Re: Vinca major or minor?

Dear PK

I'm unable to give the sort of detail that my namesake Anthony was able to provide.
However, the one thing I can say is that from my own experience here in south-eastern Italy Vinca
major is a very common plant that tends to spread quite profusely in gardens and even on rather dry
ground, whereas Vinca minor is altogether less common, and geenrally found only in damp hollows,
though I have successfully transplanted it into the shadier parts an olive grove (my garden), where it
almost rivals V. major.
If this reflects the situation in Roman Italy (and there are plenty of reasons to think both that it
would and that it wouldn't!) then it is probably more likely that major would have been used

Anthony

Anthony Lyman-Dixon wrote:

> 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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