Adam in Eden, or, Natures paradise the history of plants, fruits, herbs and flowers with their several names ... the places where they grow, their descriptions and kinds, their times of flourishing and decreasing as also their several signatures, anatomical appropriations and particular physical vertues together with necessary observations on the seasons of planting and gathering of our English simples with directions how to preserve them in their compositions or otherwise : ... there is annexed a Latin and English table of the several names of simples, with another more particular table of the diseases and their cures ... / by William Coles ...

The Names.

IT is in uncertain whether this Drug were known to the Grecians or not, there being no positive Greek name for it upon record: some think it to be the Cyperus Indicus of Dioscorides, because it hath the same colour & ta••••, the root being like Ginger; but why he should referr it to a Cyperus, is some∣what strange, the root of that having no such form, colour, or tast. Garcias and Christopherus Acosta call it Crocus Indicus, but the Common Latin name is Cur∣cuma, borrowed as is most probable from the Arabians, who call it Curcum, yet this is not the Curcuma of Serapio or Avicen as Matthiolus hath well noted, which is no other then the greater Celandine whose root is yellow, and therefore the Apothecaries in former times took it for Curcuma, and put it into the Compo∣sition called Diacurcuma. I find but one sort thereof, and therefore I shall pro∣ceed to the description.