en feet high, with rigid branches three to six inches long, thickly
closed, with tufts of gray-green, hair-like, rigid leaves, which in
exposed situations are almost spinous. Flowers yellow, a quarter of an
inch in diameter, fragrant. The young sprouts are tender, and, when
cooked, of a peculiar aromatic flavor. In their native home they are
used like the cultivated kind.

_A. aphyllus._--Indigenous to Greece, where the young shoots are
commonly used as food, especially during Lent.

III

CULTURAL VARIETIES

Although but one species of edible asparagus has found its way into
general cultivation, many varieties and strains are recognized.

Up to within a comparatively recent period it was thought that there
existed only one distinct kind, or variety, of asparagus. As late as
1869 so keen an observer as Peter Henderson believed that "the asparagus
of our gardens is confined to only one variety, and the so-called giant
can be made gigantic or otherwise, just as we will it, and the purple
top variety will become a green top whenever the composition of the soil
is not of the kind to develop the purple, and _vice versa_. All
practical gardeners know how different soils and climates change the
appearance of the same variety. Seeds of cabbage taken from the same bag
and sown at the same time, but planted out in soils of light sandy loam,
heavy clayey loam, and peat or leaf-mold, will show such marked
differences when at maturity as easily to be pronounced different sorts.
This, no doubt, is the reason why the multitude of varieties of all
vegetables, when planted side by side to test them, are so wonderfully
reduced in number."

But after inspecting an acre of ordinary asparagus and an acre of
Abraham Van Siclen's Colossal--which was afterward introduced as
Conover's Colossal--at Jamaica, L. I., N. Y., Mr. Henderson wrote: "A
thorough inspection of the roots of each lot proved that they were of
the same age when planted. The soil was next examined, and found to be
as near the same as could be, yet these two beds of asparagus showed a
difference that no longer left me a shadow of a doubt of their being
entirely different varieties."

In but few vegetables do the conditions of soil, locality, mode of
cultivation, and other circumstances affect the quality, size, and
appearance as much as in asparagus. It is therefore difficult to
distinguish fixed and permanent varieties from mere local strains and
forms secured