contents himself with seven
types and a few varieties, and probably Virgil, like
many Englishmen, called them all simply black-
berries. As with us, the commonest kind seems to
be R. discolor, which has large pink flowers, white,
under-surface to its leaves, and a juicy fruit.

Rubus

Pliny tells us that the withies of the bramble with
the prickles removed were used to make baskets.
Nevertheless, in our third passage some may prefer
to follow Servius in reading Rubea, and see a refer-
ence to willows, but there is no other evidence that
the town of Rubi was famous for willows.

Blackberries, from their likeness to mulberries,
were called mora, a name surviving in the French
' murs sauvages ' and the Italian ' more del rovo '
and ' more di macchia.'

Flower, June and July.
Italian names, Rogo and Rovo.

Rumex.

' fecundus . . . rumex ' {Mor. 73).

There are ma^7 species of dock, but there can be
little doubt that ours is the curled dock (Rumex
crispus), which still bears the names of ' romice ' and
1 rombice.' It is marked by its waved leaves and its
growth in dry places, many of the genus having
aquatic habits. The name may also cover the fiddle
dock (R. pulcher), which owes its name to the shape
of the leaves. In Italy it is the most common kind,
but in England is not found north of the Midland
counties.

The epithet refers to the patience which the plant
shows on the gathering of its leaves. They grow
again with great rapidity, and no plant seems to

US

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

suffer less from this treatment. They were cooked
and eaten like spinach.

Flower, May and June.
Italian names. See above.

Ruscus.

' horridior rusco ' (Ec. vii. 42).

' aspera rusci | vimina' (Ge. ii. 413).

The butcher's broom (Ruscus aculeatus) is occa-
sionally wild in southern England, and large patches
of it may often be seen on the hills above the Italian
lakes. Its flowers and red berries, like those of
asparagus, grow on branches which have taken the
shape of leaves. Though it dies down every year,
its growth is shrubby, and the sharp spines explain
Virgil's epithets. In Italy it is still used for making
brooms. It can hardly have made good withies for
tying up vines, though Virgil seems to imply that it
was used for this purpose.

Flower, February.
Italian name, Pungi-topo.

Ruta.

'rutam . . . rigentem ' (Mor. 89).

Rue, or the herb of grace (Ruta graveolens), is not
a common plant in any part of Italy. It was, how-
ever, cultivated, and seems to have played the part
which parsley plays with us. Thus it was used to
flavour soups and other dishes, and to garnish eggs

116

Ruta

and the like. As an eye-salve it already had the
renown of which we hear in a medieval line,

1 Auxilio rutae, vir lippe, videbis acute,'
and in Milton's

' . . . purg'd with Euphrasie and Rue
The visual nerve.'

The name of ' herb of grace ' is not ancient, and
was perhaps due to a false etymology.

Flower, July and August.
Italian name, Ruta.

Saliunca.

'puniceis humilis quantum saliunca rosetis . . . cedit'

[Ec. v. 17).

The Celtic nard (Valeriana Celtica), though found
in the Piedmontese Alps, was not a native of Italy
in the more ancient sense. It was, however, culti-
vated for use in perfumery, as was at one time our
own wild valerian. The flowers are usually yellowish,
but it is said that they are sometimes red, and to
this colour Virgil refers. Its scent also was like
that of the rose. Keightley supposed Virgil to allude
to the use of roses in chaplets, for which the valerian
would be too brittle. I see no such allusion. The
poet seems to be talking of garden beds.

Flower, July.

117

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil
Salix and Siler.

'genus haud unura . . . salici ' (Ge. ii. 83).

' viminibus salices fecundae' (ib. 446).

' dulce . . . lenta salix f eto pecori ' (Ec. iii. 83).

' (apes) pascuntur . . . glaucas salices ' (Ge. iv. 182).

' lenta salix . . . pallenti cedit olivae ' (Ec. v. 16).

' vescas salicum frondes ' (Ge. iii. 175).

' glauca canentia fronde salicta ' (Ge. ii. 13).

'salignas . . . umbonum crates' (Ae. vii. 632).

' molle siler' (Ge. ii. 12).

The willow tribe are a large and confusing people,
and, since modern botanists are at issue concerning
them, we cannot expect Virgil to be exact in his
specific distinctions. He, of course, recognized that
there were several species (Ge. ii. 84). Arcangeli
counts twenty-seven in Italy beside varieties and
hybrids. Some of these, however, are not native,
the osier (Salix viminalis) being one. This is of
northern origin, was not known to the ancient
Romans, and even now is not much cultivated south
of Lombardy. Linnaeus was less happy than usual
in his specific name, for, while 'Juvenal may well be
right in calling the viminal 'dictum a vimine collem,'
this must have been another species, probably the
purple osier (S. purpurea), of which there may have
been a bed at the foot of the hill. This was prob-
ably the Amerine willow (Ge. i. 265), which supplied
withies for tying vines. It grows to some nine feet
high, and is common on some of our English streams.
Columella speaks of its red stems.

Round Mantova willows, especially S. triandra,

118

Salix and Siler

were and are used to support the vines, and amid
these Gallus desired to lie :

' mecura inter salices lenta sub vite iaceret ' (Ec. x. 40) .

The willow which Menalcas avows to be less
beautiful than the olive was probably the white
willow (S. alba), which, however, greatly exceeds
the olive in stature and, as some may think, in
beauty.

Goats feed on the leaves of various willows and
bees go to the flowers for honey. Virgil knew them
as hedge plants (Ge. ii. 434). Shields in old days had
been made of wicker-work, and the wood made the
sickle of Priapus (Ge. iv. no). Virgil's references
to ties and withies are numerous, and our nursery-
men still use several willows for this purpose.

It is impossible to identify ' siler.' It is a tree or
shrub of wet places, and probably some willow.

Flower, spring.

Italian names : Salcio rosso (S. purpurea) ;

Salcio da pertiche (S.

alba).

Sardonia Herba.

' Sardoniis . . . amarior herbis ' (Ec. vii. 41).

Of all the crowfoots none is more acrid than
Ranunculus sceleratus, which is held to be the plant
here indicated, though, so far from being confined to
Sardinia, it is common in wet places throughout
Italy, as it is with us. The mere handling of the
plant will cause irritation of the skin.

119

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

The phrase of sardonic laughter seems to be a
piece of popular etymology. Homer's word for this
laughter is aapSdvios, of which the derivation is
unknown. The effect of eating our plant is to con-
tort the face, and the resemblance between Homer's
adjective and the adjective of Sardinia seems to
have made the Romans think that the plant must
come from that island, though they could have
found it in their own ditches. The small yellow
flowers do not attract attention.

Flower, May and June.

Scilla {Ge. iii. 451).

In our passage Virgil speaks of the squill, Urginea
scilla, as an ingredient in sheep-wash. It is common
on Italian coasts, and its large green bulbs are very
conspicuous on the mud-heaps between Crotone and
the solitary column which remains of the Temple of
Hera on the Lacinian promontory. Our own sup-
plies of the useful drug are said to come chiefly from
Spain.

Palladius mentions a curious use for the bulb.
It was split in two and the halves tied round the
cutting of a fig-tree. It seems to have been an early
form of what gardeners call ' bottom heat,' but there
cannot have been much of it.

Flower, August to October.
Italian name, Scilla.

120

Serpyllum
Serpyllum.

' olentia late | serpylla ' (Ge. iv. 30).

The common form of thyme (Thymus serpyllum)
is confined to the higher lands in Italy, but the
narrow-leaved variety comes somewhat lower down.
The plant is Shakespeare's wild thyme, and Milton
makes it grow, as it might, on the rocks above a
desert cave or grotto. Virgil names it as a bee
plant, and the leaves are braised with garlic for the
reaper's midday meal.

For garden thyme, which is not a native of Eng-
land, see Thymum.

Flower, May to September.
Italian name, Pepolino.

Sorbus.

' f ermento atque acidis imitantur vitea sorbis ' {Ge. iii. 380).

There can be no doubt that the passage refers to
some kind of beer and some kind of cider, and it
has been inferred that both liquors were made in
Italy. But Virgil is speaking of Scythians, and a
juster inference would be that these liquors were not
made in Italy, and that Virgil had heard of them
through travellers. At a later date they were made
in Italy.

The service-tree (Pyrus sorbus) is much like the
rowan or mountain ash, but the berries are larger.
The fruit is too austere to be eaten until it has been
bletted like a medlar, and become brown and soft.
It would seem that the Romans had not discovered

121

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

this art, and Martial therefore says that sorbs are fit
food only for a slave. There were several varieties
of the fruit.

This tree is not native in England, though one
tree grows, apparently wild, in Wyre Forest. It
must be distinguished from our own wild service-
tree, which has smaller berries and undivided leaves.
Both are wild in Italy, and the former is cultivated
there for its fruit.

Flower, May and June.
Italian name, Sorbo.

Suber.

' silvestri subere ' (Ae. xi. 554).

' corticibus . . . suta cavatis . . . alvearia ' (Ge. iv. 33).

' tegmina queis capitum raptus de subere cortex ' (Ae. vii. 742).

The cork-tree (Quercus suber) is a native of central
and southern Italy, and the men with cork helmets
are Campanians. Though the word ' cortex ' is not
limited to the bark of the cork-tree, we have Colu-
mella's word that this was the best material for
hives, and doubtless this was what Virgil meant.
When he says that bees sometimes establish them-
selves ' cavis corticibus,' he uses the word in a wider
sense. The farmers who, on the feast of Bacchus,
put on masks made of hollow ' cortices,' doubtless
used cork when they could get it. Cork was also
used as stoppers for wine-jars, tar being smeared
over it. Roman ladies, like Trollope's Lady Rosina
de Courcey, had cork soles to their winter shoes.

The tree is evergreen, with slightly toothed leaves,

122

Suber

and is of much less stature than the oak. The cup
of the acorn is covered with velvety scales.

Flower, April and May.
Italian name, Sughera.

Taeda.

' taedas silva alta ministrat' (Ge. ii. 431).

Originally the name of a tree, our word more
often signifies a torch, and probably has that mean-
ing in this passage. Virgil, however, must have
known the material of the tree even if he never saw
it alive. It is the Swiss stone-pine (Pinus cembra),
a native of lofty mountains, and found on the Alps
within sight of the plain of Lombardy. The strong
aroma, at its highest point in the spring, points to
the very rosinous character which made it of service
for torches. The tree has a close, erect, and some-
what oval habit of growth. When Horace com-
pared Hannibal's descent upon Italy to a fire
sweeping 'per taedas,' he doubtless was speaking
of conifers generally, and had no special kind in
view.

Flower, July.

Italian name, Pino Zimbro.

Taxus.

' (amant) aquilonem et frigora taxi ' (Ge. ii. 113).

' taxi torquentur in arcus ' (ib. 448).

' sic tibi Cyrnaeas fugiant examina taxos' (Ec. ix. 30).

In Italy the yew (Taxus baccata) is exclusively
a tree of the higher ground, and except in Liguria

123

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

does not come near the coast. Virgil says that it is
characteristic of cold soils, but with us it is most
plentiful on chalky soils (Ge. ii. 257). Perhaps
Virgil, seeing it flourish with a north aspect, made
the false inference that it liked the soil also to be
cold. Theophrastus observed that it was a moun-
tain tree and liked shade, but is silent as to the
soil.

Our second passage shows that, as in medieval
England, the wood of the yew was shaped into
bows. The tree was also grown in gardens, and
sometimes became the victim of the topiary, though
it was the box that more often suffered the in-
dignity of being clipped into animal and inanimate
shapes.

Virgil forbids the planting of yews near a bee-
hive {Ge. iv. 47), and was perhaps right in holding
that the flower of the yew made honey bitter.
Knowing that Corsican honey had an ill flavour,
he seems in our third passage to have assumed that
the bitterness was due to this tree. Travellers in
Corsica, however, set it down to the box. Arcangeli
says that yew is rare in all the islands.

In the passage referred to above concerning soil
Virgil calls yews ' nocentes.' The word covers several
kinds of damage. Grass will hardly grow under a
yew, and the roots extend a long way. The ancients
held that both the berries and the leaves were
poisonous. I have often eaten the mucilaginous
berry, and if there is poison in it it must be in the
seeds. Cattle can eat the shoots off the tree ap-

124

Taxus

parently with impunity, but if they feed on branches
that have been gathered and left to ferment they die
of it.

Flower, January to April.

Italian name, Tasso.

Terebinthus.

' per artem | inclusum buxo aut Oricia terebintho | lucet ebur '

(Ae. x. 135).

The terebinth, or turpentine-tree (Pistacia Tere-
binthus), now grows wild in Italy, and the point
of Virgil's epithet is uncertain. According to
Servius, a variety with very black wood came from
Oricus in Epirus, but it looks as though Servius,
after the manner of scholiasts, had concocted his
note out of the passage. Virgil did not scruple to
couple a foreign name with an Italian tree or plant
if the foreign town or country was famous for it.
Thus, in spite of all the olives of southern Italy, he
calls the fruit ' Sicyonian bacam,' because the Achaean
town of Sicyon was famous for its olives.

In Greece, Theophrastus tells us, the wood was
not used, and in Italy the art of inlaying, to which
our passage refers, was doubtless later than his time,
however fashionable it may have become in the later
days of the Republic. The Greeks by incision got
a rosin from the exudation of the tree. This is now
called Chian turpentine, as most of it comes from the
Isle of Skio.

Flower, April and May.
Italian name, Terebinto.
125

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil
Thymbra.

'graviter spirantis copia thymbrae' (Ge. iv. 31).
The species of savory here named is probably
Satureia hortensis, a small labiate annual cultivated
for the aromatic tops, which were used in cookery
and for flavouring vinegar. In England this is
known as summer savory. Our plant may, however,
be another species, S. montana, known here as winter
savory. It is a shrubby perennial. Whichever of
the two was called thymbra, the other was called
satureia, from which name savory is derived. The
Greek Ovfifipa was perhaps a third species not native
to Italy.

Flower, Summer.

Italian names, Santoreggia and Savoreggia.

Thymum.

'Cecropium . . . thymum' (Ge. iv. 270).

' thymo mihi dulcior Hyblae ' (Ec. vii. 37).

'redolent . . . thymo fragmantia mella ' (Ge. iv. 169).

I believe that two species are included under this
name, and that the Athenian and the Italian thyme
were not the same plant. The former is admittedly
Thymus capitatus, which is found in southern but
not in northern Italy. On the other hand, the
species which occurs all along the western side of
the peninsula, T. vulgaris, seems not to be found in
Greece. This is the plant still called ' timo ' in Italy,
and commonly cultivated in our gardens under the
name of garden thyme.

126

Thymum

Thyme was evidently the chief bee plant, though
its season of flowering hardly exceeds a month. It
was also used for fumigating the hive (Ge. iv. 241),
and as a medicine for its inhabitants (ib. 267). The
leaves were also used in cookery, and when it was to
be dried for this purpose it was held best to dry it in
the shade. Modern authorities agree with this view.

Writers on Shakespeare's wild thyme frequently
quote Virgil, but the two poets have different plants
in mind.

Flower, June.
Italian name, Timo.

Tilia.

'(apes) pascuntur . . . pinguem tiliam ' (Ge. iv. 183).
' tiliae leves ' (Ge. ii. 449).

The small-leaved lime (Tilia parvifolia) is native
in Rockingham Forest and perhaps in a few other
places in southern England. In Italy it is confined
to the high ground. The limes which the old
Corycian grew at Taranto may have been one of
the sub-species, either T. intermedia, the common
lime, or T. platyphylla, the broad-leaved lime.
Virgil gives the Corycian credit for being success-
ful with a hill -land tree at so low an altitude.
I take ' pinguem ' to refer to the sticky leaves, as in
Juvenal's ' pinguia crura luto ' and Martial's ' pin-
guis virga,' a stick plastered with bird-lime. All
varieties of the trees seem to be beloved by bees.

The timber, which Virgil commends for the yoke
of the plough, is light, and can be planed smooth :

127

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

hence it figures both as * levis ' (Ge. i. 173), and as
' levis ' {Ge. ii. 449). It is well fitted for carving,
and was much used by Grinling Gibbons.

Bass made of the inner bark, ' philyra,' was used
for tying flowers into chaplets and garlands.

Flower, June and July.

Italian name, Tiglio.

Tribulus : see Lappa.

Tinus.

Philargyrius tells us that in the phrase which ap-
pears in our manuscripts as ' tiliae atque uberrima
pinus ' (Ge. iv. 141) Virgil left a choice of two read-
ings, * pinus ' and ' tinus.' The latter is our garden
laurustinus (Viburnum tinus), characteristically
called by Conington ' a kind of wild bay-tree,'
though the bay is wild in Italy, and the laurustinus
is nowise akin to it. The Corycian grew it for its
beauty only, for at Taranto the flowers would be
over before his bees were much about.

In Ge. iv. 112, * ipse thymum pinosque ferens
de montibus altis,' the Palatine manuscript gives
* tinos ' for ' pinos.' This is certainly a false read-
ing. The laurustinus is eminently a tree of the
coastland, and flowers in the dead time of the year.
Even in Mid-Sussex it suffers some damage in a hard
frost, and it would never be so foolish as of its own
accord to face a winter in the Apennines.
Flower, January and February.
Italian name, Lauro-tino.
128

Triticum
Triticum.

' triticeam messem ' (Ge. i. 219).

Wheat (Triticum vulgare), the reputed invention
of Osiris, was perhaps developed out of spelt or some
other grass in the valley of the Nile. The Italian
variety was bearded, as it appears in the statues
of Ceres. Though Varro gives us the names for the
different parts of the ear, some of the lexicons are
not exact. The ear itself is ' spica,' whence ' spicea
messis ' (Ge. i. 314), though Virgil usually avails
himself of synecdoche and uses ' arista ' in its stead
(Ge. i. 8, etc.). This is properly the beard, and in
1 molli arista ' (Ec. iv. 28) seems to have that mean-
ing, the epithet applying to the flexibility of the
beard. It must, however, be said that ' mollis,' as
applied to plants, seems to be a difficult and shifty
adjective. The bract, which forms an envelope to
the organs of reproduction, is ' gluma,' and the seed
or grain of corn is ' granum.' The names of other
parts of the plant apply to other cereal grasses as
welL Thus 'stipula' and 'culmus' are synonyms
for the stem, halm, or straw, while ' palea ' is the
chaff.

Wheat broke into varieties, the best for colour
and weight being ' robus.'

Italian name, Grano.

129

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil
Tus.

' India mittit ebur, molles sua tura Sabaei ' (Ge. i. 57).
1 solis est turea virga Sabaeis ' (Ge. ii. 117).
' turiferis Panchai'a pinguis harenis ' (ib. 139).
Cf. Ae. i. 417 ; iv. 453 ; xi. 481.

Although Virgil is mistaken in supposing that
Arabia or the land of Sheba alone produced frankin-
cense, it is probable that no other country exported
it to Rome. Theophrastus tells us that it came
from Arabia, and gives travellers' accounts of the
tree and the methods of collecting the gum. The
Arabians seem to have lost the art of cultivating the
tree, for nowadays their product is inferior to that
which comes from the islands of the Indian Archi-
pelago.

The tree which produces it is either Boswellia
serrata or B. Carteri, perhaps varieties of the same
species, which have a balsamic and resinous juice.
Its use in religious ceremonies arises from the belief
that the smoke carries the scent upward to the noses
of the gods.

Ulmus.

' ulmis adiungere vites ' (Ge. i. 2).

' ulmus opaca ingens' (Ae. vi. 283).

' nee gemere aeria cessabit turtur ab ulmo' (Ec. i. 59).

'genus haud unum . . . fortibus ulmis' (Ge. ii. 83).

Recent investigation has considerably modified
our views of the species of elms. The common
English elm used to be accounted a Roman im-
portation, but it is now ascertained that the English

130

Ulmus

and the Roman elms are specifically distinct. Our
own retains the name of Ulmus campestris, and
appears to be a native of southern England. Its
habit of not producing fertile seeds must be
ascribed to its power of multiplying itself by suckers
rather than by a foreign origin. The Italian species
has been named U. australis, and is distinguished
by its thicker leaves and their larger and more
cuspidate apex. When Virgil tells us that there are
several kinds he doubtless means the varieties into
which the species easily breaks, and also the wych
elm, U. montana, which is found in the higher
ground of northern Italy.

The elm was largely planted to support the vines
in a vinetum, but seems to have produced nothing
that was of use in a vinea. Its timber made the
beam of the plough (Ge. i. 170), and its leaves served
for litter and fodder (Ge. ii. 446).

Since elm timber does not readily warp, it was
the proper material for ' cardines.' These, with the
good leave of the lexicons, are not hinges, but up-
right beams let into sockets, and having the planks
of the door attached to them.

Flower, February and March.
Italian name, Olmo.

I3I

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil
Ulva.

' ulvam . . . palustrem ' (Ge. iii. 175).

' viridi procumbit in ulva ' (Ec. viii. 88).

' in ulva | delitui ' (Ae. ii. 135).

' informi limo glaucaque ... in ulva ' (ib. vi. 416).

This, which one might expect to be among the
easiest, is among the more difficult to identify.
That the name indicates a species, and is not, as
some have supposed, a general name for marsh
plants with sword-like leaves, is sufficiently proved
by two lists in Ovid's Metamorphoses —

' Non illic canna palustris, k

nee steriles ulvae, nee acuta cuspide iunci ' (iv. 288) —

a passage which describes a limpid Lycian lake ;
and this description of the scene of a boar-hunt :

' Tenet ima lacunae
lenta salix ulvaeque leves iuncique palustres
viminaque et longa parvae sub harundine cannae ' (viii. 335).

It is clear that ' harundo ' is Ovid's name for the
great or pole reed, Arundo donax, and ' canna ' his
name for the common reed, Phragmites communis.
Our passage and many others show that * ulva ' was
a common marsh plant with green leaves, that it
grew in masses, and that it was high enough, at
least, for a crouching man to hide n. Virgil's
epithet of * glauca ' does not help us, because the
plant of this passage belongs to the under-world,
where are no bright colours and no things of
earthly beauty. The reed of Cocytus is ' deformis '

132

Ulva

(Ge. iv. 478), gaunt and ugly, epithets not to be
applied to those which fringe the banks of the
hallowed Mincio.

Martyn found our plant in the cat's-tail, which
children call bulrush, and books » by the bookish
name of reed-mace ; but Ovid would hardly have
applied the epithet of ' sterilis ' to a plant with so
stately an inflorescence. Moreover, the plant has
farinaceous and esculent roots, and Martyn himself
claims an Italian use for its fluff as the stuffing
of beds.

The method of residues seems to leave us with
only one plant which answers all the conditions.
This is the fen sedge (Cladium Mariscus), whose
Italian name is 'paniscastrella di palude.' Its leaves
are as long as four and its stem as five feet. It often
makes masses in the lakes and marshes of Italy.
Though a local plant in England, it is still abundant
in some parts of the Eastern Counties fens, and,
according to Mrs. Lancaster, was at one time used at
Cambridge for lighting fires. It may be recognized
by the stout and round stems, which are very leafy,
and by the leaves, which have jagged edges and very
long points. The flowering cymes are pale brown.

Flower, May and June.

Italian name, Panicastrella di palude.

Vaccinium : see Hyacinthus.

x33

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

Verbena.

' verbena tempora vincti ' (Ae. xii. 120).
' verbenas adole pingues ' (Ec. viii. 65).
'lilia verbenasque' (Ge. iv. 131).

The vervain (Verbena officinalis) is a fairly frequent
roadside plant in England and very common in Italy.
It has a small spike of bluish flowers, and, as Pliny
noted, an angular stem and oak-like leaves. It has
not enough beauty or dignity to justify its standing
side by side with the lily in the Corycian's garden,
nor does it look like a bee plant, and I have never
seen bees on it, though I have grown it in a garden.
The Corycian must have learnt from his Italian
neighbours how highly they valued a plant which
could cure them of divers diseases, save them from
the effect of a serpent's fang, and through incanta-
tion bring an errant husband to his wife's breast. It
could cleanse a house from impurities, and Jupiter
would have no other herb to sweep his table.

When the Romans held that a foreign State had
done them a wrong, they sent an ambassador, who
wore a fillet of white wool with a wreath of vervain,
plucked root and all on the Capitol, to demand
reparation. In this use the plucked tufts were called
' sagmina,' or sacred things, and the envoy was
* verbenarius.' It would seem, however, that other
plants could be used if they were plucked from the
sacred enclosure. Tufts of grass would do, and, in
some cases, sprays of myrtle seem to have been
chosen. This led to an extension of the name,
'verbena' standing for any spray — bay, olive, or

134

Verbena

other — that was used in sacred rites. It may have
such a meaning in our first passage.

It does not appear what quality in the vervain won
for it this remarkable reverence. The Druids are
said to have valued it as highly as the Romans did,
and in medieval times it had an equal renown as a
charm against witchcraft and a remedy for most
ailments. In fact, its only property seems to be a
slight astringency.

Flower, June to September.

Italian names, Verbena and Vervena.

Viburnum.

' lenta . . . inter viburna cupressi ' (Ec. i. 26).

The plant here is assumed to be the wayfaring
tree (Viburnum Lantana), apparently on the ground
that its Italian name is still ' vavorna.' It is true
that the branches of this shrub are flexible, but they
hardly look it ; in fact, as it grows in the hedges ©f
an English limestone district, it is almost aggres-
sively upright. A kindred species is the wild guelder
rose (V. Opulus), which affects damper places. In
flower and berry it is much the finer shrub, and
from it has sprung the guelder rose, in which the
blossoms are barren and the cyme has become
globular. Both species are common in Italy. I
have an Opulus growing under a tall pine, and like
to think that they are as near Virgil's picture as
English conditions will allow.

Flower, April to June.
Italian names, Vavorna and Lantana.
*35

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil
Vicia.

'tenues foetus viciae ' (Ge. i. 75 ; cf. ib. 227).

The vetch or tare (Vicia sativa) is a leguminous
plant developed in cultivation from V. angustifolia,
a plant common in most parts of Europe and
northern Africa. It is an annual, and in the wild
form the seeds are very small, hence tenues, though
they grow larger in the cultivated type. The plant
is grown for fodder, and the Romans were aware
that its roots enriched the ground. The reason of
this is explained under Faba. After the crop had
been mown, the ground was immediately ploughed,
and the nitrogen became available for the succeeding
crop.

Flower, May and June.

Italian name, Veccia.

Viola.

1 et nigrae violae sunt et vaccinia nigra ' (Ec. x. 39).
'molli viola' (ib. v. 38 ; Ae. x. 39). ■
' pallentes violas ' (Ec. ii. 47).
1 violaria ' (Ge. iv. 32).

It seems that the name covers several distinct
plants, as did the Greek tov. Our first passage,
which follows the line of Theocritus,

Kai to lov fieXav evrl kol a ypairra v6.kiv6os,

refers to the sweet violet (Viola odorata), of which
the purple form was known as Sarran — that is,
Tyrian. The white form is also found in Italy; but
perhaps in our third passage Virgil is translating

136

Viola

Xev/cotov, which is evidently not a violet, but what
gardeners call a soft-wooded plant. It is usual to
identify it with the hoary stock (Matthiola incana),
still known in Italy as \ violacciocco bianco,' the
epithet presumably referring to the hoariness of the
leaves and stem. The plant once grew on the
Hastings cliffs, and may still occasionally be found
at Freshwater Bay in the Isle of Wight. It is the
ancestor of our garden Queen and Brompton stocks,
and, like the violet, was a garland flower.

The violet was extensively grown not only for
bees, but for its scent, and for a purple dye of no
great value. Pesto was as famous for violets as for
roses.

Flower of Violets, March and April.

Flower of Stock, March to May.

Italian names : Viola (violet).

Fiorbono, Fiorbianco, and
Violacciocco bianco (stock).

Viscum.

' Solet silvis brumali frigore viscum
fronde virere nova, quod non sua seminat arbos,
et croceo foetu teretes circumdare ramos' (Ae. vi. 205 sqq.).

Virgil well indicates the curious green -yellow
colour of the mistletoe (Viscum album), and its con-
spicuousness on a leafless tree in winter. The berries
were made into bird-lime, and for this purpose were
gathered before they were ripe. There are two
varieties, and that which has an oval and yellowish

*37

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

berry was held to give a better product than the
more common type, of which the berries are round
and white.

The trees on which the mistletoe is most com-
monly parasitic in Italy are apples, pears, poplars,
plums, and almonds.

It is supposed that its association with Christmas
came from a dedication to Saturn, which made it
figure at the Saturnalia.

Flower, March and April.
Italian name, Vischio.

VlTIS AND LABRUSCA.

The former is the cultivated and the latter the
wild form of the vine (Vitis vinifera), a native of
northern Persia, cultivated from prehistoric times.
The vine came to Greece, perhaps, by way of
Damascus, where it flourishes greatly, and where
lately our soldiers have eaten what one of them
called ' huge grapes, by bucketfuls.' As chance
seedlings, produced by the pilfering of birds, are
apt to return to the wild stock, the ' labrusca ' has
naturalized itself in woods, and occasionally on sea-
beaches, in Italy. Homer pictures it as creeping
round the entrance of Calypso's island cave, and
Virgil in a like position on a Sicilian grotto,
' Antrum | silvestris raris sparsit labrusca racemis '
{Ec. v. 6). The scanty bunches provided a small
grape, of which peasants made a rough and thin wine.

The cultivation of the vine, in its native country

138

Vitis and Labrusca

and in Syria and Egypt, produced in early days
many varieties. In Virgil's days they were yet more
numerous, and, after speaking of fifteen, he cuts short
his list with the remark that it were as easy to count
the Libyan sands or the waves of the Ionian sea
(Ge. ii. 90-108). We cannot with any certainty
identify these varieties or, indeed, be sure that any
of them still exist. Grapes change their character
with a change of soil, and varieties produced in
cultivation, the ' vernae ' of the vegetable world,
whether vines or apples or other, seldom have in
them the sempiternity of the wilding race. The
greybeards of to-day sigh in vain for the Ribston
pippin. It irks the good tree to be ever in the
service of a devouring master ; wherefore, after some
generations, it fades and languishes, and grows dim
and dies.

Nowadays the vine is usually propagated by eyes,
but seeds, cuttings, or layers made the choice of
ancient Italy ; and Virgil decides for the layer,
1 propago ' (Ge. ii. 63), a method still in occasional
use. In the vineyard the young plants were set in
rows, ' antes ' (ib. 417), and usually on the principle
of the quincunx, which gives the largest allowance
of light and air (ib. 278). In the young state,
the vines are lightly pinched, as gardeners call it,
in summer (ib. 365, 366), and, when they have filled
their allotted space, they are annually pruned back
to the old wood (ib. 367 sqq.), with intermediate
prunings to remove superfluous growths and let in
air and sunshine.

J39

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

Of the vineyard there were two types. For one
type the technical name seems to have been ' vinea,'
though usage is not quite consistent. In this the
vines either crept along the ground or were held up
by short sticks — Shakespeare's ' pole-clipt vinyard.'
Both methods survive in Italy, the sticks nowadays
being often a tripod of bamboo canes. This system
reduces labour, but the vines are more liable to damage
from hailstorms. It does not appear that Virgil men-
tions it, his use of the name ' vinea ' being merely
for metrical convenience, and his principles would
involve a preference for the * vinetum' or ' arbustum,'
as it was sometimes called. In this the vines were
trained to trees, usually elms (Ec. ii. 70 ; Ge. i. 2 ;
ib. ii. 221). The only other tree mentioned by Virgil
is a willow (Ec. x. 40), but many others were occa-
sionally used. The plane was rejected rather for its
shaling bark than for its large leaves, for in well-
managed vineyards no more leaves were allowed on
the supporting tree than served to keep it alive
(Ge. ii. 400; Ec. ii. 70). Indeed, when the soil
was thin only a single shoot was allowed to grow
from the top of the trunk. On the other hand, in
rich soil it was usual to have a system of trained
branches.

On this method the young vines were at first
trained to reeds, or poles, or folded sticks (ib. 358 sq.),
which reached up to the lowest tier of branches, the
name for the tiers being ' tabulata,' or stories. The
interval between the tiers was not less than three
feet, and no branch was immediately under one in

140

Vitis and Labrusca

the tier above it. Otherwise, the whipping of the
branch and the vine-shoots in the wind would damage
the hanging blossoms or fruit.

To keep out beasts, especially the mischievous
goat, it was necessary to enclose the vineyard with a
hedge (ib. 371) of ' paliurus,' or some other thorny
shrub, and the soil had to be kept open by deep and
frequent hoeing (ib. 399 sq.). In fact, as Virgil says,
to the work there is no end.

The wide cultivation and the great value of the vine
gave rise to a technical vocabulary for its various
parts. As with other trees, the name for the main
stem was ' truncus.' The rods left on the tree after
pruning were ' palmites,' and the eyes or buds on
them ' gemmae,' or sometimes ' oculi.' Thus Virgil's
sign of spring is accurately expressed, ' laeto turgent
in palmite gemmae ' (Ec. vii. 48). The shoots which
spring from the eyes were 'pampini.' These are
longest in autumn before the general pruning, hence
1 pampineo autumno ' (Ge. ii. 5). The summer
pruning, in which superfluous ' pampini ' were re-
moved, was 'pampinatio,' and 'putatio' is also found
in this sense, especially in poetry, though it is more
properly applied either to the general removal of the
' pampini ' in winter, or to the pruning of the sup-
porting elm or other tree. Lexicons have a way
of rendering both ' palmes ' and ' pampinus ' by
' tendril.' This is absurd, for tendrils do not produce
buds, nor are they, as tendrils, pruned off, but only
as growing on a 'pampinus.' Technically, 'racemus'
is the stalk of the bunch of grapes, ' uva,' but is

141

Shrubs, Trees, and Plants of Virgil

often used for the bunch itself, and once, oddly, by
Virgil, for a berry (Ge. ii. 60). The berry was
1 acinus ' or ' acinum,' forms which between them
display all three genders. A stone of the grape was
' vinaceum.'

The centurion's staff and whipping-stick, ' nodosa
vitis,' was a ' palmes.' Bacchus, for the reins of his
team of panthers or tigers, used the young shoots.

Flower, Spring.
Italian name, Vite.

142

ITALIAN NAMES

WITH THEIR EQUIVALENTS IN VIRGIL

Abete rosso, Abies.

Acanto, Acanthus.

Acero, Acer.

Aglio, Alium.

Alberello, Populus.

Albatro, Arbutus.

Alloro, Laurus.

Altea, Hibiscum.

Amarecciole, Genista [Broom].

Amello, Amellus.

[Aneto, Anethum ?]

Antiveleno, Inula.

Appeggi, Cedrus.

Appiastro, Melisphyllum.

Arcidiavolo, Lotus [Celtis].

Attacca-mani, Lappa.

Astone, Carduus.

Astro, Amellus.

Avornello, Ornus.

Baccara, Baccar.

Baccellina, Genista [Dyer's

Greenweed].
Benefisci, Hibiscum.
Berbena, Verbena.
Bietola, Beta.
Biondello, Lutum.

Bosso or Bossolo, Buxus.
Braglia, Genista [Dyer's Green-
weed].
Brula, Myrica.

Calcatreppola, Tribulus.

Calendula, Calta.

Canajoli, Lupinus.

Canna, Harundo [Great Reed].

Canna di Palude, Harundo

[Common Reed].
Capogirlo, Ervum.
Carice, Carex.
Castagno, Castanea.
Cedro (see Malus C).
Cedronella, Melisphyllum.
Cerinta, Cerintha.
Cetriolino, Cucumis.
Chioppo, Acer.
Cicuta, Cicuta.
Cipolla, Cepa.
Cipresso, Cupressus.
Citraggine, Melisphyllum.
Colore, Ebulus.
Corbezzolo, Arbutus.
Coriandola, Coriandrum.
Corniolo or Crogniolo, Cornus.

43

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

Cotogno (see Malus B.).
Crescione, Nasturtium.

Dittinella, Casia (Daphne).

Ebbio, Ebulus.

Edera or Ellera, Hedera.

Elabro bianco, Helleborus.

Elenio, Inula.

Elice, Elix.

Endivia, Intubum.

Erbacorsa, Casia (Daphne).

Erba Medica, Medica.

Erba-tortora, Cerintha.

Erbella, Inula.

Eschio, Quercus.

Faggio, Fagus.

Fagiolo dall' occhio, Phaselus.

Farnia, Quercus.

Fava, Faba.

Felce capannaja, Filix.

Finocchio, Anethum [Fennel].

Finocchiaccio, Ferula.

Fiorbono, Viola [Stock].

Fiorrancia, Calta.

Fragola or Fravola, Fragum.

Frassino, Fraxinus.

Frumento, Triticum.

Gattice, Populus.

Gelso, Morus.

Giglio, Lilium.

Giglio rosso [Lilium bulbiferuni]

(see Hyacinthus).
Ginepro, Juniperus.
Ginestra, Ginista [ Spanish

Broom.]

Ginistrella, Ginista [ Dyer's
Greenweed].

Gioglio, Lolium.

Giracapo, Narcissus [Pheas-
ant's Eye].

Giunco, Juncus.

Granfarro, Far.

Guaderella, Lutum.

Ippofesto, Tribulus.
Ischio, Ligustrum [Privet].

Lattuga, Lactuca.

Lauro-tino, Tinus.

Lebbio, Ebulus.

Leccio, Ilex.

Lentaggine, Tinus.

Lente or Lenticchia, Lens.

Libo, Taxus.

Ligustro, Ligustrum [Privet].

Lino, Linum.

Loglio, Lolium.

Loppo, Acer.

Lotu, Lotus [Celtis australis],

Lupino, Lupinus.

Maggiorana, Amaracus.

Malva, Malva.

Malvaccioni, Hibiscum.

Marruca, Paliurus.

Melo, Malus [Apple].

Miglio, Milium.

Mirto, Myrtus.

Mochi, Ervum.

Moro, Morus.

Mullaghera, Lotus [L. cornicu-

latus.
Muschio, Muscus.

144

Italian Names

Narcisso, Narcissus [Pheasant's

Eye].
Nasso, Taxus.
Nocca, Carex.
Nocciuolo, Corylus.
Noce, Nux.

Oleastro, Oleaster.
Olivella, Ligustrum [Privet].
Olivo or Ulivo, Olea or Oliva.
Olmo, Ulmus [Ulmus australis].
Olmo riccio, Ulmus [U. mon-

tand\.
Ontano, Alnus.
Orniello, Ornus.
Orzo, Hordeum.

Pallone [Viburnum Opulus] (See
Viburnum).

Palma da datteri, Palma.

Panicastrella di palude, Ulva.

Pan-porcino or Pan-terreno,
Baccar.

Papavero, Papaver.

Pepolino, Serpyllum.

Pero, Pirus.

Persia, Amaracus.

Pino di Corsica, Pieea.

Pino da pinocchi, Pinus [Stone
Pine].

Pino di Scozia, Pinus [Scotch
Fir].

Pino Zimbro, Taeda.

Platano, Platanus.

Porro, Ponrum.

Prungo, Prunus [Primus domes-
tied] .

Prugnolo, Prunus [P. spinosa].

Pungi-topo, Ruscus.

Ramerino or Rosmarino, Ros

marinus.
Rogo or Rovo, Rubus.
Rombice or Romice, Rumex.
Rosa, Rosa.

Rucola or Ruchetta, Eruca.
Ruta, Ruta.

Sala [Typha latifolia. See under
Ulva].

Salce, Salix.

Santoreggia or Savoreggia,
Thymbra.

Scacciabile, Baccar.

Scarlattina, Cerintha.

Scilla, Scilla.

Sgancio, Prunus [P. spinosa].

Sedano, Apium.

Sorbo, Sorbus.

Spaccasassi, Lotus [Celtis].

Spadarella [Gladiolus zegetum.
See Hyacinth.]

Spelta, Far.

Speronella, Lappa.

Spinogiallo [Centaur ea solstiti-
alis. See Cardus].

Stroppioni, Carduus [C. arven-
sis] .

Sughera, Suber.

Susino, Plum [Prunus domes-
tied] .

Tamarice, Myrica.
Tasso, Taxus.
Testucchio, Acer.
Tiglio, Tilia.
Timo, Thymum.

Vavorna, Viburnum [V. Lan-
tana],

45 i

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

Veccia, Vicia.

Veladro, Helleborus.

Vena, Avena.

Verbena, Verbena,

Viola, Viola [Sweet Violet].

Violaccio bianco, Viola

[Stock].
Vischio (Viscum).

Visciolo, Cerasus.
Vite, Vitis.

Zafferano, Crocus.
Zampino, Abies.
Zinepro, Juniperus.
Zirlo, Ervum.
Zucca, Cucurbita.

This list is compiled from Arcangeli, with a good many
additions. The word scacciabile seems not to be in the dictionaries,
nor have I ever seen it written. I have been told that Medicago
arborea is called cytiso, but Arcangeli does not give it, and it
seems to be used of an exotic. For Saliunca I have not heard or
found any name.

? 46

LIST OF SCIENTIFIC NAMES

WITH THEIR EQUIVALENTS IN VIRGIL

Abies pectinata, Abies.
Acacia Arabica, Lotus.
Acanthus mollis, Acanthus.
Acer campestre, Acer.
Aconitum anthora, Aconitum.
Allium cepa, Cepa.

porrum, Porrum.

sativum, Alium.

Alnus glutinosa, Alnus.
Alhaea officinalis, Hibiscum.
Amomum cardamomum, Amo-

mum.
Anethum graveolens, Ane-

thum (?)
Apium graveolens, Apium.
Arbutus unedo, Arbutus.
Arundo donax, Harundo.
Avena fatua, Avena sterilis.
Avena sativa, Avena.

Beta ciela, Beta.

maritima, Beta.

Boswellia, Tus.

Buxus sempervirens, Buxus.

Calendula officinalis, Calta.
Carduus arvensis, Carduus.

Castanea sativa, Castanea.
Celtis australis, Lotus.
Centaurea calcitrapa, Tribulus.

solstitialis, Carduus (?)

Cerinthe aspera, Cerinthe.
Cichorium divaricatum, Intu-

bum.
Citrus medica [see Malus C.].
Cladium mariscus, Ulva.
Conium maculatum, Cicuta.
Coriandrum sativum, Coriand-

rum.
Cornus mas, Cornus.
Corylus Avellana, Corylus.
Crocus sativus, Crocus.
Cucumis sativus, Cucumis.
Cucurbita pepo, Cucurbita.
Cupressus sempervirens, Cu-

pressus.
Cyclamen (species), Baccar.
Cytisus scoparius, Genista.

Daphne gnidium, Casia.
Dolichus melanophthalmus,
Phaselus.

Eruca sativa, Eruca.

J47

Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

Fagus silvestris, Fagus.
Ferula communis, Ferula.
Foeniculum vulgare, Anethum.
Fragaria vescum, Fragum.
Fraxinus excelsior, Fraxinus.
ornus, Ornus.

Galium aparine, Lappa.
Genista tinctoria, Genista.
Gladiolus communis [see Hya-
cinthus].

Hedera helix, Hedera.
Hedera chrysocarpa, Hedera

pallens.
Hordeum vulgare, Hordeum.

Inula helenium, Inula.

Juglans regia, Nux.

Juncus conglomerate and J,

effusus, Juncus.
Juniperus communis, Juniperus .

Lactuca sativa, Lactuca.
Laurus cinnamomum, Casia.
Laurus nobilis, Laurus.
Lepidium sativum, Nasturtium.
Ligustrum vulgare, Ligustrum.
Lilium bulbiferum [see Hyacin-

thus] .

candidum, Lilium.

croceum [see Hyacin-

thus].
martagon [see Hvacin-

thus].
Linum angustifolium and L.

usitatissimum, Linum.
Lolium temulentum, Lolium.
Lupinus albus, Lupinus.

Malva silvestris, Malva.
Matthiola incana, Viola pallens.
Medicago arborea, Cytisus.

sativa, Medica.

Melissa officinalis, Melisphyl-

lum.
Morus nigra, Morus.
Myrtus communis, Myrtus.

Narcissus poeticus, Narcissus.

serotinus, Narcissus

sera comans.

Olea Europaea, Oleaster.

sativa, Olea and Oliva.

Origanum dictamnum, Dic-

tamnum.
marjorana,Amaracus.

Paliurusaculeatus [= australis],

Paliurus.
Panicum miliaceum, Milium.
Papaver hortense, P. officinale,

and P. somniferum, Papaver.
Phoenix dactylifera, Palma.
Phragmites communis, Har-

undo.
Pinus cembra, Taeda.

laricio, Picea.

pinea, Pinus.

silvestris, Pinus.

Pistacia terebinthus, Terebin-

thus.
Platanus orientalis, Platanus.
Populus alba, Populus.
Primus cerasus, Cerasus.

communis, Prunus.

domestica, Prunus.

insititia, Prunus.

148

List of Scientific Names

Prunus spinosa, Spinus.

Pteris aquilina, Filix.

Pyrus cydonia [see MalusB.].

domestica, Pirus.

malus, Malus.

sorbus, Sorbus.

Quercus ilex, Ilex.

pedunculata, Quercus

and Robur.

sessiliflora, Aesculus

and Robur.

suber, Suber.

Ranunculus sceleratus, Sardonia
herba.

Reseda luteolum, Lutum.

Ros marinus, Rosmarinus offici-
nalis.

Rosa (species), Rosa.

Rubus discolor and others,
Rubus.

Rumex crispus and others,
Rumex.

Ruscus aculeatus, Ruscus.

Ruta graveolens, Ruta.

Salix (species), Salix.
Sambucus ebulus, Ebulus.
Satureia hortensis, Thymbra.

Satureia thymbra, Thymbra.

Siler, Salix (?)

Spartium junceum, Genista.

Tamarix Gallica, Myrica.
Taxus baccata, Taxus.
Thymus serpyllum, Serpyllum.

vulgaris, Thymum.

Tilia parvifolia, Tilia.
Triticum spelta, Far.
■ vulgare, Triticum.

Ulmus australis, Ulmus.

montana, Ulmus.

Urginea Scilla, Scilla.

Vaccinium [see Hyacinthus].
Valeriana Celtica, Saliunca.
Veratrum album, Helleborus.
Verbena officinalis, Verbena.
Viburnum Lantana, Viburnum.

tinus, Tinus.

Vicia ervilia, Ervum.

faba, Faba.

lens, Lens.

sativa, Vicia.

Viscum album, Viscum.
Vitis vinifera, Vitis and Lab-
rusca.

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J. S. PHILLIMORE,

Professor of Humanity in the University of Glasgow.

The Revival of Criticism. A Paper read at

the meeting of the Classical Association at Oxford, May
17th, 1919. Demy 8vo, sewed, is. 6d. net.

A. H. WALKER, M.A.

A Primer of Greek Constitutional History.

Fcap 8vo, cloth, 3s. net.

1 This is a valuable little book, carefully put together, and sober in its
conjectures and conclusions.' — The Spectator.

' It is for high forms at public schools and University students, and fills
a vacant place in their bookshelves by providing a sound and concise
exposition both of the theory and of the history.' — The Times.

G. B. GRUNDY, D.Litt.

Ancient Gems in Modern Settings. Being

Versions of the Greek Anthology in English Rhyme by
various writers. Demy i6mo, cloth, 6s. net; on Oxford
India paper, limp leather, 7s. 6d. net.

' Dr. G. B. Grundy has laid the poetry-loving public under a deep
obligation by the production of his delightful collection. . . . The choice
from first to last is excellent.' — 1 he Guardian.

' . . . Perhaps the most satisfactory presentation of the Anthology now
available in English. . . . Altogether a charming little book.' — The Dial.

' In this volume Mr. Grundy has collected a large number of English
versions, in which the tenderness or wit of the Greek originals has been
admirably reproduced by the taste and ingenuity of our scholars and poets.'
— The Literary World.

A. G. ROPER, M.A.,

Headmaster of Wallop Preparatory School.

Ancient Eugenics. Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d.

net.

'An excellent essay. . . . Mr. Roper must be read . . . before we say
more on the subject.' — The Expository Times.

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