Re: Vinca major or minor?

p.k.peirce@att.net wrote:
> 
> To Alessandra and all,
> 
> I am researching Vinca (major and minor) for a writing project. I have been
> trying to figure out if the one used in antiquity, as in ancient Rome, was
> Vinca major or V. minor, or both. I wondered if the answer is obvious to
> someone who lives in Italy (by the fact that only one is commmonly seen there
> now), or if the historical record reveals which one was grown then and used for
> garlands and wreaths. I have guessed it was V. major, since this one is the
> less hardy. Also because it is the one cited by traditional herbalists, so
> maybe the one first known, but would like to have sounder reasons to decide.
> 
> Any thoughts or information appreciated.
> 
> Pam Peirce,
> San Francisco, CA

This is one of those entertainingly tendentious  questions which leads
one up a gum tree and into a mares nest. The first problem is to work
out when the
classical authors were really writing about Vinca and when they were
referring
to something entirely different. The classical Greek word is "Klematis"
for which
the  Loeb translation of Pliny offers  Convolvolus arvensis  and C
scammonia, also a translation of "Clematis aegyptia" as Vinca minor.
This latter, Pliny claims, is also known as daphnoidies  and
polygonoides. However in this instance Pliny may have miscopied
Dioscorides who distinguishes between Klematis (translated as Vinca
Minor in the Gunther/Goodyer edition)  also known as Daphnoides,
Myrsinoides and Polygonides (sic), and Klematis etera (No translation in
Gunther/Goodyer)  which, Dioscorides writes,  some call Epigetis,  ye
Egyptians phylacuum, ye Romans ambuxus. "Ambuxus" appears neither in
Pliny nor in Lewis & Short.  Of the two Anicia juliana-based
illustrations in Dioscorides, with some stretch of the imagination, that
of "Klematis" could be thought to resemble Vinca, but that of "Klematis
etera" could be an Eryngium run over by a cart for all it tells us about
what the plant is 
More clues lie in the 1547 edition of Mattioli who in his commentary on
"Klematis" in Dioscorides, writes "Chiamasi la clematide della prima
descrittione volgarmente in Toscana provenca, di cui usano le donne fa
le ghirlande a i fanciullini e parimente alle virginelle che muiono, (
on which, in her "Medieval English Gardens", Teresa McLean writes about
Periwinkle being used for "death garlands", particularly to crown
criminals en route to execution)  ne
pero retrovare io in questa nota alcuna, che ripugni, ch'ella non sia la
clematide messa nella prima spetie..... and on and on he runs, slagging
off all those he considers to have  misidentified the plant in his
customary fashion.
However, as it takes me an hour with a dictionary to work out what
exactly he is writing about, I will leave it to Alessandra to fill in
the gaps.What is significant is that the illustrations are infinitely
better than in Gunther/Goodyer, so that the first is clearly a vinca and
the second, as Mattioli points out, is equally clearly Clematis vitalba.
Odd that neither Pliny, at a superficial glance, at least, mentions
Vinca in his chapter  on garland making (though Farrer in her
"Ancient Roman Gardens" suggests I might have missed it) nor does Cato.
Riddle of North Carolina, one of the world experts on Diosorides, in his
paper "Ancient & Medieval chemotherapy, seems to be alone
in identifying Dioscorides Klematis as Vinca major. "Petit pervanche"
appears in a great many medieval French paintings but then translators
and art
historians seem to have taken it for granted that all Pervanche are
petit and there are no big ones. From Albertus Magnus "Semperviva
dicitur alio nomine pervinca" which adds a further dimension to the
confusion....well that was fun and now the rain's stopped, I had better
go and do something more constructive. Hope it's given you, if not a
pointer in the right direction, some different directions to follow up.	

Anthony
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