previous next

CHAP. 30.—THREE VARIETIES OF TREFOIL: THE MYOPHONUM.

The leaves of trefoil also are employed for making chaplets. There are three varieties: the first being called by the Greeks sometimes "minyanthes,"1 and sometimes "asphaltion;" the leaves of it, which the garland-makers employ, are larger than those of the other kinds. The second variety, known as the "oxytriphyllon,"2 has a pointed leaf; and the third has the smallest leaf of them all. Among these plants there are some which have a tough, sinewy stem, such as marathron,3 for instance, hippomarathron,4 and the myophonum.5 The umbels, too, of fennel-giant and the purple flowers6 of the ivy are employed for this purpose; as also another kind of ivy very similar to the wild rose,7 the colour only of which is attractive, the flower being quite inodorous. There are also two8 varieties used of the cneorum, the black and the white, this last being odoriferous: they are both of them provided with branches, and they blossom after the autumnal equinox.9

(10.) There are the same number of varieties, also, of origanum employed in making chaplets, one of which is destitute of seed, the other, which is also odoriferous, being known as the Cretan10 origanum.

1 The Psoranthea bituminosa of Linnæus. It is found on declivities near the sea-coast, in the south of Europe.

2 "Pointed trefoil." Pliny has probably committed an error here, as Dioscorides makes oxyphyllum, minyanthes, and asphaltium to be different names of the same variety. Sprengel, however, identifies this pointed trefoil with the Trifolium Italicum of Linnæus.

3 The Anethum fæniculum of Linnæus. See B. viii. c. 41, B. xx. c. 95, and B. xxx. c. 9.

4 See B. xx. c. 96.

5 The "mouse-killer." Probably the Aconitum napellus of Linnæus. See B. xxvii. c. 2.

6 See B. xvi. c. 62.

7 Fée remarks, that there is no such ivy in existence; he agrees with Dalechamps in the opinion that Pliny has confounded κίσσος, "ivy," with κίστος, the "rock-rose. See B. xvi. c. 62.

8 The Daphne Cnidium and the Daphne Cneorum of Linnæus. See B. xxiii. c. 35, and B. xv. c. 7.

9 In reality, they blossom in April and May, and mostly a second time in autumn as well, the Daphne Cneorum in particular.

10 See B. xx. c. 69.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Latin (Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff, 1906)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

hide References (4 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: