This biennial Umbellifer is wild in the south of Europe, from Spain to Turkey. It has also been found at Tlemcen in Algeria, and in Lebanon.[369] Dioscorides and Pliny speak of it under the names of _Petroselinon_ and _Petroselinum_,[370] but only as a wild medicinal plant. Nothing proves that it was cultivated in their time. In the Middle Ages Charlemagne counted it among the plants which he ordered to be cultivated in his gardens.[371] Olivier de Serres in the sixteenth century cultivated parsley. English gardeners received it in 1548.[372] Although this cultivation is neither ancient nor important, it has already developed two varieties, which would be called species if they were found wild; the parsley with crinkled leaves, and that of which the fleshy root is edible. +Smyrnium+, or +Alexanders+—_Smyrnium olus-atrum_, Linnæus. Of all the Umbellifers used as vegetables, this was one of the commonest in gardens for nearly fifteen centuries, and it is now abandoned. We can trace its beginning and end. Theophrastus spoke of it as a medicinal plant under the name of _Ipposelinon_, but three centuries later Dioscorides[373] says that either the root or the leaves might be eaten, which implies cultivation. The Latins called it _olus-atrum_, Charlemagne _olisatum_, and commanded it to be sown in his farms.[374] The Italians made great use of it under the name _macerone_.[375] At the end of the eighteenth century the tradition existed in England that this plant had been formerly cultivated; later English and French horticulturists do not mention it.[376] The _Smyrnium olus-atrum_ is wild throughout Southern Europe, in Algeria, Syria, and Asia Minor.[377] +Corn Salad+, or +Lamb’s Lettuce+—_Valerianella olitoria_, Linnæus. Frequently cultivated as a salad, this annual, of the Valerian family, is found wild throughout temperate Europe to about the sixtieth degree of latitude, in Southern Europe, in the Canary Isles, Madeira, and the Azores, in the north of Africa, Asia Minor, and the Caucasus.[378] It often grows in cultivated ground, near villages, etc., which renders it somewhat difficult to know where it grew before cultivation. It is mentioned, however, in Sardinia and Sicily, in the meadows and mountain pastures.[379] I suspect that it is indigenous only in these islands, and that everywhere else it is introduced or naturalized. The grounds for this opinion are the fact that no name which it seems possible to assign to this plant has been found in Greek or Latin authors. We cannot even name any botanist of the Middle Ages or of the sixteenth century who has spoken of it. Neither is it mentioned among the vegetables used in France in the seventeenth century, either by the _Jardinier Français_ of 1651, or by Laurenberg’s work, _Horticultura_ (Frankfurt, 1632). The cultivation and even the use of this salad appear to be modern, a fact which has not been noticed. +Cardoon+—_Cynara cardunculus_, Linnæus.