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CHAP. 31. (6.)—THE ROOTS, FLOWERS, AND LEAVES OF ALL THESE PLANTS. GARDEN PLANTS WHICH LOSE THEIR LEAVES.

Nearly all1 the garden plants have a single2 root only, radishes, beet, parsley, and mallows, for example; it is lapathum, however, that has the longest root of them all, it attaining the length of three cubits even. The root of the wild kind is smaller and of a humid nature, and when up it will keep alive for a considerable period. In some of these plants, however, the roots are fibrous, as we find the case in parsley and mallows, for instance; in others, again, they are of a ligneous nature, as in ocimum, for example; and in others they are fleshy, as in beet, and in saffron even more so. In some, again, the root is composed of rind and flesh, as in the radish and the rape; while in others it is jointed, as in hay grass3. Those plants which have not a straight root throw out immediately a great number of hairy fibres, orage4 and blite,5 for instance: squills again, bulbs, onions, and garlic never have any but a vertical root. Among the plants that grow spontaneously, there are some which have more numerous roots than leaves, spalax,6 for example, pellitory,7 and saffron.8

Wild thyme, southernwood, turnips, radishes, mint, and rue blossom all9 at once; while others, again, shed their blossom directly they have begun to flower. Ocimum10 blossoms gradu- ally, beginning at the lower parts, and hence it is that it is so very long in blossom: the same is the case, too, with the plant known as heliotropium.11 In some plants the flower is white, in others yellow, and in others purple. The leaves fall first12 from the upper part in wild-marjoram and elecampane, and in rue13 sometimes, when it has been injured accidentally. In some plants the leaves are hollow, the onion and the scallion,14 more particularly.

1 This passage, and indeed nearly the whole of the Chapter, is borrowed from Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. B. i. c. 9.

2 Fée thinks that by the expression μονόῤῥιζα, Theophrastus means a root that strikes vertically, instead of spreading.

3 Gramen. See B. xviii. c. 67, and B. xxiv. c. 118.

4 Atriplex. See B. xx. c. 83.

5 See B. xx. c. 93.

6 Poinsinet suggests that this may mean the "mole-plant," ἀσπάλαξ being the Greek for "mole."

7 "Perdicium." See B. xxii. cc. 19, 20.

8 "Crocus." See B. xxi. c. 17, ct seq.

9 This is not the fact. All these assertions are from Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. B. vii. c. 3.

10 Fée thinks that the ocimum of Pliny is not the basil of the moderns, the Ocimum basilicum of the naturalists. The account, however, here given would very well apply to basil.

11 The Heliotropium Europæum of botany. See B. xxii. c. 19.

12 These assertions, Fée says, are not consistent with modern experience.

13 See c. 45 of this Book.

14 "Gethyum." The Allium schœnoprasum, probably, of botany, the ciboul or scallion.

The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.

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