The first record of a named cultigen occurs in De Agri Cultura.Marcus Cato's De Agri Cultura Retrieved: 2010-08-05 written about 160 BCE by Roman statesman Cato the Elder (234–149 BCE) in a list that includes 120 kinds (cultivars) of figs, grapes, apples and olives. The names are presented in a way that implies that they would have been familiar to fellow Romans. The "cultivar" names were mostly of one word and denoted the provenance of the cultivar (the geographical origin of the place where the plant selections were made). Writers up to the 15th century added little to this early work. In the Middle Ages the book of hours, early herbals, illuminated manuscripts and economic records indicate that plants grown by the Romans found their way into monastery gardens. For example, in 827 CE the following herbs were mentioned in the poem Hortulus by Walafrid Strabo as growing in the monastery garden of St Gallen in Switzerland: sage, rue, southernwood, wormwood, horehound, fennel, German iris, lovage, chervil, Madonna lily, opium poppy, clary, mint, betony, agrimony, catmint, radish, gallica rose, bottle gourd and melon. It seems likely that aromatic and culinary herbs were quite widespread and similar lists of plants occur in records of plants grown in Villa gardens at the time of Charlemagne (742–814 CE).
