# A History of Monsters. 675

# Plants That Are Monstrous in Various Parts

Monstrous plants are produced in many ways. First, they arise through grafting, when a tree that is sterile by its own nature produces fruit after receiving the graft of a fertile stock from a mixed genus of plants. For this reason, it is worth remembering what Pliny testifies to having seen regarding a lime tree grafted at Tivoli; it was weighted down with every kind of fruit—nuts on one branch, berries on another, and elsewhere grapes, figs, pears, pomegranates, and various types of apples. Thus, Virgil did not sing without reason:

The rugged arbutus is grafted with the offspring of the nut, and sterile planes have carried strong apple trees; chestnuts have borne beech, and the mountain ash has grown white with the pear’s pale flower, and swine have crunched acorns under elms.

Likewise, Calpurnius, referring to this in his Eclogues, wrote:

My art now tempers pears with the apple, and now compels the grafted peach to creep into the early plum.

We have also seen, in the most beautiful greenhouses and flower gardens of the Most Serene Grand Duke of Tuscany, clusters of grapes emerging from a lemon tree, as well as roses which a jasmine plant was producing. However, these are hardly seen as true monsters, since they are prepared with wondrous artifice in gardens everywhere.

Therefore, leaving aside these plant monsters created by art, we shall proceed to consider those plants which are created monstrous by Nature from the very start of their generation—whether in the root, the leaves, the stalks, the flowers, or the fruit. Indeed, we have observed Nature’s errors in all these aforementioned parts of plants, as we shall henceforth show by presenting their images.

First, a monster involving the root of a plant offers itself for our consideration, which was discovered some years ago in a public garden. This plant grows everywhere among the crops, near hedges, and on the margins of fields. It has leaves similar to cultivated basil, and hairy little branches whose tips are occupied by white flowers; when these fall, they are succeeded by small pods containing black seed. Its root is thin and hollow. Matthiolus calls it *ocymaſtrum*, the same as *ocymum*, or wild basil; indeed, Castore Durante calls it wild basil. Dodonaeus, however, named it the white wild Lychnis, and Bauhin called it the hairy soapwort of the Italians.

Because four species of this plant are observed: the first is the one already described, which puts forth a simple white flower; from the second, purple flowers erupt; the third grows with a full white flower, which is why Lobelius designated it the "white many-flowered wild Lychnis"; and the fourth finally produces a full purple flower. For this reason, these last three varieties are cultivated in flowerbeds for their beauty and rarity. The first species, however, being the lowliest and growing spontaneously in gardens, is rooted out by the most diligent cultivators.

It happened, however, that a gardener, while pulling up wild herbs, uprooted an *ocymaſtrum* of this kind with a root so swollen that it seemed to rival a turnip. Since this plant grows by its own nature with a thin root, we exhibit this one, drawn as a monster, for the reader to inspect in Figure I. It is true that a similar plant in gardens may produce flowers and leaves larger than normal due to the richness of the nutrients, but such a root has never been observed, even when growing in soil saturated with manure. Furthermore, the top of the plant where the flowers emerged seemed to suffer from an unnatural swelling.

Turning now to monstrous plant leaves, we shall first present for inspection an almond branch endowed with monstrous leaves, formerly sent as a thing to be wondered at by