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The Plant-Lore & Garden-Craft of Shakespeare, a non-fiction book by Henry Nicholson Ellacombe |
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Part 1. The Plant-Lore Of Shakespeare - Broom, Bulrush, Burdock And Burs |
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_ PART I. THE PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE BROOM, BULRUSH, BURDOCK AND BURS
The Broom was one of the most popular plants of the Middle Ages. Its modern Latin name is Cytisus scoparius, but under its then Latin name of Planta genista it gave its name to the Plantagenet family, either in the time of Henry II., as generally reported, or probably still earlier. As the favourite badge of the family it appears on their monuments and portraits, and was embroidered on their clothes and imitated in their jewels. Nor was it only in England that the plant was held in such high favour; it was the special flower of the Scotch, and it was highly esteemed in many countries on the Continent, especially in Brittany. Yet, in spite of all this, there are only these three notices of the plant in Shakespeare, and of those three, two (2 and 3) refer to its uses when dead; and the third (1), though it speaks of it as living, yet has nothing to say of the remarkable beauties of this favourite British flower. Yet it has great beauties which cannot easily be overlooked. Its large, yellow flowers, its graceful habit of growth, and its fragrance-- "Sweet is the Broome-flowre, but yet sowre enough"-- at once arrest the attention of the most careless observer of Nature. We are almost driven to the conclusion that Shakespeare could not have had much real acquaintance with the Broom, or he would not have sent his "dismissed bachelor" to "Broom-groves."[42:1] I should very much doubt that the Broom could ever attain to the dimensions of a grove, though Steevens has a note on the passage that "near Gamlingay, in Cambridgeshire, it grows high enough to conceal the tallest cattle as they pass through it; and in places where it is cultivated still higher." Chaucer speaks of the Broom, but does not make it so much of a tree-- "Amid the Broom he basked in the sun." And other poets have spoken of the Broom in the same way--thus Collins--
--- Castle of Indolence, canto i. And a Russian poet speaks of the Broom as a tree--
--- Flora Domestica, p. 68. As a garden plant it is perhaps seen to best advantage when mixed with other shrubs, as when grown quite by itself it often has an untidy look. There is a pure white variety which is very beautiful, but it is very liable to flower so abundantly as to flower itself to death. There are a few other sorts, but none more beautiful than the British.
[42:1] Yet Bromsgrove must be a corruption of Broom-grove, and there are other places in England named from the Broom.
BULRUSH. Wooer. Her careless tresses --- Two Noble Kinsmen, act iv, sc. 1 (104).
The Burs are the unopened flowers of the Burdock (Arctium lappa), and their clinging quality very early obtained for them expressive names, such as amor folia, love leaves, and philantropium. This clinging quality arises from the bracts of the involucrum being long and stiff, and with hooked tips which attach themselves to every passing object. The Burdock is a very handsome plant when seen in its native habitat by the side of a brook, its broad leaves being most picturesque, but it is not a plant to introduce into a garden.[44:1] There is another tribe of plants, however, which are sufficiently ornamental to merit a place in the garden, and whose Burs are even more clinging than those of the Burdock. These are the Acaenas; they are mostly natives of America and New Zealand, and some of them (especially A. sarmentosa and A. microphylla) form excellent carpet plants, but their points being furnished with double hooks, like a double-barbed arrow, they have double powers of clinging. _ |
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