Chapter 6. Monacha

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_ CHAPTER VI. MONACHA

1. It is not a little vexing to me, in looking over the very little I have got done of my planned Systema Proserpinae, to discover a grave mistake in the specifications of Veronica. It is Veronica chamaedrys, not officinalis, which is our proper English Speedwell, and Welsh Fluellen; and all the eighth paragraph, p. 74, properly applies to that. Veronica officinalis is an extremely small flower rising on vertical stems out of recumbent leaves; and the drawing of it in the Flora Danica, which I mistook for a stunted northern state, is quite true of the English species,[32] except that it does not express the recumbent action of the leaves. The proper representation of ground-leafage has never yet been attempted in any botanical work whatever, and as, in recumbent plants, their grouping and action can only be seen from above, the plates of them should always have a dark and rugged background, not only to indicate the position of the eye, but to relieve the forms of the leaves as they were intended to be shown. I will try to give some examples in the course of this year.

2. I find also, sorrowfully, that the references are wrong in three, if not more, places in that chapter. S. 971 and 972 should be transposed in p. 72. S. 294 in p. 74 should be 984. D. 407 should be inserted after Peregrina, in p. 76; and 203, in fourth line from bottom of p. 78, should be 903. I wish it were likely that these errors had been corrected by my readers,--the rarity of the Flora Danica making at present my references virtually useless: but I hope in time that our public institutes will possess themselves of copies: still more do I hope that some book of the kind will be undertaken by English artists and engravers, which shall be worthy of our own country.

3. Farther, I get into confusion by not always remembering my own nomenclature, and have allowed 'Gentianoides' to remain, for No. 16, though I banish Gentian. It will be far better to call this eastern mountain species 'Olympica': according to Sibthorpe's localization, "in summa parte, nive soluta, montis Olympi Bithyni," and the rather that Curtis's plate above referred to shows it in luxuriance to be liker an asphodel than a gentian.

4. I have also perhaps done wrong in considering Veronica polita and agrestis as only varieties, in No. 3. No author tells me why the first is called polite, but its blue seems more intense than that of agrestis; and as it is above described with attention, vol. i., p. 75, as an example of precision in flower-form, we may as well retain it in our list here. It will be therefore our twenty-first variety,--it is Loudon's fifty-ninth and last. He translates 'polita' simply 'polished,' which is nonsense. I can think of nothing to call it but 'dainty,' and will leave it at present unchristened.

5. Lastly. I can't think why I omitted V. Humifusa, S. 979, which seems to be quite one of the most beautiful of the family--a mountain flower also, and one which I ought to find here; but hitherto I know only among the mantlings of the ground, V. thymifolia and officinalis. All these, however, agree in the extreme prettiness and grace of their crowded leafage,--the officinalis, of which the leaves are shown much too coarsely serrated in S. 984, forming carpets of finished embroidery which I have never yet rightly examined, because I mistook them for St. John's wort. They are of a beautiful pointed oval form, serrated so finely that they seem smooth in distant effect, and covered with equally invisible hairs, which seem to collect towards the edge in the variety Hirsuta, S. 985.

For the present, I should like the reader to group the three flowers, S. 979, 984, 985, under the general name of Humifusa, and to distinguish them by a third epithet, which I allow myself when in difficulties, thus:

V. Humifusa, caerulea, the beautiful blue one, which resembles Spicata.
V. Humifusa, officinalis, and,
V. Humifusa, hirsuta: the last seems to me extremely interesting, and I hope to find it and study it carefully.

By this arrangement we shall have only twenty-one species to remember: the one which chiefly decorates the ground again dividing into the above three.

6. These matters being set right, I pass to the business in hand, which is to define as far as possible the subtle relations between the Veronicas and Draconidae, and again between these and the tribe at present called labiate. In my classification above, vol. i, p. 200, the Draconidae include the Nightshades; but this was an oversight. Atropa belongs properly to the following class, Moiridae; and my Draconids are intended to include only the two great families of Personate and Ringent flowers, which in some degree resemble the head of an animal: the representative one being what we call 'snapdragon,' but the French, careless of its snapping power, 'calf's muzzle'--"Muflier, muflande, or muffle de Veau."--Rousseau, 'Lettres,' p. 19.

7. As I examine his careful and sensible plates of it, I chance also on a bit of his text, which, extremely wise and generally useful, I translate forthwith:--

"I understand, my dear, that one is vexed to take so much trouble without learning the names of the plants one examines; but I confess to you in good faith that it never entered into my plan to spare you this little chagrin. One pretends that Botany is nothing but a science of words, which only exercises the memory, and only teaches how to give plants names. For me, I know _no_ rational study which is only a science of words: and to which of the two, I pray you, shall I grant the name of botanist,--to him who knows how to spit out a name or a phrase at the sight of a plant, without knowing anything of its structure, or to him who, knowing that structure very well, is ignorant nevertheless of the very arbitrary name that one gives to the plant in such and such a country? If we only gave to your children an amusing occupation, we should miss the best half of our purpose, which is, in amusing them, to exercise their intelligence and accustom them to attention. Before teaching them to name what they see, let us begin by teaching them to see it. _That_ science, forgotten in all educations, ought to form the most important part of theirs. I can never repeat it often enough--teach them never to be satisfied with words, ('se payer de mots') and to hold themselves as knowing nothing of what has reached no farther than their memories."

8. Rousseau chooses, to represent his 'Personees,' La Mufflaude, la Linaire, l'Euphraise, la Pediculaire, la Crete-de-coq, l'Orobanche, la Cimbalaire, la Velvote, la Digitale, giving plates of snapdragon, foxglove, and Madonna-herb, (the Cimbalaire), and therefore including my entire class of Draconidae, whether open or close throated. But I propose myself to separate from them the flower which, for the present, I have called Monacha, but may perhaps find hereafter a better name; this one, which is the best Latin I can find for a nun of the desert, being given to it because all the resemblance either to calf or dragon has ceased in its rosy petals, and they resemble--the lower ones those of the mountain thyme, and the upper one a softly crimson cowl or hood.

9. This beautiful mountain flower, at present, by the good grace of botanists, known as Pedicularis, from a disease which it is supposed to give to sheep, is distinguished from all other Draconidae by its beautifully divided leaves: while the flower itself, like, as aforesaid, thyme in the three lower petals, rises in the upper one quite upright, and terminates in the narrow and peculiar hood from which I have named it 'Monacha.'

10. Two deeper crimson spots with white centres animate the colour of the lower petals in our mountain kind---mountain or morass;--it is vilely drawn in S. 997 under the name of Sylvatica, translated 'Procumbent'! As it is neither a wood flower nor a procumbent one,[33] and as its rosy colour is rare among morass flowers, I shall call it simply Monacha Rosea.

I have not the smallest notion of the meaning of the following sentence in S.:--"Upper lip of corolla not rostrate, with the margin on each side furnished with a triangular tooth immediately below the apex, but without any tooth below the middle." Why, or when, a lip is rostrate, or has any 'tooth below the middle,' I do not know; but the upper _petal_ of the corolla is here a very close gathered hood, with the style emergent downwards, and the stamens all hidden and close set within.

In this action of the upper petal, and curve of the style, the flower resembles the Labiates,[34] and is the proper link between them and the Draconidae. The capsule is said by S. to be oval-ovoid. As eggs always _are_ oval, I don't feel farther informed by the epithet. The capsule and seed both are of entirely indescribable shapes, with any number of sides--very foxglove-like, and inordinately large. The seeds of the entire family are 'ovoid-subtrigonous.'--S.

11. I find only two species given as British by S., namely, Sylvatica and Palustris; but I take first for the Regina, the beautiful Arctic species D. 1105, Flora Suecica, 555. Rose-coloured in the stem, pale pink in the flowers (corollae pallide incarnatae), the calices furry against the cold, whence the present ugly name, Hirsuta. Only on the highest crests of the Lapland Alps.

(2) Rosea, D. 225, there called Sylvatica, as by S., presumably because "in pascuis subhumidis non rarae." Beautifully drawn, but, as I have described it, vigorously erect, and with no decumbency whatever in any part of it. Root branched, and enormous in proportion to plant, and I fancy therefore must be good for something if one knew it. But Gerarde, who calls the plant Red Rattle, (it having indeed much in common with the Yellow Rattle), says, "It groweth in moist and moorish meadows; the herbe is not only unprofitable, but likewise hurtful, and an infirmity of the meadows."

(3) Palustris, D. 2055, S. 996--scarcely any likeness between the plates. "Everywhere in the meadows," according to D. I leave the English name, Marsh Monacha, much doubting its being more marshy than others.

12. I take next (4 and 5) two northern species, Lapponica, D. 2, and Groenlandica, D. 1166; the first yellow, the second red, both beautiful. The Lap one has its divided leaves almost united into one lovely spear-shaped, single leaf. The Greenland one has its red hood much prolonged in front.

(6) Ramosa, also a Greenland species; yellow, very delicate and beautiful. Three stems from one root, but may be more or fewer, I suppose.

13. (7) Norvegica, a beautifully clustered golden flower, with thick stem. D. 30, the only locality given being the Dovrefeldt. "Alpina" and "Flammea" are the synonyms, but I do not know it on the Alps, and it is no more flame-coloured than a cowslip.

Both the Lapland and Norwegian flowers are drawn with their stems wavy, though upright--a rare and pretty habit of growth.

14. (8) Suecica, D. 26, named awkwardly Sceptrum Carolinum, in honour of Charles XII. It is the largest of all the species drawn in D., and contrasts strikingly with (4) and (5) in the strict uprightness of its stem. The corolla is closed at the extremity, which is red; the body of the flower pale yellow. Grows in marshy and shady woods, near Upsal. Linn., Flora Suecica, 553.

The many-lobed but united leaves, at the root five or six inches long, are irregularly beautiful.

15. These eight species are all I can specify, having no pictures of the others named by Loudon,--eleven, making nineteen altogether, and I wish I could find a twentieth and draw them all, but the reader may be well satisfied if he clearly know these eight. The group they form is an entirely distinct one, exactly intermediate between the Vestals and Draconids, and cannot be rightly attached to either; for it is Draconid in structure and affinity--Vestal in form--and I don't see how to get the connection of the three families rightly expressed without taking the Draconidae out of the groups belonging to the dark Kora, and placing them next the Vestals, with the Monachae between; for indeed Linaria and several other Draconid forms are entirely innocent and beautiful, and even the Foxglove never does any real mischief like hemlock, while decoratively it is one of the most precious of mountain flowers. I find myself also embarrassed by my name of Vestals, because of the masculine groups of Basil and Thymus, and I think it will be better to call them simply Menthae, and to place them with the other cottage-garden plants not yet classed, taking the easily remembered names Mentha, Monacha, Draconida. This will leave me a blank seventh place among my twelve orders at p. 194, vol. i., which I think I shall fill by taking cyclamen and anagillis out of the Primulaceae, and making a separate group of them. These retouchings and changes are inevitable in a work confessedly tentative and suggestive only; but in whatever state of imperfection I may be forced to leave 'Proserpina,' it will assuredly be found, up to the point reached, a better foundation for the knowledge of flowers in the minds of young people than any hitherto adopted system of nomenclature.

16. Taking then this re-arranged group, Mentha, Monacha, and Draconida, as a sufficiently natural and convenient one, I will briefly give the essentially botanical relations of the three families.

Mentha and Monacha agree in being essentially hooded flowers, the upper petal more or less taking the form of a cup, helmet or hood, which conceals the tops of the stamens. Of the three lower petals, the lowest is almost invariably the longest; it sometimes is itself divided again into two, but may be best thought of as single, and with the two lateral ones, distinguished in the Menthae as the apron and the side pockets.

Plate XII. represents the most characteristic types of the blossoms of Menthae, in the profile and front views, all a little magnified. The upper two are white basil, purple spotted--growing here at Brantwood always with two terminal flowers. The two middle figures are the purple-spotted dead nettle, Lamium maculatum; and the two lower, thyme: but I have not been able to draw these as I wanted, the perspectives of the petals being too difficult, and inexplicable to the eye even in the flowers themselves without continually putting them in changed positions.

17. The Menthae are in their structure essentially quadrate plants; their stems are square, their leaves opposite, their stamens either four or two, their seeds two-carpeled. But their calices are five-sepaled, falling into divisions of two and three; and the flowers, though essentially four-petaled, may divide either the upper or lower petal, or both, into two lobes, and so present a six-lobed outline. The entire plants, but chiefly the leaves, are nearly always fragrant, and always innocent. None of them sting, none prick, and none poison.

18. The Draconids, easily recognizable by their aspect, are botanically indefinable with any clearness or simplicity. The calyx may be five- or four-sepaled; the corolla, five- or four-lobed; the stamens may be two, four, four with a rudimentary fifth, or five with the two anterior ones longer than the other three! The capsule may open by two, three, or four valves,--or by pores; the seeds, generally numerous, are sometimes solitary, and the leaves may be alternate, opposite, or verticillate.

19. Thus licentious in structure, they are also doubtful in disposition. None that I know of are fragrant, few useful, many more or less malignant, and some parasitic. The following piece of a friend's letter almost makes me regret my rescue of them from the dark kingdom of Kora:--

"... And I find that the Monacha Rosea (Red Rattle is its name, besides the ugly one) is a perennial, and several of the other draconidae, foxglove, etc., are biennials, born this year, flowering and dying next year, and the size of roots is generally proportioned to the life of plants; except when artificial cultivation develops the root specially, as in turnips, etc. Several of the Draconidae are parasites, and suck the roots of other plants, and have only just enough of their own to catch with. The Yellow Rattle is one; it clings to the roots of the grasses and clovers, and no cultivation will make it thrive without them. My authority for this last fact is Grant Allen; but I have observed for myself that the Yellow Rattle has very small _white_ sucking roots, and no earth sticking to them. The toothworts and broom rapes are Draconidae, I think, and wholly parasites. Can it be that the Red Rattle is the one member of the family that has 'proper pride, and is self supporting'? the others are mendicant orders. We had what we choose to call the Dorcas flower show yesterday, and we gave, as usual, prizes for wild flower bouquets. I tried to find out the local names of several flowers, but they all seemed to be called 'I don't know, ma'am.' I would not allow this name to suffice for the red poppy, and I said 'This red flower _must_ be called _something_--tell me what you call it?' A few of the audience answered 'Blind Eyes.' Is it because they have to do with sleep that they are called Blind Eyes--or because they are dazzling?"

20. I think, certainly, from the dazzling, which sometimes with the poppy, scarlet geranium, and nasturtium, is more distinctly oppressive to the eye than a real excess of light.

I will certainly not include among my rescued Draconidae, the parasitic Lathraea and Orobanche; and cannot yet make certain of any minor classification among those which I retain,--but, uniting Bartsia with Euphrasia, I shall have, in the main, the three divisions Digitalis, Linaria, Euphrasia, and probably separate the moneyworts as links with Veronica, and Rhinanthus as links with Lathraea.

And as I shall certainly be unable this summer, under the pressure of resumed work at Oxford, to spend time in any new botanical investigations, I will rather try to fulfil the promise given in the last number, to collect what little I have been able hitherto to describe or ascertain, respecting the higher modes of tree structure. _

Read next: Chapter 7. Science In Her Cells

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