Note 159 — {41} Fifthly, Of Plants.
Reading edition
“Differing much from those in England. One sort of them bears a most beautiful flower” (p. 56, where it is rightly placed among plants “proper to the country”). The author refers here, doubtless, to Apios tuberosa, Moench. (ground-nut of New England), which was raised at Paris, from American seeds, by Vespasian Robin, and figured from his specimens by Cornuti (Canad., p. 200) in 1635; but it was celebrated, ten years earlier, in “Nova Anglia,”—a curious poem by the Rev. William Morrell, who came over with Capt. Robert Gorges in 1623, and spent about a year at Weymouth and Plymouth, publishing his book in 1625 (repr. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 125, &c.),—as follows:—
“Vimine gramineo nux subterranea suavis Serpit humi, tenui flavo sub cortice, pingui Et placido nucleo nivei candoris ab intra, Melliflua parcos hilarans dulcedine gustus, Donec in æstivum Phœbus conscenderit axem. His nucleis laute versutus vescitur Indus: His exempta fames segnis nostratibus omnis Dulcibus his vires revocantur victibus almæ.”