CLOTH MANUFACTURED FROM BROOM BARK, NETTLE, AND BULBOUS PLANT.—TESTIMONY OF GREEK AND LATIN AUTHORS.
Authority for Spanish Broom—Stipa Tenacissima—Cloth made from Broom-bark—Albania—Italy—France—Mode of preparing the fibre for weaving—Pliny’s account of Spartum—Bulbous plant—Its fibrous coats—Pliny’s translation of Theophrastus—Socks and garments—Size of the bulb—Its genus or species not sufficiently defined—Remarks of various modern writers on this plant—Interesting communications of Dr. Daniel Stebbins, of Northampton, Mass. to Hon. H. L. Ellsworth.
Pliny says, that “in the part of Hispania Citerior about New Carthage whole mountains were covered with Spartum; that the natives made mattresses, shoes, and coarse garments of it, also fires and torches; and that its tender tops were eaten by animals[206].” He also says, that it grows spontaneously where nothing else will grow, and that it is “the rush of a dry soil.”
[206] L. xix. c. 2.
The question now arises, what plant Pliny intended to describe. Clusius, who travelled in Spain chiefly with a view to botany, supposed Pliny’s “Spartum” to be the tough grass, used in every part of Spain for making mats, baskets, &c., which Linnæus afterwards called Stipa Tenacissima[207]. It is not surprising, that the opinion of so eminent a botanist as Clusius has been generally adopted. It is, however, far more probable, that the plant, which Pliny intended to speak of, was the Spartium Junceum, Linn., so familiarly known under the name of Spanish Broom.
[207] Clusii Plant. Rar. Historia, L. vi. p. 219. 220.
In the first place, the name Spartum should be considered as decisive of the question, unless some sufficient reason can be shown for ascribing to it in this passage a sense different from that which it commonly bore. Spartus or Spartum, is admitted to be used by all authors, Greek and Latin, and even by Pliny himself in another passage[208], to denote the Spanish Broom. We learn from Sibthorp, that the Spanish Broom is still called Sparto by the Greeks, and that it grows on dry sandy hills throughout the islands of the Archipelago and the continent of Greece. Sparto was indeed properly the Greek name of this shrub, the Latin name being Genista, and the use of the Greek name in Hispania Citerior may have been owing to the Grecian settlements on that coast, colonized from Marseilles.
[208] See L. xi. 8. where Pliny says, that bees obtain honey and wax from “Spartum,” and compare this with Aristotle, Hist. Anim. L. x. 40.
Besides the passages of Latin authors referred to by Schneider and Billerbeck, and which it is unnecessary to repeat, the following from Isidore of Seville appears decisive respecting the acceptation of the term.