XXVIII. As foliage for chaplets smilax, ivy and their clusters provide the favourite material; about these I have spoken at length in my chapters on shrubs.^a There are other kinds also that can be indicated only by their Greek names, because our countrymen for the most part have paid no attention to this nomenclature. Though most of them grow in foreign lands, yet I must discuss them, because my subject is not Italy but Nature.

XXIX. So among the leaves used to make chaplets are found those of melotrum, spiraea, wild marjoram, cneorum, that Hyginus calls cassia, conyza, which he calls cunilago, melissophyllum, known to us as apiastrum, and melilot, which we call Campanian garland. For in Italy the favourite kind grows in Campania, in Greece at Sunium, next in repute the melilot of Chalcidice and Crete being found however everywhere only in wild, woody districts. That chaplets were in antiquity often made from the melilot is shown by the name sertula (garland), which it has adopted as its own. The scent is near to that of saffron, and so is the flower itself. The Campanian^b is very popular indeed, having very short and very fleshy leaves.

XXX. The leaves of trefoil also are used for chaplets. There are three kinds of it: the first is called by some Greeks minyanthes, by others asphaltion, having a larger leaf than the other kinds, which the garland makers use. The second kind, oxytriphyllon, has a pointed leaf. The third is the smallest of them all. Among these some have a sinewy stem, such as marathum, hippomarathum, myophonum. They use also fennel-giant, the clusters of the ivy and a red flower classified in another kind of the