Entry lacking, Adler reports, in several of the manuscripts.
1Asphodelus microcarpus. It was a "famine food for the poor. Galen states that asphodel, which he had seen consumed in famines during his own time, was barely edible. However, Theophrastus, who was less fussy than Galen, praised [in Enquiry into Plants 7.12-13] the utility of asphodel, saying that its stalk was edible when fried, its seed if roasted, and its tuberous roots made a good meal when chopped up with figs. It was eaten again in Greece during the First World War" (R. Sallares, The Ecology of the Ancient Greek World (London 1991) 230-1).↩
2The distinction is one of accentuation: the noun (as the headword) is proparoxytone, but this adjective oxytone. The "asphodel meadow" was supposedly haunted by the shades of dead heroes; cf. HomerOdyssey 11.539 and 24.13 (web address 1 and web address 2 respectively); also alpha 4299.