25 FEBRUARY 1938, Page 17

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A Catalogue for Epicures I have never felt impelled to review a gardening catalogue until confronted with Bunyard's Vegetables for Epicures. This twenty-page booklet issued by the famous Maidstone firm is devoted entirely to aristocratic vegetables, and makes the mouth water on every page. Here are some of its high- spots : lima beans, suitable for a warm situation i blue coca beans, ornamental as well as delicious ; orache, a blonde venus among spinachs ; poke-weed, whose young summer shoots have the flavour of asparagus ; scolymus, the golden thistle, cultivated as salsify ; skirret, also similar to salsify ; and the well-known border plant Inula Helenium, whose violet-scented roots are candied and eaten. H. E. BATES.