[500] Generally supposed to be the Valeriana Celtica of modern naturalists. See B. xxi. c. 79.
[501] Probably the Valeriana Italica of modern naturalists.
[502] See B. xix. c. 48.
[503] Known in this country as fox-glove, our Lady’s gloves, sage of Jerusalem, or clown’s spikenard. See B. xxi. c. 16.
[504] Not always, but very seldom, Brotier says. Clusius has established, from observation, that this plant is only a variety of the Valeriana Celtica.
[505] Fée remarks, that the name “baccara,” in Greek, properly belonged to this plant, but that it was transferred by the Romans to the field nard, with which the Asarum had become confounded. It is the same as the Asarum Europæum of modern naturalists; but it does not, as Pliny asserts, flower twice in the year.
[506] It is by no means settled among naturalists, what plant the Amomum of the ancients was; indeed, there has been the greatest divergence of opinion. Tragus takes it to be a kind of bindweed: Matthioli, the Piper Æthiopicum of Linnæus: Cordus and Scaliger, the rose of Jericho, the Anastatica hierocuntica of Linnæus. Gesner thinks it to have been the garden pepper, the Solanum bacciferum of Tournefort: Cæsalpinus the cubeb, the Piper cubeba of Linnæus: Plukenet and Sprengel the Cissus vitiginea, while Fée and Paulet look upon it as not improbably identical with the Amomum racemosum of Linnæus. The name is probably derived from the Arabic hahmâma, the Arabians having first introduced it to the notice of the Greeks.
[507] Supposed to have been only the Amomum, in an unripe state, as Pliny himself suggests.
[508] Still known in pharmacy as “cardamum.” It is not, however, as Pliny says, found in Arabia, but in India; from which it probably reached the Greeks and Romans by way of the Red Sea. There are three kinds known in modern commerce, the large, the middle size, and the small. M. Bonastre, “Journal de Pharmacie,” May, 1828, is of opinion, that the word cardamomum signifies “amomum in pods,” the Egyptian kardh meaning “pod,” or “husk.” It is, however, more generally supposed, that the Greek word, καρδία, “heart,” enters into its composition.
[509] “Verus” seems a preferable reading here to “vero,” which has been adopted by Sillig.