Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris, or, A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permitt to be noursed vp / a kitchen garden of all manner of herbes, rootes & fruites for meate or sauce vsed with vs, and, an orchard of all sorte of fruitbearing trees and shrubbes fit for our land, together with the right orderinge, planting & preseruing of them and their vses & vertues

by John Parkinson

6. Armerius latifolius variegatus siue versicolor. Speckled sweete Williams, or London pride.

These spotted Williams are very like the first red Williams, in the forme or maner of growing, hauing leaues as broade, and browne sometimes as they, the flowers, stand as thicke or thicker, clustring together, but of very variable colours: for some flowers will be of a fine delayed red, with few markes or spots vpon them, and others will bee full speckled or sprinkled with white or siluer spots, circlewise about the middle of the flowers, and some will haue many specks or spots vpon them dispersed: all these flowers are not blowne at one time, but some are flowring, when others are decaying, so that abiding long in their pride, they become of the more respect: The seede is blacke, as all the rest, and not to be distinguished one from another: the roots are some long, and some small and threddy, running vnder the vpper crust of the earth.

7. Armerius latifolius flore rubro saturo holofericeo. Sweet Williams of a deepe red or murrey colour.

The leaues of this kinde seeme to be a little larger, and the ioints a little redder then the former, but in the flower consisteth the chiefest difference, which is of a deepe red, or murrey purple colour, like vnto veluet of that colour, without any spots, but smooth, and as it were soft in handling, hauing an eye or circle in the middle, at the bottome of the leaues.

8. Armerius latifolius simplex flore albo. Single white sweete Williams.

The white kinde differeth not in forme, but in colour from the former, the leaues are not browne at all, but of a fresh greene colour, and the flowers are wholly white, or else they are all one.

The Place.

These for the most part grow wilde in Italie, and other places: we haue them in our Gardens, where they are cherished for their beautifull varietie.

The Time.

They all generally doe flower before the Gilloflowers or Pinkes, or with the first of them: their seede is ripe in Iune and Iuly, and doe all well abide the extremitie of our coldest winters.