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

3. Iasminum luteum, siue Trifolium fruticans alijs Polemonium. The yellow Iasmine.

This that is called the yellow Iasmine, hath many long slender twiggy branches rising from the roote, greene at the first, and couered with a darke grayish barke afterwards, whereon are set at certaine distances, three small darke greene leaues together, the end leafe being alwaies the biggest: at the ioynts where the leaues come forth, stand long stalkes, bearing long hollow flowers, ending in fiue, and some in six leaues, very like vnto the flowers of the first Iasmine, but yellow, whereupon it is vsually called the Yellow Iasmine: after the flowers are past, there come in their places round blacke shining berries, of the bignesse of a great Pease, or bigger, full of a purplish iuyce, which will dye ones fingers that bruise them but a little: the roote is tough, and white, creeping farre about vnder the ground, shooting forth plentifully, whereby it greatly encreaseth.

The Place.

The first is verily thought to haue been first brought to Spaine out of Syria, or thereabouts, and from Spaine to vs, and is to be seene very often, and in many of our Country Gardens. The second hath his breeding in Spaine also, but whether it be his originall place we know not, and is scarce yet made well acquainted with our English ayre. The third groweth plentifully about Mompelier, and will well abide in our London Gardens, and any where else.

The Time.

The first flowreth not vntill the end of Iuly. The second somewhat earlier. The third in Iuly also.

The Names.

The first is generally called Iasminum album, and Gelseminum album: In English, The white Iasmine. The second hath his name in his title, as much as may be said of it. The third hath been taken of some to be a Cytisus, others iudge it to be Polemonium, but the truest name is Trifolium fruticans, although many call it Iasminum luteum: In English most vsually, The yellow Iasmine, for the reasons aforesaid; or else after the Latine name, Shrubbie Trefoile, or Make-bate.

The Vertues.

The white Iasmines haue beene in all times accepted into outward medicines, eyther for the pleasure of the sweete sent, or profit of the warming properties. And is in these dayes onely vsed as an ornament in Gardens, or for sent of the flowers in the house, &c. The yellow Iasmine, although some haue adiudged it to be the Polemonium of Dioscorides, yet it is not vsed to those purposes by any that I know.