2019 ASHS Annual Conference

In the first century CE, two Roman agricultural writers, Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella and Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), referred to proto-greenhouses (specularia) constructed for the Emperor Tiberius (42 BCE–37 CE) presumably adjacent to his palace, the Villa Jovis on the Isle of Capri. Pliny stated in Historia Naturalis (Book 19,23:64) that the specularia consisted of beds mounted on wheels which were moved into the sun and on wintry days withdrew under the cover of frames glazed with transparent stone (lapis specularis or mica). Apparently the specularia were built to provide fruits of cucumis, “a delicacy for which the Emperor Tiberiuis , had a remarkable partiality; in fact there was never a day on which he was not supplied it. The cucumis described by Columella and Pliny, long mistranslated as cucumber, were in fact long-fruited forms of Cucumis melo subsp. melo, Flexuosis Group. They are known today as vegetable melons, snake melons, and faqqous and were highly esteemed in Rome and ancient Israel.