178 HISTORY OF ESSEX BOTANY.
p. 720. " Melilotus vulgaris. Common Melilot . . . in Essex in
divers places . . . in some places of Essex they call it Hartwort, because
they thinke the seede thereof happening into their bread caused paines in the
stomacke and chest, which they usually call the Heart burne." [Melilotus
officinalis Lam.
pp. 1059-1060. Pisum sylvestre alteram. The other wilde Pease . . .
Of this kinde there is another found to grow somewhat larger . . . on the
chalkie hills at Kings Hay in Kent, not farre from the Thames, and the larger
sort hereof in some barren fields in Essex."
From the habitat I take this to be Lathyrus sylvestris L.
previously recorded by Gerard from the Chalk at Swanscombe
Wood, Kent.
pp. 1043-4. " Lonchitis asperia minor. The smaller rough Splenewort .
There is another of this sort lesser than this, found about
Colchester in Essex." [Lomaria spicant Desv.]
p. 1064. " Lathyrus annuus. Yearely or Annuall Cichelings . . . .
All these [eight] sorts except the sixt (which I found in clensing of Anneseede
to use) grow in Spaine, and from thence were brought with a number of other
rare seedes besides by Guillaume Boel and imparted to Mr. Coys of Stubbers in
Essex in love, as a lover of rare plants, but to me of debt, for going into Spaine
almost wholly on my charge hee brought mee little else for my mony, but
while I beate the bush another catcheth and eateth the bird : so while I with
care and cost sowed them yearely hoping first to publish them, another that
never saw them unlesse in my Garden, nor knew of them but by a collaterall
friend, prevents me whom they knew had their descriptions ready for the
Presse."
It would not be easy now to identify these exotic species
first grown in an Essex garden. The querulous allusion would
seem to be to Johnson, whose "agility" and "younger yeares"
are slightingly referred to in Parkinson's address 'To the
Reader,' since these plants grown from seeds given to him by
Coys in 1620 and 1621 are described in the Appendix to his
edition of Gerard (pp. 1626—1629). It is only fair to add that
Johnson (p. 1628) acknowledges having gathered some of these
seeds "in the garden of my good friend Mr. Joh. Parkinson an
Apothecary of London, Anno 1616."
The Rose Willow, figured on p. 1430, and stated on the
next page to occur "in sundry places of Essex" is an aggrega-
tion of leaves terminating a shoot of Salix alba L., S. fragilis L.,
S. caprea L., or other species, whether pollarded or not, and
replacing the scales of a catkin or the foliage-leaves of an
ordinary bud. "The gall" for gall it is, "consists of an
imbricate mass of shortened, sessile, and crowded leaves; in the
centre is a small, hard, inner gall, which contains one or more
larvae of the gall-gnat . . . Cecidomyia rosaria H. Loew."30
30 E A. Fitch, "The Galls of Essex," Trains. Essex Field Club, vol. ii., p. 148 ; M. T.
Masters, Vegetable Teratology (1869), p. 168.