Temple, William; Sieveking, Albert Forbes: Upon the gardens of Epicurus: with other XVIIth century garden essays (London: Chatto and Windus, 1908)

PLANTS IN SCRIPTURE 129
bottom, and somewhat repandous, or inverted at the
top, doth handsomely illustrate the comparison.
But that the lily of the valley, mentioned in the
Canticles, “ I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of
the valley,” is that vegetable which passeth under the
same name with us, that is, lil'ium con'vallium, or the
May lily, you will more hardly believe, who know
with what insatisfaction the most learned botanists
reduce that plant unto any described by the ancients ;
that Anguillara will have it to be the cenanthe of
Athenaeus, Cordus, the pothos of Theophrastus, and
Lobelius, that the Greeks had not described it; who
find not six leaves in the flower, agreeably to all lilies,
but only six small divisions in the flower, who find it
also to have a single, and no bulbous root, nor leaves
shooting about the bottom, nor the stalk round, but
angular. And that the learned Bauhinus hath not
placed it in the classis of lilies, but nervifolious
plants.
21. It is said in the Song of Solomon, that “The
vines with the tender grape give a good smell.” That
the flowers of the vine should be emphatically noted
to give a pleasant smell seems hard unto our northern
nostrils, which discover not such odours, and smell
K