The essay “A Word for Autumn” by A. A. Milne is, in part, a tribute to the end of summer and a meditation on the changing seasons—but it’s mostly about Milne’s unfettered passion for celery.
“It is as fresh and clean as a rainy day after a spell of heat,” he rhapsodizes about the vegetable, which he feels best captures the “crispness” of the cold months. “How delicate are the tender shoots unfolded layer by layer. Of what a whiteness is the last baby one of all, of what a sweetness his flavour.”
The author is hardly the lone member of celery’s fan club. For centuries, enthusiasts around the world have flocked to the plant: from Egypt and China, where wild varieties were used medicinally as a hangover cure or aphrodisiac, to Greece and Rome,
