I do not pretend to be a specialist in the study of plant-names. But
there is something to be said for ignorance (in moderation), since it
brings reader and writer more closely together than is the case when the
author knows the last word in a subject of which the reader knows
nothing. But we need not consider the case of the blankly ignorant
reader, and I can undertake that (for very sufficient reasons) I shall
not be offensively learned.
The fact that language is handed on from one generation to the next may
remind us of heredity, and the way in which words change is a case of
variation. But we cannot understand what determines the extinction of
old words or the birth of new ones. We cannot, in fact, understand how
the principle of natural selection is applicable to language: yet there
must be a survival of the fittest in words, as in living creatures.
Language is a quality of man, and just as we can point to big racial
groups such as that which includes the English, Dutch, Danish, Swedish,
Norwegian, Icelandic and German peoples, so their languages, though
differing greatly in detail, have certain well-marked resemblances. Of
course I do not mean to imply that language is hereditary, like the form
of skull or the colour of the hair. I only insist on these familiar
facts in order to show that the wonderful romance inherent in the great
subject of evolution also illumines that cycle of birth and death to
which existing plant-names are due.
In the case of living creatures we can at least make a guess as to what
are the qualities that have made them succeed in the struggle for life.
But in the case of the birth and death of words we are surrounded with
difficulties.
In some instances, however, it is clear that plant-names were forgotten
with the growth of Protestantism. The common milk-wort used to be called
the Gang-flower {100a} because it blossoms in what our ancestors called
Gang Week,--"three days before the Ascension, when processions were made
. . . to perambulate the parishes with the Holy Cross and Litanies, to
mark their boundaries, and invoke the blessing of God on the crops."
{100b} Bishop Kennet says that the girls made garlands of milk-wort and
used them "in those solemn processions." As far as dates are concerned
the name is fairly appropriate, for Rogation Sunday is 27th April, _i.e._
10th May, old style, and, according to Blomefield, {100c} from eight
years' observation, the milk-wort flowers on 15th May. The milk-wort is
a small plant, and the labour of making garlands from it must have been
considerable. There must have been a reason for using a blue flower, and
I gather from a friend learned in such matters that blue is associated
with the Virgin Mary, to whom the month of May is dedicated.
In this case we can perhaps understand why the name should have all but
died out with the disappearance of these old ceremonies. But why should
the name _milk-wort_ have survived? Its scientific name, Polygala, is
derived from Greek and means "much milk," and the plant was supposed to
encourage lactation. It is an instance of names being more long-lived
than the beliefs which they chronicle.
There are, of course, many plants called after saints. Thus the pig-nut
(_Bunium_) is called St Anthony's nut, because, as quoted by Prior, "The
wretched Antonius" was "forced to mind the filthy herds of swine." The
buttercup (_R. bulbosus_) was called St Anthony's turnip from its tubers
being said to be eaten by pigs.
St Catherine's flower (_Nigella_) (generally known as love-in-a-mist or
devil-in-a-bush) is called after the martyr from the arrangement of its
styles, which recall the spokes of St Catherine's wheel. I do not mean
the well-known fireworks but the instrument of torture on which the saint
died. St James' wort is the yellow daisy-like flower _Senecio Jacobaea_,
known as rag-wort. It is said to have been used as a cure for the
diseases of horses, of which he was the patron.
In the old herbals the cowslip is called St Peter's wort from the
resemblance of the flowers to a bunch of keys--no doubt the keys of
heaven, of which Peter is custodian.
A number of plants were called after the Virgin Mary: these were
doubtless known as Our Lady's flowers, but their names have been
corrupted in Protestant days by the omission of the pronoun.
Lady's fingers (_Anthyllis vulneraria_) is a common enough plant bearing
a head or tuft of yellow flowers. Each has a pale swollen calyx, and
these are, I suppose, the fingers on which the name is founded, though I
find it said that it originates in the leaflets surrounding the flower
head.
Butcher's broom is known in Wales as Mary's holly, the latter half of the
name referring to its red berries and prickly leaves. It was used to
clean butcher's blocks.
Lady's slipper is so named from the strikingly shoe-like form of the
flower. It is excessively rare in England, but in Southern France one
may see great bunches gathered for sale, over which, by the way, I have
often mourned.
Lady's tresses (the orchid _Spiranthes_) is so named from the curious
twisted or braided arrangement of the flowers.
Lady's smock (_Cardamine pratensis_) bears a name immortalised in
Shakespeare's song:--
"When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady's smocks all silver white,
And cuckow-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight."
I suspect that the poet called them _silver white_ to rhyme with
_delight_, for they are distinctly lilac in colour. Nor are they
especially smock-like--many other flowers suggest a woman's skirt equally
well--but this is a carping criticism.
Lady's bedstraw seems to have been so called from the yellow colour of
one or more kinds of Galium.
Lady's bower is _Clematis vitalba_, now known as traveller's joy. Anyone
exploring Seven Leases Lane, which runs along the edge of the Cotswolds,
will travel in continuous joy, for the lady's bower converts many hundred
yards of hedge into continuous beauty.
_Pulmonaria_ has been called the Virgin Mary's tears, from the pale
circular marks on its leaves. The blue flowers have been supposed to
typify the beautiful eyes of the Virgin, while the red buds are the same
eyes disfigured with weeping.
Many plants are named after the devil; there is, for instance, a species
of _Scabiosa_ called devil's bit, because that eminent personage bit the
root short off, and so it remains to this day. His object seems to have
been to destroy the medicinal properties the plant was supposed to
possess.
We now pass on to plants flowering on certain dates, such as Saints' days
or other church festivals. The snowdrop has been called the Fair Maid of
February, because it was supposed to flower on Candlemas Day, 2nd
February, which would be 15th February according to the modern calendar.
The name St John's wort, which we habitually apply to several species of
_Hypericum_, is correctly used only for _H. perforatum_. Its English
name is said to have been given from its flowering on St John's Day, 24th
June. This would be 7th July, new style, and I find that Blomefield's
average of eight annual observations is 4th July.
I had been wondering why there seemed to be no name for St John's wort
suggested by the glands, which show as pellucid dots when the leaf is
held up to the light. And in Britten and Holland's _Dictionary of
English Plant Names_, 1886, I found that _H. perforatum_ was called Balm
of Warrior's Wound, which must refer to the innumerable stabs it
exhibits, though they are more numerous than most warriors can endure. A
closely related plant is _Hypericum androsaemum_, known as Tutsan, said
to mean _toute saine_, as curing all hurts. In Wales, as I well remember
forty years ago, the leaves were kept in bibles. They are, as I learn
from a Welsh scholar, known as Blessed One's leaves.
The common yellow wayside plant _Geum urbanum_ is known as Herb Benet,
because, like St Benet, it had the power of counteracting the effect of
poison.
The sweet-william is said by Forster to be so named from flowering on St
William's Day, 25th June. But Blomefield's date is 17th June, which
would be 4th June, old style. A much more probable explanation is that
William is a corruption of the French name _oeillet_, a word derived from
the Latin _ocellus_, a little eye. So that the ancestry of the name runs
thus:--_Ocellus_--oeillet--Willy--William.
Oxalis, the wood-sorrel, was known as hallelujah, not only in England but
in several parts of the Continent, from its blossoming between Easter and
Whitsuntide, when psalms were sung ending in the word hallelujah.
Historical.
Some plant-names take us back to historical personages. The Carline
thistle is named after Karl the Great, better known as Charlemagne.
There was a pestilence in his army, and in answer to his prayer an angel
appeared and shot, from a crossbow, a bolt, which fell on the Carline
thistle with which the Emperor proceeded to conquer the pestilence.
Another magical arrow-shot is described in well-known lines in _A
Midsummer Night's Dream_ (Act ii., scene I). Oberon speaks of Cupid
loosing his "love shaft smartly from the bow" at "a fair vestal throned
in the west." Cupid missed his mark, and the poet continues:--
"Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it Love-in-idleness."
The name Love-in-idleness should be Love-in-idle if the metre could have
allowed it. This means love-in-vain: witness the Anglo-Saxon bible,
where occurs the phrase to take God's name "in idle." The flower
referred to by Shakespeare is doubtless the pansy.
Some names recall the work of more modern people. Thus the wild
chamomile was known in the Eastern counties as _Mawther_; and this, as
all lovers of Dickens will remember, means not a mother but a girl; and
the name is in fact a translation of the Greek Parthenion into the
Suffolk dialect.
The elder used to be known as the _bour-tree_. I fear that the name is
extinct in England, but a Scotch friend tells me that he was familiar
with it in his youth. I love this name because it is associated in my
mind with the words of Meg Merrilees {106} in _Guy Mannering_, the first
English classic in which I took pleasure.
"Aye, on this very spot the man fell from his horse--I was behind the
bour-tree bush at the very moment. Sair, sair he strove, and sair he
cried for mercy; but he was in the hands of them that never kenn'd the
word!"
The actual origin of the name is, however, not romantic; it is said to
mean _bore_, and to refer to the fact that tubes were made from it by
boring out the pith. It seems possible that such tubes were, in
primitive times, used to blow the fire, and this would explain the name
elder, which seems to mean _kindler_.
The dwarf elder, a distinct species, though not connected with an
individual, commemorates a race, being known as Dane's blood. It grows
on the Bartlow Hills, near Cambridge, where tradition says that Danes
were killed in battle.
I add a few names as being picturesque, though without any literary
associations.
There is an old name for the shepherd's purse, viz., clapperde-pouch,
which is said to allude to the leper who stood at the cross-ways
announcing his presence with a bell and clapper, and begged for pennies
to put in his pouch, which is typified by the seed capsule. Another name
for the plant is mother's heart, {107} and is no doubt referable to the
shape of the seed pod. Children in England, also in Germany and
Switzerland, used to play at the simple game of asking a companion to
gather a pod, and then jeering at him for having plucked out his mother's
heart.
The name columbine comes from the flower's obvious resemblance to a group
of doves, and its Latin name _aquilegia_, meaning a collection of eagles,
is a nobler form of the same idea.
Dead-man's fingers is a fine uncanny name for the innocent _Orchis
maculata_, and refers to its branching white tuber.
Garlick is a very ancient name, being derived from the Anglo-Saxon _gar_,
a spear, and _leac_, a plant; in the name house-leek the word still bears
its original meaning of a plant.
_Tragopogon_, the goat's beard, which closes its flowers about mid-day,
was once known as go-to-bed-at-noon.
The pansy has been called Herb trinity from the triple colouring of its
petals. In Welsh, and also in German, the pansy is called stepmother.
The lower petal is the most decorative, and this is the stepmother
herself. On examining the back of the flower it will be seen that she is
supported by two green leaflets, known as the _sepals_. These are called
her two chairs. Then come her two daughters, less smart, and having only
a chair apiece. Lastly, the two step-daughters, still more plainly
dressed and with but one chair between them.
Polemonium, from its numerous leaflets arranged in pairs, has received
the picturesque name of Jacob's ladder. I remember the pleasure with
which I first saw it growing wild in the hayfields of the Engadine.
Polygonatum, _i.e._ Solomon's seal, has been christened _Scala coeli_,
the ladder to heaven, on the same principle. The name Solomon's seal is
not obviously appropriate till we dig up the plant, when the underground
stem is found marked with curious scars, which, however, should be
pentagonal if they are to represent Solomon's pentacle.
Herb twopence (_Lysimchia nummularia_) is so named after the round
leaflets arranged in pairs along its creeping stalk. I do not know why
_Inula conyza_ is called ploughman's spikenard, but it is a picturesque
name.
Everyone knows the garden plant touch-me-not, so called from the curious
irritability of its pods, which writhe in an uncanny way when we gather
them. This quality is expressed twice over in the Latin name _Impatiens
noli-me-tangere_. But there is a forgotten old English name which
pleases me more, viz., quick-in-the-hand, that is to say
alive-in-the-hand. This use of the word survives in the familiar phrase
"the quick and the dead."
The English name of _Echium vulgare_ is viper's bugloss--this I had
always imagined referred to the forked tongue (the style) which projects
from the flower. But it is said to be so named from the seeds resembling
a viper's head. This is certainly the case, and what can be the function
of the little knobs on the seed, which represent eyes, I cannot imagine.
The name bugloss is derived from the Greek and means ox-tongue--no doubt
in reference to the plant's rough leaves.
_Corruptions_.--Another and greater class of names comprises those which
are corruptions of classical names or of those unfamiliar in other ways.
A well-known example is daffodil, which was originally affodyl, a
corruption of asphodel, a name of unknown meaning, originally given to
the iris, and transferred to narcissus. A very obvious corruption is
aaron, which has been applied to Lords and Ladies, whose scientific name
is Arum. An incomprehensibly foolish instance is bullrush for pool-rush,
_i.e._ water rush. This name has at least the merit of supplying
material for that riddle of our childhood in which occur the words "when
the bull rushes out."
Carraway is another obvious corruption of its Latin name _Carum carui_.
In the ancient _Schola Salernitana_, as I learn from Sir Norman Moore, is
a punning Latin line, "Dum carui carwey non sine febre fui" ("When I was
out of carraway I was never free from fever").
Dogwood (_Cornus sanguinea_) was originally dagwood, so called because it
was used to make _dags_ or skewers: doubtless the same word as dagger.
According to a Welsh tradition dogwood was the tree on which the devil
hung his mother. I cannot resist the pleasure of quoting this fact,
although it does not bear on anything in particular.
Eglantine, a name used for the wild rose, is with much probability
derived from the Latin _aculentus_, prickly, which became in French
_aiglent_. Hence came the French names of the plant _eglantier_ and our
_eglantine_.
Gooseberry is believed not to have anything to do with a goose, but to
come from the Flemish _Kroes_, meaning a cross, a comparison said to be
suggested by the triple thorns, though of course a fourth thorn is needed
to make this simile accurate. It is hard to see why a plant which grows
wild in England, and seems by some botanists to be considered indigenous,
should have a Flemish name. Prior, our chief authority, asserts that the
early herbalists constantly took names from continental writers, and I
think his judgment may be trusted. The problem of the derivation of the
word gooseberry may at least serve to illustrate the difficulty of the
subject.
The name _Hemlock_, which nowadays has a wicked poisonous sound, has in
truth a very innocent origin. It is compounded of _hem_, _i.e._ haulm, a
stalk, and _lock_, or leac, a plant, thus signifying merely a plant with
a stem. Jack of the Buttery, a name applied to _Sedum acre_, is said to
be a corruption from _bot_, _i.e._ an internal parasite, and _theriac_,
by which was meant a cure for that evil. The last-named word has turned
into "Jack," and _bot_ has grown into "buttery."
Lamb's tongue is said to be a name for _Plantago media_; but this must, I
think, be a corruption of land tongue, which is highly appropriate to the
tongue-like leaves lying so closely appressed to the soil that no blade
of grass grows under them, as though they were determined to spite any
one who should root them up by disfiguring his lawn with naked patches.
But still better evidence is forthcoming in the fact that my old
Cambridgeshire gardener always called them land tongues. Why the
Anglo-Saxons used the name _way bread_ for the plantain I do not see: the
fact is vouched for by Cockayne in his book entitled _Leechdoms_.
In Gloucestershire the plantain is called the _fire-leaf_, a name which
records the belief that plantains are a danger in the way of heating
hay-stacks.
The word madder, _i.e._ the name of the plant which supplies the red dye
for the trousers of our French allies, has a curious history. Madder is
derived from _mad_, a worm, and should therefore be applied to cochineal,
the red colouring matter produced by the minute creature called a coccus.
But still more confusion meets us: the word vermilion which is now used
for a red colour of mineral origin, is derived from _vermis_, a worm, and
should therefore also be applied to cochineal. The word pink, one of the
most familiar of plant-names, has a curious origin, being simply the
German _Pfingst_, a corruption of Pentecost, _i.e._ the fiftieth day
after Easter.
The tendency to make some kind of sense, or at least something familiar,
from the unfamiliar, comes out in name service-tree (_Pyrus torminalis_).
It has nothing to do with _service_, being simply a corruption of
_cerevisia_, a fermented liquor. The fruit was used for brewing what
Evelyn in his _Sylva_, chap. xv., declares it to be, an incomparable
drink. Prior says that the French name of the tree, _cormier_, is
derived from an ancient Gaulish word _courmi_, which seems to suggest the
modern Welsh _cwrw_, beer.
Tansy (_Tanacetum_) is believed to be simply a corruption of _athansia_,
immortality. I gather that we got the name through the French
_athanasie_, in which, of course, the _th_ is sounded as a _t_. In all
probability it was originally applied to some plant more deserving of
being credited with immortality.
A few miscellaneous names may here be given. _Thorough wax_ is a name
for _Chlora perfoliata_, also known as _yellow wort_. Its leaves are
perfoliate, _i.e._ opposite and united by their bases so that the stem
seems to have grown through a single leaf.
_Kemps_, _i.e._ warriors, was a name of the common plantain, with which
children used to fight one against the other. I remember this as being
an unsatisfactory game because one so constantly killed one's own kemp
instead of the enemy.
_Herb Paris_ is simply the plant with a pair of leaves; it should,
however, have been described as having four leaves. Thus the name has
nothing to do with Paris, the capital of France. But some plants have
names of geographical origin; the currants or minute grapes used for
making cakes are so called because they come from Corinth. So that we
are quite wrong in applying this same name to the familiar companion of
the gooseberry in our gardens. In the same way damsons are so called
because they are said to have come originally from Damascus.
The name Canterbury bell has a very interesting origin, namely, that
bells were the recognised badge of pilgrims to the shrine of St Thomas at
Canterbury. One of these bells was found in the bed of the Thames when
old London Bridge was pulled down. It is said to be "about the size of
an ordinary handbell, with a flat top, on which is an open handle,
through which a strap could easily be passed to attach it to a horse's
collar." This bell is known to have been associated with Canterbury by
the inscription _Campana Thome_ on the outer edge. The pilgrims seem to
have journeyed cheerfully. It is written that some "pilgrims will have
with them bag-pipes; so that in everie towne they come through, what with
the noise of their piping, and the jangling of their _Canterburie bells_,
etc., they make more noise than if the king came there away."
Dutch mice is a name for _Lathyrus tuberosus_. Gerard says that the
plant is so named from the "similitude or likeness of Domesticall Mise,
which the blacke, rounde, and long nuts, with a peece of the slender
string hanging out behind do represent." From this description one would
expect to see mouse-like pods, but it is the tubers which give the name
to the plant. This is clearly visible in Bentham's illustration; {114} I
hope the artist was unaware of the name when he made the drawing--but I
have my doubts. The specimen from Cambridgeshire (which I owe to the
kindness of Mr Shrubbs of the University Herbarium) are not especially
mouse-like.
The names shepherd's needle and Venus' comb have been given to an
umbelliferous plant, _Scandix Pecten_. The teeth of the comb are
represented by what are practically seeds. These are elongated
stick-like objects covered with minute prickles all pointing upwards. I
do not know how the seeds germinate under ordinary conditions, but I
learn from Mr Shrubbs that they are dragged into the holes of earthworms,
as my father describes in the case of sticks and leaf-stalks.
Unfortunately for the worms, the prickles on Venus' needles do not allow
the creatures to free themselves, and they actually die in considerable
numbers with the needles fixed in their gullets.