"cremocarp consists of two semicircular-ovoid mericarps, constricted at
the commissure"--or when, with our lives in our hands, so to speak, we
experiment in fungus-eating, and learn that a particular mushroom has
its stem "fistulose, subsquamulose, its pileus membranaceous, rarely
subcarnose, when young ovato-conic, then campanulate, at length torn and
revolute, deliquescent, and clothed with the flocculose fragments of
the veil"--we probably feel that some further information would be
welcome.
A friend who had been reading a series of articles on botany once
remarked to me that "they could scarcely be said to be written in any
known language, but were in a new tongue which might perhaps be called
Botanesque."
But it is of the botanesque nomenclature that I now wish to speak. The
faculty of bestowing appropriate names is at all times a gift, an
inspiration, most happy when least laboured, and often eluding the
efforts of learned and scientific men. By schoolboys it is sometimes
exhibited in perfection; as in a case that I remember at a public
school, where three brothers of the name of Berry were severally known,
for personal reasons, as Bilberry, Blackberry, and Gooseberry, the
fitness of which botanical titles was never for a moment impugned.
But botanists rarely invent names so well. The nomenclature of plants,
like that of those celestial flowers, the stars, is a queer jumble of
ancient and modern, classical learning and mediaeval folk-lore, in which
the really characteristic features are often overlooked. In this respect
the Latin names are worse offenders than the English; and one is
sometimes tempted, in disgust at their pedantic irrelevance, to ignore
them altogether, and to exclaim with the poet:
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
But this would be an error; for a name does greatly enhance the interest
of an object, be it boy, or bird, or flower; and the Greek and Latin
plant-names, cumbrous and far-fetched though many of them are--as when
the saintfoin is absurdly labelled _onobrychis_, on the supposition that
its scent provokes an ass to bray--form, nevertheless, a useful link
between botanists of different nations and a safeguard against the
confusion that arises from a variety of local terms.
Among the English names also there are some clumsy appellations, and in
a few cases the Latin ones are much pleasanter: _stellaria_, for
example, as I have already said, is more elegant than "stitchwort."
"What have I done?" asks the small cousin of the woodruff, in Edward
Carpenter's poem, when it justly protests against its hideous
christening by man:
What have I done? Man came,
Evolutional upstart one,
With the gift of giving a name
To everything under the sun.
What have I done? Man came
(They say nothing sticks like dirt),
Looked at me with eyes of blame,
And called me "Squinancy-wort."
But on the whole the English names of flowers are simpler and more
suggestive than the Latin; certainly "monk's-hood" is preferable to
_aconitum_, "rest-harrow" to _ononis_, "flowering rush" to _butomus_;
and so on, through a long list: and it therefore seems rather strange
that the native titles should sometimes be ousted by the foreign. I have
met botanists who had quite forgotten the English, and were obliged to
ask me for the scientific term before they could sufficiently recall the
plant of which we were speaking.
The prefix "common" is often very misleading in the English
nomenclature. Anyone, for example, who should go confidently searching
for the "common hare's-ear" would soon find that he had got his work cut
out. There are, in fact, not many plants that are everywhere common;
most of those that are so described should properly be classed as
_local_, because, while plentiful in some districts, they are infrequent
in others.
Botanical names fall mainly into three classes, the medicinal, the
commemorative, the descriptive. The old uses of plants by the herbalists
mark the prosaic origin of many of the names; some of which, such as
"goutweed," at once explain themselves, as indicating supposed remedies
for ills that flesh is heir to. Others, if less obvious, are still not
far to seek; the "scabious," for example, derived from the Latin
_scabies_, was reputed to be a cure for leprosy: a few, like
"eye-bright" (_euphrasia_, gladness), have a more cheerful significance.
When we turn to such titles as _centaurea_, for the knapweed and
cornflower, some explanation is needed, to wit, that Chiron, the
fabulous centaur, was said to have employed these herbs in the exercise
of his healing art.
The commemorative names are mostly given in honour of accomplished
botanists, it being a habit of mankind, presumably prompted by the
acquisitive instincts of the race, to name any object, great or
small--from a mountain to a mouse--as _belonging_ to the person who
discovered or brought it to notice. In the case of wildflowers this is
not always a very felicitous system of distinguishing them, though
perhaps better than the utilitarian jargon of the pharmacopoeia.
Sometimes, indeed, it is beyond cavil; as in the fit association of the
little _linnaea borealis_ with the great botanist who loved it; but when
a number of the less important professors of the science are
immortalized in this way, there seems to be something rather irrelevant,
if not absurd, in such nomenclature. Why, for example, should two of the
more charming crucifers be named respectively _Hutchinsia_ and
_Teesdalia_, after a Miss Hutchins and a Mr. Teesdale? Why should the
water-primrose be called _Hottonia_, after a Professor Hotton; or the
sea-heath _Frankenia_, after a Swedish botanist named Franken; and so
on, in a score of other cases that might be cited? The climax is reached
when the _rubi_ and the _salices_ are divided into a host of more or
less dubious sub-species, so that a Bloxam may have his bramble, and a
Hoffmann his willow, as a possession for all time!
The most rational, and also the most graceful manner of naming flowers
is the descriptive; and here, luckily, there are a number of titles,
English or Latin, with which no fault can be found. Spearwort,
mouse-tail, arrow-head, bird's-foot, colt's-foot, blue-bell, bindweed,
crane's-bill, snapdragon, shepherd's purse, skull-cap, monk's-hood,
ox-tongue--these are but a few of the well-bestowed names which, by an
immediate appeal to the eye, fix the flower in the mind; they are at
once simple and appropriate: in others, such as Adonis, Columbine,
penny-cress, cranberry, lady's-mantle, and thorow-wax, the description,
if less manifest at first sight, is none the less charming when
recognized. The Latin, too, is at times so befitting as to be accepted
without demur; thus _iris_, to express the rainbow tints of the flowers,
needs no English equivalent, and _campanula_ has only to be literally
rendered as "bell-flower." In _campanula hederacea_, the "ivy-leaved
bell-flower," we see nomenclature at its best, the petals and the
foliage of a floral gem being both faithfully described.
A glance at a list of British wildflowers will bring to mind various
other ways in which names have been given to them--some familiar, some
romantic, a few even poetical. Among the homely but not unpleasing kind,
are "Jack by the hedge" for the garlic mustard; "John go to bed at noon"
for the goat's-beard; "creeping Jenny" for the money-wort; and
"lady's-fingers" for the kidney-vetch. Of the romantically named plants
the most conspicuous example is doubtless the forget-me-not, its English
name contrasting, as it does, with the more realistic Latin _myosotis_,
which detects in the shape of the leaves a likeness to a mouse's ear.
None, perhaps, can claim to be so poetical as Gerarde's name for the
clematis; for "traveller's joy" was one of those happy inspirations
which are unfortunately rare.
VI
THE OPEN DOWNLAND
Open hither, open hence,
Scarce a bramble weaves a fence.
MEREDITH.
WHEN speaking of some Sussex water-meadows, I mentioned as one of their
many delights the views which they offer of the never distant Downs. The
charm of these chalk hills is to me only inferior to that of real
mountains; there are times, indeed, when with clouds resting on the
summits, or drifting slowly along the coombes, one could almost imagine
himself to be in the true mountain presence. I have watched, on an
autumn day, a long sea of vapour rolling up from the weald against the
steep northern front of the Downs, while their southern slopes were
still basking in sunshine; and scarcely less wonderful than the clouds
themselves are the cloud-shadows that may often be seen chasing each
other across the wide open tracts which lie in the recesses of the
hills.
"Majestic mountains," "exalted promontories," were among the
descriptions given of the Downs by Gilbert White: what we now prize in
them is not altitude but spaciousness. In Rosamund Marriott Watson's
words:
Broad and bare to the skies
The great Down-country lies.
Its openness, with the symmetry of the free curves and contours into
which the chalk shapes itself, is the salient feature of the range; and
to this may be added its liberal gift of solitude and seclusion. Even
from the babel of Brighton an hour's journey on foot can bring one into
regions where a perpetual Armistice Day is being celebrated, with
something better than the two minutes of silence snatched from the
townsfolk's day of din.
The Downs are also open in the sense of being free, to a very great
extent, from the enclosures which in so many districts exclude the
public from the land. In some parts, unfortunately, the abominable
practice of erecting wire fences is on the increase among sheep-farmers;
but generally speaking, a naturalist may here wander where he will.
Of all the flowering plants of the Downs, the gorse is at once the
earliest and the most impressive; no spectacle that English wildflowers
can offer, when seen _en masse_, excels that of the numberless
furze-bushes on a bright April day. There is then a vividness in the
gorse, a depth and warmth of that "deep gold colour" beloved by
Rossetti, which far surpasses the glazed metallic sheen of a field of
buttercups. It is pure gold, in bullion, the palpable wealth of
Croesus, displayed not in flat surfaces, but in bars, ingots, and
spires, bough behind bough, distance on distance, with infinite variety
of light and shade, and set in strong relief against a background of
sombre foliage. Thus it has the appearance, in full sunshine, almost of
a furnace, a reddish underglow and heart of flame which is lacking even
in the broom. To creep within one of these gorse-temples when illumined
by the sun, is to enjoy an ecstasy both of colour and of scent.
With the exception of the furze, the Downland flowers are mostly low of
stature, as befits their exposed situation, a small but free people
inhabiting the wind-swept slopes and coombes, and well requiting the
friendship of those who visit them in their fastnesses. One of the
earliest and most welcome is the spring whitlow-grass, which abounds on
ant-hills high up on the ridges, forming a dense growth like soft down
on the earth's cheek. Here it hastes to get its blossoming done before
the rush of other plants, its little reddish stalk rising from a rosette
of short leaves, and bearing the tiny terminal flowers with white deeply
cleft petals and anthers of yellow hue. Its near successor is the
equally diminutive mouse-ear (_cerastium semidecandrum_), a
white-petaled plant of a deep dark green, viscous, and thickly covered
with hairs.
When summer has come, the flowers of the Downs are legion--yellow
bird's-foot trefoil, and horse-shoe vetch; milkwort pink, white, or
blue; fragile rock-rose; graceful dropwort; salad burnet;
squinancy-wort, and a hundred more,[7] of which one of the fairest,
though commonest, is the trailing silverweed, whose golden petals are in
perfect contrast with the frosted silver of the foliage. But the special
ornament of these hills, known as "the pride of Sussex," is the
round-headed rampion, a small, erect, blue-bonneted flower which is no
"roundhead" in the Puritan sense, but rather of the gay company of
cavaliers. Abundant along the Downs from Eastbourne to Brighton, and
still further to the west, it is a plant of which the eye never tires.
[Footnote 7: See the beautiful chapter on "The Living Garment," in Mr.
W. H. Hudson's _Nature in Downland_.]
But it is the orchids that chiefly draw one's thoughts to Downland when
midsummer is approaching. "Have you seen the bee orchis?" is then the
question that is asked; and to wander on the lower slopes at that season
without seeing the bee orchis would argue a tendency to
absent-mindedness. I used to debate with myself whether the likeness to
a bee is real or fanciful, till one day, not thinking of orchids at all,
I stopped to examine a rather strange-looking bee which I noticed on the
grass, and found that the insect was--a flower. That, so far, settled
the point; but I still think that the fly orchis is the better imitation
of the two.
The early spider orchis is native on the eastern range of the Downs,
near the lonely hamlet of Telscombe and in a few other localities in
the heart of the hills; where, unless one has luck--and I had none--the
search for a small flower on those far-stretching slopes is like the
proverbial hunt for a needle in a hayloft. The only noticeable object on
the hillside was an apparently dead sheep, about a hundred feet below
me, lying flat on her back, with hoofs pointing rigidly to the sky; but
as it was _orchis_, not _ovis_, that I was in quest of, I was about to
pass on, when I saw a shepherd, who had just come round a shoulder of
the Down, uplift the sheep and set her on her legs, whereupon, to my
surprise, she ambled away as if nothing had been amiss with her. I
learnt from the shepherd that such accidents are not uncommon, and that
having once "turned turtle" the sluggish creature (as mankind has made
her) would certainly have perished unless he had chanced to come to the
rescue. When I told the good man what had brought me to that
unfrequented coombe, he said, as country people often do, that he did
not "take much notice" of wildflowers; nevertheless, after inquiring
about the appearance of the orchids, he volunteered to note the place
for me if he chanced to see them. Then, as we were parting, he called
after me: "And if you see any more sheep on their backs, I'll thank you
if you'll turn 'em over." This I willingly promised, on the principle
not only of humanity, but that one good turn deserves another. Next
season, perhaps, our friendly compact may be renewed.
The dingle in which Telscombe lies is rich in flowers; in the Maytime of
which I am speaking, there was a profusion of hound's-tongue in bloom,
and a good sprinkling of that charming upland plant, deserving of a
pleasanter name, the field fleawort; but of what I was searching for, no
trace. I had walked into the spider's "parlour," but the spider was not
at home. More fortunate was a lady who on that same day brought to the
Hove exhibition a flower which she had casually picked on another part
of the Downs where she was taking a walk. Sitting down for a rest, she
saw an unknown plant on the turf. It was a spider orchis.
Much less unaccommodating, to me, was the musk orchis, a still smaller
species which grows in several places where the northern face of the
Downs is intersected, as below Ditchling Beacon, by deep-cut
tracks--they can hardly be called bridle-paths--that slant upward across
the slope. I was told by Miss Robinson, of Saddlescombe, to whose wide
knowledge of Sussex plants many flower-lovers besides myself have been
indebted, that she once picked a musk orchis from horseback as she was
riding along the hill side. It is a sober-garbed little flower, with not
much except its rarity to signalize it; but an orchis is an orchis
still; there is no member of the family that has not an interest of its
own. Many of them are locally common on these hills; to wit, the early
purple, the fly, the frog, the fragrant, the spotted, the pyramidal,
and most lovely of all, the dwarf orchis; also the twayblade, the
lady's-tresses, and one or two of the helleborines. The green-man
orchis, not uncommon in parts of Surrey and Kent, will here be sought in
vain.
But the Downs are not wholly composed of grassy sheep-walks and
furze-dotted wastes; they include many tracts of cultivated land, where,
if we may judge from the botanical records of the past generation,
certain cornfield weeds which are now very rare, such as the mouse-tail
and the hare's-ear, were once much more frequent. It is rather strange
that the improved culture, which has nearly eliminated several
interesting species, should have had so little effect on the charlock
and the poppy, which still colour great squares and sections of the
Downs with their rival tints, their yellow and scarlet rendered more
conspicuous by having the quiet tones of these rolling uplands for a
background.
In autumn, when most of the wealden flowers are withering, the chalk
hills are still decked with gentians and other late-growing kinds; and
the persistence, even into sere October, of such children of the sun as
the rampion and the rock-rose is very remarkable. The autumnal aspect of
the Downs is indeed as beautiful as any; for there are then many days
when a blissful calm seems to brood over the great coombes and hollows,
and the fields lie stretched out like a many-coloured map, the rich
browns of the ploughlands splashed and variegated with patches of
yellow and green. Then, too, one sees and hears overhead the joy-flight
of the rooks and daws, as round and round they circle, higher and
higher, like an inverted maelstrom swirling upward, till it breaks with
a chorus of exulting cries as gladdening to the ear as is the sight of
those aerial manoeuvres to the eye.
The final impression which the Downs leave on the mind is, I repeat, one
of freedom and space; and this is felt by the flower-lover as strongly
as by any wanderer on these hills, these "blossoming places in the
wilderness," as Mr. Hudson has called them, "which make the thought of
our trim, pretty, artificial gardens a weariness."
VII
PRISONERS OF THE PARTERRE
Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden,
Trained to stand in rows, and asking if they please.
I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones:
O my wild ones! they tell me more than these.
MEREDITH.
THE domestication of plants, as of animals, is a concern of such
practical importance that in most minds it quite transcends whatever
interest may be felt in the beauty of wildflowers. But the many delights
of the garden ought not to blind us to the fact that there is in the
wild a peculiar quality which the domesticated can never reproduce, and
that the plant which is free, even if it be the humblest and most
common, has a charm for the nature-lover which the more gorgeous
captives of the garden must inevitably lack. If much is gained by
domestication, much is also lost. This, doubtless, is felt less strongly
in the taming of plants than of animals, but in either case it holds
true.
To some of us, it must be owned, zoological gardens are a nightmare of
confusion, and the now almost equally popular "rock-garden" a place
which leaves an impression of dulness and futility; for while we fully
recognize the interest, such as it is, of inducing Alpines to grow under
altered conditions of climate, there is an irrelevance in the assembling
of heterogeneous flowers in one enclosure, which perplexes and wearies
the mind. For just as a cosmopolitan city is no city at all, and a Babel
is no language, so a multifarious rock-garden, where a host of alien
plants are grouped in unnatural juxtaposition, is a collection not of
flowers but of "specimens." For scientific purposes--the determination
of species, and viewing the plants in all stages of their growth--it may
be most valuable: to the mere flower-lover, as he gazes on such a
concourse, the thought that arises is: "What's Hecuba to him, or he to
Hecuba?" It is a museum, a herbarium, if you like; but hardly, in any
true sense, a garden.
I once had the experience of living next door to a friend who was
smitten with the mania for rock-gardening, and from my study window I
overlooked the process from start to finish--first the arrival of many
tons of limestone blocks and chips; then the construction of artificial
crags and gullies, moraines and escarpments, until a line of miniature
Alps rose to view; and lastly the planting of various mountain flowers
in the situations suited to their needs. Then followed many earnest
colloquies between the creator of this fair scene and a neighbour
enthusiast, as they walked about the garden together and inspected it
plant by plant, much as a farmer goes his rounds to examine his oats or
turnips. They surveyed the world, botanically speaking, from China to
Peru. Yet somehow I felt that, just as I would rather see a sparrow at
large than an eagle in captivity, so to be shown round that
well-fashioned rockery was less entertaining than to show oneself round
the most barren of the adjacent moors. "Herbes that growe in the
fieldes," wrote a fifteenth-century herbalist, "be bettere than those
that growe in gardenes."[8]
[Footnote 8: Quoted in _A Garden of Herbs_, by E. S. Rohde.]
This, however, is by no means the common opinion; on the contrary, there
is in most minds a disregard or veritable contempt for wildflowers as
being, with a few exceptions, "weeds," and quite unworthy of comparison
with the inmates of a garden.
In her _Haunts of the Wild Flowers_, Anne Pratt has recorded how she was
invited by a cottager to throw away a bunch of "ordinary gays" that she
was carrying, and to gather some garden flowers in their stead.
I once took a long walk over the moors in Derbyshire in order to visit
certain rare flowers of the limestone dales, among them the
speedwell-leaved whitlow-grass (_draba muralis_), a specimen of which I
brought home. This little crucifer is very insignificant in appearance;
and the fact that anyone should plod many miles to gather it so upset
the gravity of an extremely demure and respectful servant girl, when
she saw it on my mantelpiece, that to her own visible shame and
confusion she broke into a loud giggle, somewhat as Bernard Shaw's
chocolate-cream soldier failed to conceal his amusement when the
portrait of the hero of the cavalry charge was shown to him by its
possessor.
Even in the case of those wildings whose beauty or scent has made them
generally popular, it is thought the highest compliment to domesticate
them, to bring them--poor waifs and strays that they are--from their
forlorn savage state into the fold of civilization, just as a
"deserving" pauper might be received into an almshouse, or an orphan
child into one of Dr. Barnardo's homes. And strange to say, this
reverential belief in the garden, as enhancing the merits of the wild,
has found its way into many of the wildflower books: for instance, in
Johns's well-known work, _Flowers of the Field_ (of the _field_, be it
noted), we are informed that the lily of the valley is "a universally
admired garden plant, and that the sweet-brier is "deservedly"
cultivated.
The more refined wildflowers, it will be seen, can thus rise, as it
were, from the ranks, at the cost of their freedom, which happens to be
the most interesting thing about them, to be enrolled in the army of the
civilized; and the result has been that some of the more distinguished
plants, such as the _daphne mezereum_, are fast losing their place among
British wildflowers, and becoming nothing better than prisoners and
captives of the parterre. This disdain that is felt for whatever is
wild, natural, and unowned, is largely responsible for the unscrupulous
digging up of any attractive plants that may be discovered, a subject of
which I propose to speak in the next chapter.