Celery the winners of the sacred Nemean Games was also made of celery. The Ancient Greek colony of Selinous (, "Selinous"), on Sicily, was named after wild parsley that grew abundantly there; Selinountian coins depicted a parsley leaf as the symbol of the city. The perennial BBC television series Doctor Who featured the Fifth Doctor (played by Peter Davison, from 1981–84), who wore a sprig of celery as a corsage. The name "celery" retraces the plant's route of successive adoption in European cooking, as the English "celery" (1664) is derived from the French "céleri" coming from the Lombard term, "seleri", from
Celery in celery vases to be salted and eaten raw. A chthonian symbol among the ancient Greeks, celery was said to have sprouted from the blood of Kadmilos, father of the Cabeiri, chthonian divinities celebrated in Samothrace, Lemnos, and Thebes. The spicy odor and dark leaf color encouraged this association with the cult of death. In classical Greece, celery leaves were used as garlands for the dead, and the wreaths of the winners at the Isthmian Games were first made of celery before being replaced by crowns made of pine. According to Pliny the Elder in Achaea, the garland worn by