Erectly Yellow. Nigella orientalis, Yellow Fennel Flower, Hortus Haren, Groningen, The Netherlands
Here's a family member of Black Cumin, Yellow Fennel Flower, Nigella orientalis, first introduced to Western Europe (England) from Aleppo, Syria (the site today of horrific war), in the late seventeenth century. I saw it in the marvellous Botanical Garden at Haren, just to the south of Groningen.
Curiously, I was at first rather confused and set on a wrong historical trail about the advent of this pretty but strange plant to Western Europe. Usually I've found that marvellous journal Curtis's Botanical Magazine to be a good guide in this sort of thing. But the entry for our plant in 1809 is off the mark. It sent me scurrying to look in old books for one Reverend Mr Harrington of the British trading post (Factory) of Aleppo. He was said to have sent or taken Orientalis to England. Well, couldn't find that gentleman. Now, great Carolus Linnaeus half a century earlier - like indeed the Magazine also - refers to the fine late-seventeenth century botanist Robert Morison (1620-1683). So there I went.
Morison's great Plantarum Historiae Universalis, part III, published as late as 1699, has a good entry on Nigella orientalis. Here it is called Nigella chalepensis lutea (= Yellow Nigella of Aleppo). And Morison adds that it was collected in Aleppo by Robert Huntington (1637-1701), so not by a Harrington.
Huntington was for about ten years the chaplain of the Aleppo Factory. Not primarily a botanist but a fine orientalist, he appears to have collected (some) plants as well. He didn't publish much in his 'theological' field, but put together a formidable collection of oriental manuscripts. And he was a scholar, too, of the Samaritans of Nablus, with whom he maintained a correspondence throughout his life.
Whether Huntington cultivated this Yellow Fennel in his garden upon his return to England and his later posting to Ireland, I don't know...
Erectly Yellow. Nigella orientalis, Yellow Fennel Flower, Hortus Haren, Groningen, The Netherlands
Here's a family member of Black Cumin, Yellow Fennel Flower, Nigella orientalis, first introduced to Western Europe (England) from Aleppo, Syria (the site today of horrific war), in the late seventeenth century. I saw it in the marvellous Botanical Garden at Haren, just to the south of Groningen.
Curiously, I was at first rather confused and set on a wrong historical trail about the advent of this pretty but strange plant to Western Europe. Usually I've found that marvellous journal Curtis's Botanical Magazine to be a good guide in this sort of thing. But the entry for our plant in 1809 is off the mark. It sent me scurrying to look in old books for one Reverend Mr Harrington of the British trading post (Factory) of Aleppo. He was said to have sent or taken Orientalis to England. Well, couldn't find that gentleman. Now, great Carolus Linnaeus half a century earlier - like indeed the Magazine also - refers to the fine late-seventeenth century botanist Robert Morison (1620-1683). So there I went.
Morison's great Plantarum Historiae Universalis, part III, published as late as 1699, has a good entry on Nigella orientalis. Here it is called Nigella chalepensis lutea (= Yellow Nigella of Aleppo). And Morison adds that it was collected in Aleppo by Robert Huntington (1637-1701), so not by a Harrington.
Huntington was for about ten years the chaplain of the Aleppo Factory. Not primarily a botanist but a fine orientalist, he appears to have collected (some) plants as well. He didn't publish much in his 'theological' field, but put together a formidable collection of oriental manuscripts. And he was a scholar, too, of the Samaritans of Nablus, with whom he maintained a correspondence throughout his life.
Whether Huntington cultivated this Yellow Fennel in his garden upon his return to England and his later posting to Ireland, I don't know...