PLANT NAMES
"The fascination of plant names is founded on two instincts,--love
of Nature and curiosity about Language."
--_English Plant Names_, REV. JOHN EARLE, 1880.
Verbal magic is the subtle mysterious power of certain words. This power
may come from association with the senses; thus I have distinct sense of
stimulation in the word scarlet, and pleasure in the words lucid and
liquid. The word garden is a never ceasing delight; it seems to me
Oriental; perhaps I have a transmitted sense from my grandmother Eve of
the Garden of Eden. I like the words, a Garden of Olives, a Garden of
Herbs, the Garden of the Gods, a Garden enclosed, Philosophers of the
Garden, the Garden of the Lord. As I have written on gardens, and
thought on gardens, and walked in gardens, "the very music of the name
has gone into my being." How beautiful are Cardinal Newman's words:--
"By a garden is meant mystically a place of spiritual repose,
stillness, peace, refreshment, delight."
There was, in Gerarde's day, no fixed botanical nomenclature of any of
the parts or attributes of a plant. Without using botanical terms, try
to describe a plant so as to give an exact notion of it to a person who
has never seen it, then try to find common words to describe hundreds of
plants; you will then admire the vocabulary of the old herbalist, his
"fresh English words," for you will find that it needs the most dextrous
use of words to convey accurately the figure of a flower. That felicity
and facility Gerarde had; "a bleak white color"--how clearly you see it!
The Water Lily had "great round leaves like a buckler." The Cat-tail
Flags "flower and bear their mace or torch in July and August." One
plant had "deeply gashed leaves." The Marigold had "fat thick crumpled
leaves set upon a gross and spongious stalke." Here is the Wake-robin,
"a long hood in proportion like the ear of a hare, in middle of which
hood cometh forth a pestle or clapper of a dark murry or pale purple
color." The leaves of the Corn-marigold are "much hackt and cut into
divers sections and placed confusedly." Another plant had leaves of "an
overworne green," and Pansy leaves were "a bleak green." The leaves of
Tansy are also vividly described as "infinitely jagged and nicked and
curled with all like unto a plume of feathers."
[Illustration: The Garden's Friend.]
The classification and naming of flowers was much thought and written
upon from Gerarde's day, until the great work of Linnaeus was finished.
Some very original schemes were devised. _The Curious and Profitable
Gardner_, printed in 1730, suggested this plan: That all plants should
be named to indicate their color, and that the initials of their names
should be the initials of their respective colors; thus if a plant were
named William the Conqueror it would indicate that the name was of a
white flower with crimson lines or shades. "Virtuous Oreada would
indicate a violet and orange flower; Charming Phyllis or Curious
Plotinus a crimson and purple blossom." S. was to indicate Black or
Sable, and what letter was Scarlet to have? The "curious ingenious
Gentleman" who published this plan urged also the giving of "pompous
names" as more dignified; and he made the assertion that French and
Flemish "Flowerists" had adopted his system.
[Illustration: Edging of Striped Lilies in a Salem Garden.]
These were all forerunners of Ruskin, with his poetical notions of plant
nomenclature, such as this; that feminine forms of names ending in _a_
(as Prunella, Campanula, Salvia, Kalmia) and _is_ (Iris, Amarylis)
should be given only to plants "that are pretty and good"; and that real
names, Lucia, Clarissa, etc., be also given. Masculine names in _us_
should be given to plants of masculine qualities,--strength, force,
stubbornness; neuter endings in _um_, given to plants indicative of evil
or death.
I have a fancy anent many old-time flower names that they are also the
names of persons. I think of them as persons bearing various traits and
characteristics. On the other hand, many old English Christian names
seem so suited for flowers, that they might as well stand for flowers as
for persons. Here are a few of these quaint old names, Collet, Colin,
Emmot, Issot, Doucet, Dobinet, Cicely, Audrey, Amice, Hilary, Bryde,
Morrice, Tyffany, Amery, Nowell, Ellice, Digory, Avery, Audley, Jacomin,
Gillian, Petronille, Gresel, Joyce, Lettice, Cibell, Avice, Cesselot,
Parnell, Renelsha. Do they not "smell sweet to the ear"? The names of
flowers are often given as Christian names. Children have been
christened by the names Dahlia, Clover, Hyacinth, Asphodel, Verbena,
Mignonette, Pansy, Heartsease, Daisy, Zinnia, Fraxinella, Poppy,
Daffodil, Hawthorn.
What power have the old English names of garden flowers, to unlock old
memories, as have the flowers themselves! Dr. Earle writes, "The
fascination of plant names is founded on two instincts; love of Nature,
and curiosity about Language." To these I should add an equally strong
instinct in many persons--their sensitiveness to associations.
I am never more filled with a sense of the delight of old English
plant-names than when I read the liquid verse of Spenser:--
"Bring hether the pincke and purple Cullembine
... with Gellifloures,
Bring hether Coronations and Sops-in-wine
Worne of paramours.
Sow me the ground with Daffadowndillies
And Cowslips and Kingcups and loved Lilies,
The pretty Pawnce
The Chevisaunce
Shall match with the fayre Flour Delice."
Why, the names are a pleasure, though you know not what the Sops-in-wine
or the Chevisaunce were. Gilliflowers were in the verses of every poet.
One of scant fame, named Plat, thus sings:--
"Here spring the goodly Gelofors,
Some white, some red in showe;
Here pretie Pinks with jagged leaves
On rugged rootes do growe;
The Johns so sweete in showe and smell,
Distinct by colours twaine,
About the borders of their beds
In seemlie sight remaine."
If there ever existed any difference between Sweet-johns and
Sweet-williams, it is forgotten now. They have not shared a revival of
popularity with other old-time favorites. They were one of the "garland
flowers" of Gerarde's day, and were "esteemed for beauty, to deck up the
bosoms of the beautiful, and for garlands and crowns of pleasure." In
the gardens of Hampton Court in the days of King Henry VIII., were
Sweet-williams, for the plants had been bought by the bushel.
Sweet-williams are little sung by the poets, and I never knew any one
to call the Sweet-william her favorite flower, save one person. Old
residents of Worcester will recall the tiny cottage that stood on the
corner of Chestnut and Pleasant streets, since the remote years when the
latter-named street was a post-road. It was occupied during my childhood
by friends of my mother--a century-old mother, and her ancient unmarried
daughter. Behind the house stretched one of the most cheerful gardens I
have ever seen; ever, in my memory, bathed in glowing sunlight and
color. Of its glories I recall specially the long spires of vivid Bee
Larkspur, the varied Poppies of wonderful growth, and the rioting
Sweet-williams. The latter flowers had some sentimental association to
the older lady, who always asserted with emphasis to all visitors that
they were her favorite flower. They overran the entire garden, crowding
the grass plot where the washed garments were hung out to dry, even
growing in the chinks of the stone steps and between the flat stone
flagging of the little back yard, where stood the old well with its
moss-covered bucket. They spread under the high board fence and appeared
outside on Chestnut Street; and they extended under the dense Lilac
bushes and Cedars and down the steep grass bank and narrow steps to
Pleasant Street. The seed was carefully gathered, especially of one
glowing crimson beauty, the color of the Mullein Pink, and a gift of it
was highly esteemed by other garden owners. Old herbals say the
Sweet-williams are "worthy the Respect of the Greatest Ladies who are
Lovers of Flowers." They certainly had the respect and love of these
two old ladies, who were truly Lovers of Flowers.
[Illustration: Garden Seat at Avonwood Court.]
I recall an objection made to Sweet-williams, by some one years ago,
that they were of no use or value save in the garden; that they could
never be combined in bouquets, nor did they arrange well in vases. It is
a place of honor, some of us believe, to be a garden flower as well as a
vase flower. This garden was the only one I knew when a child which
contained plants of Love-lies-bleeding--it had even then been deemed
old-fashioned and out of date. And it also held a few Sunflowers, which
had not then had a revival of attention, and seemed as obsolete as the
Love-lies-bleeding. The last-named flower I always disliked, a
shapeless, gawky creature, described in florists' catalogues and like
publications as "an effective plant easily attaining to a splendid form
bearing many plume-tufts of rich lustrous crimson." It is the "immortal
amarant" chosen by Milton to crown the celestial beings in _Paradise
Lost_. Poor angels! they have had many trying vagaries of attire
assigned to them.
I can contribute to plant lore one fantastic notion in regard to
Love-lies-bleeding--though I can find no one who can confirm this memory
of my childhood. I recall distinctly expressions of surprise and regret
that these two old people in Worcester should retain the
Love-lies-bleeding in their garden, because "the house would surely be
struck with lightning." Perhaps this fancy contributed to the exile of
the flower from gardens.
[Illustration: Terraced Garden of the Misses Nichols, Salem,
Massachusetts.]
There be those who write, and I suppose they believe, that a love of
Nature and perception of her beauties and a knowledge of flowers, are
the dower of those who are country born and bred; by which is meant
reared upon a farm. I have not found this true. Farm children have
little love for Nature and are surprisingly ignorant about wild flowers,
save a very few varieties. The child who is garden bred has a happier
start in life, a greater love and knowledge of Nature. It is a principle
of Froebel that one must limit a child's view in order to coordinate his
perceptions. That is precisely what is done in a child's regard of
Nature by his life in a garden; his view is limited and he learns to
know garden flowers and birds and insects thoroughly, when the vast and
bewildering variety of field and forest would have remained
unappreciated by him.
It is a distressing condition of the education of farmers, that they
know so little about the country. The man knows about his crops and his
wife about the flowers, herbs, and vegetables of her garden; but no
countrymen know the names of wild flowers--and few countrywomen, save of
medicinal herbs. I asked one farmer the name of a brilliant autumnal
flower whose intense purple was then unfamiliar to me--the Devil's-bit.
He answered, "Them's Woilets." Violet is the only word in which the
initial V is ever changed to W by native New Englanders. Every pink or
crimson flower is a Pink. Spring blossoms are "Mayflowers." A frequent
answer is, "Those ain't flowers, they're weeds." They are more knowing
as to trees, though shaky about the evergreen trees, having little idea
of varieties and inclined to call many Spruce. They know little about
the reasons for names of localities, or of any historical traditions
save those of the Revolution. One exclaims in despair, "No one in the
country knows anything about the country."
This is no recent indifference and ignorance; Susan Cooper wrote in her
_Rural Hours_ in 1848:--
"When we first made acquaintance with the flowers of the
neighborhood we asked grown persons--learned perhaps in many
matters--the common names of plants they must have seen all their
lives, and we found they were no wiser than the children or
ourselves. It is really surprising how little country people know
on such subjects. Farmers and their wives can tell you nothing on
these matters. The men are at fault even among the trees on their
own farms, if they are at all out of the common way; and as for
smaller native plants, they know less about them than Buck or
Brindle, their own oxen."
[Illustration: Kitchen Dooryard at Wilbour Farm, Kingston, Rhode
Island.]
In that delightful book, _The Rescue of an Old Place_, the author has a
chapter on the love of flowers in America. It was written anent the
everpresent statements seen in metropolitan print that Americans do not
love flowers because they are used among the rich and fashionable in
large cities for extravagant display rather than for enjoyment; and that
we accept botanical names for our indigenous plants instead of calling
them by homely ones such as familiar flowers are known by in older
lands.
Two more foolish claims could scarcely be made. In the first place, the
doings of fashionable folk in large cities are fortunately far from
being a national index or habit. Secondly, in ancient lands the people
named the flowers long before there were botanists, here the botanists
found the flowers and named them for the people. Moreover, country folk
in New England and even in the far West call flowers by pretty
folk-names, if they call them at all, just as in Old England.
The fussing over the use of the scientific Latin names for plants
apparently will never cease; many of these Latin names are very
pleasant, have become so from constant usage, and scarcely seem Latin;
thus Clematis, Tiarella, Rhodora, Arethusa, Campanula, Potentilla,
Hepatica. When I know the folk-names of flowers I always speak thus of
them--and _to them_; but I am grateful too for the scientific
classification and naming, as a means of accurate distinction. For any
flower student quickly learns that the same English folk-name is given
in different localities to very different plants. For instance, the name
Whiteweed is applied to ten different plants; there are in England ten
or twelve Cuckoo-flowers, and twenty-one Bachelor's Buttons. Such names
as Mayflower, Wild Pink, Wild Lily, Eyebright, Toad-flax, Ragged Robin,
None-so-pretty, Lady's-fingers, Four-o'clocks, Redweed, Buttercups,
Butterflower, Cat's-tail, Rocket, Blue-Caps, Creeping-jenny, Bird's-eye,
Bluebells, apply to half a dozen plants.
The old folk-names are not definite, but they are delightful; they tell
of mythology and medicine, of superstitions and traditions; they show
trains of relationship, and associations; in fact, they appeal more to
the philologist and antiquarian than to the botanist. Among all the
languages which contribute to the variety and picturesqueness of English
plant names, Dr. Prior deems Maple the only one surviving from the
Celtic language. Gromwell and Wormwood may possibly be added.
[Illustration: "A running ribbon of perfumed snow which the sun is
melting rapidly."]
There are some Anglo-Saxon words; among them Hawthorn and Groundsel.
French, Dutch, and Danish names are many, Arabic and Persian are more.
Many plant names are dedicatory; they embody the names of the saints and
a few the names of the Deity. Our Lady's Flowers are many and
interesting; my daughter wrote a series of articles for the _New York
Evening Post_ on Our Lady's Flowers, and the list swelled to a
surprising number. The devil and witches have their shares of flowers,
as have the fairies.
I have always regretted deeply that our botanists neglected an
opportunity of great enrichment in plant nomenclature when they ignored
the Indian names of our native plants, shrubs, and trees. The first
names given these plants were not always planned by botanists; they were
more often invented in loving memory of English plants, or sometimes
from a fancied resemblance to those plants. They did give the
wonderfully descriptive name of Moccasin-flower to that creature of the
wild-woods; and a far more appropriate title it is than Lady's-slipper,
but it is not as well known. I have never found the Lady's-slipper as
beautiful a flower as do nearly all my friends, as did my father and
mother, and I was pleased at Ruskin's sharp comment that such a slipper
was only fit for very gouty old toes.
Pappoose-root utilizes another Indian word. Very few Indian plant names
were adopted by the white men, fewer still have been adopted by the
scientists. The _Catalpa speciosa_ (Catalpa); the _Zea mays_ (Maize);
and _Yucca filamentosa_ (Yucca), are the only ones I know. Chinkapin,
Cohosh, Hackmatack, Kinnikinnik, Tamarack, Persimmon, Tupelo, Squash,
Puccoon, Pipsissewa, Musquash, Pecan, the Scuppernong and Catawba
grapes, are our only well-known Indian plant names that survive. Of
these Maize, the distinctive product of the United States, will ever
link us with the vanishing Indian. It will be noticed that only Puccoon,
Cohosh, Pipsissewa, Hackmatack, and Yucca are names of flowering plants;
of these Yucca is the only one generally known. I am glad our stately
native trees, Tupelo, Hickory, Catalpa, bear Indian names.
A curious example of persistence, when so much else has perished, is
found in the word "Kiskatomas," the shellbark nut. This Algonquin word
was heard everywhere in the state of New York sixty years ago, and is
not yet obsolete in families of Dutch descent who still care for the nut
itself.
We could very well have preserved many Indian names, among them
Hiawatha's
"Beauty of the springtime,
The Miskodeed in blossom,"
I think Miskodeed a better name than Claytonia or Spring Beauty. The
Onondaga Indians had a suggestive name for the Marsh Marigold,
"It-opens-the-swamps," which seems to show you the yellow stars "shining
in swamps and hollows gray." The name Cowslip has been transferred to it
in some localities in New England, which is not strange when we find
that the flower has fifty-six English folk-names; among them are
Drunkards, Crazy Bet, Meadow-bright, Publicans and Sinners, Soldiers'
Buttons, Gowans, Kingcups, and Buttercups. Our Italian street venders
call them Buttercups. In erudite Boston, in sight of Boston Common, the
beautiful Fringed Gentian is not only called, but labelled, French
Gentian. To hear a lovely bunch of the Arethusa called Swamp Pink is not
so strange. The Sabbatia grows in its greatest profusion in the vicinity
of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and is called locally, "The Rose of
Plymouth." It is sold during its season of bloom in the streets of that
town and is used to dress the churches. Its name was given to honor an
early botanist, Tiberatus Sabbatia, but in Plymouth there is an almost
universal belief that it was named because the Pilgrims of 1620 first
saw the flower on the Sabbath day. It thus is regarded as a religious
emblem, and strong objection is made to mingling other flowers with it
in church decoration. This legend was invented about thirty years ago by
a man whose name is still remembered as well as his work.
[Illustration: Fountain Garden at Sylvester Manor.]