Common Name: Cockscomb^[1]

Scientific Name: Celosia cristata

Thomas Jefferson recorded sowing Cockscomb at Shadwell, his boyhood home, in 1767.^[2] This plant was introduced to Europe from Asia late in the 16th century,^[3] and was a popular garden plant in America beginning in the early half of the 1700s.^[4]

Cockscomb is a tender annual with a large, fan-like flower head.

Footnotes

1. ↑ This article is based on a Center for Historic Plants Information Sheet.
2. ↑ Betts, Garden Book, 4. Manuscript and transcription at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
3. ↑ Joan Parry Dutton, Plants of Colonial Williamsburg (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg, 1979), 97.
4. ↑ David Stuart and James Sutherland, Plants from the Past: Old Flowers for New Gardens (London: Penguin Books, 1989), 74. See also Lawrence D. Griffith, Flowers and Herbs of Early America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 44.

Further Sources

• Adams, Denise Wiles. Restoring American Gardens: An Encyclopedia of Heirloom Ornamental Plants, 1640-1940. Portland, Oregon: Timber Press, Inc., 2004
• Betts, Edwin M.,Hazlehurst Bolton Perkins, and Peter J. Hatch. Thomas Jefferson's Flower Garden at Monticello, 3rd ed. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986
• Leighton, Ann. American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1986
• MacMahon, Bernard. The American Gardener's Calendar, 1806. Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1997
• Seeds available for purchase at Monticello Museum Shop
• Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants