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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 - Sedge, Senna, Speargrass, Stover |
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_ PART I. THE PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE SEDGE, SENNA, SPEARGRASS, STOVER SEDGE
Sedge is from the Anglo-Saxon Secg, and meant almost any waterside plant. Thus we read of the Moor Secg, and the Red Secg, and the Sea Holly (Eryngium maritimum) is called the Holly Sedge. And so it was doubtless used by Shakespeare. In our day Sedge is confined to the genus Carex, a family growing in almost all parts of the world, and containing about 1000 species, of which we have fifty-eight in Great Britain; they are most graceful ornaments both of our brooks and ditches; and some of them will make handsome garden plants. One very handsome species--perhaps the handsomest--is C. pendula, with long tassel-like flower-spikes hanging down in a very beautiful form, which is not uncommon as a wild plant, and can easily be grown in the garden, and the flower-spikes will be found very handsome additions to tall nosegays. There is another North American species, C. Fraseri, which is a good plant for the north side of a rock-work: it is a small plant, but the flower is a spike of the purest white, and is very curious, and unlike any other flower.
Even in the time of Shakespeare several attempts were made to grow the Senna in England, but without success; so that he probably only knew it as an important "purgative drug." The Senna of commerce is made from the leaves of Cassia lanceolata and Cassia Senna, both natives of Africa, and so unfitted for open-air cultivation in England. The Cassias are a large family, mostly with handsome yellow flowers, some of which are very ornamental greenhouse plants; and one from North America, Cassia Marylandica, may be considered hardy in the South of England.
[277:1] In this passage the old reading for "Senna" is "Cyme," and this is the reading of the Globe Shakespeare; but I quote the passage with "Senna" because it is so printed in many editions.
Except in this passage I can only find Speargrass mentioned in Lupton's "Notable Things," and there without any description, only as part of a medical recipe: "Whosoever is tormented with sciatica or the hip gout, let them take an herb called Speargrass, and stamp it and lay a little thereof upon the grief." The plant is not mentioned by Lyte, Gerard, Parkinson, or the other old herbalists, and so it is somewhat of a puzzle. Steevens quotes from an old play, "Victories of Henry the Fifth": "Every day I went into the field, I would take a straw and thrust it into my nose, and make my nose bleed;" but a straw was never called Speargrass. Asparagus was called Speerage, and the young shoots might have been used for the purpose, but I have never heard of such a use; Ranunculus flammula was called Spearwort, from its lanceolate leaves, and so (according to Cockayne) was Carex acuta, still called Spiesgrass in German. Mr. Beisly suggests the Yarrow or Millfoil; and we know from several authorities (Lyte, Hollybush, Gerard, Phillip, Cole, Skinner, and Lindley) that the Yarrow was called Nosebleed; but there seems no reason to suppose that it was ever called Speargrass, or could have been called a Grass at all, though the term Grass was often used in the most general way. Dr. Prior suggests the Common Reed, which is probable. I have been rather inclined to suppose it to be one of the Horse-tails (Equiseta).[278:1] They are very sharp and spearlike, and their rough surfaces would soon draw blood; and as a decoction of Horse-tail was a remedy for stopping bleeding of the nose, I have thought it very probable that such a supposed virtue could only have arisen when remedies were sought for on the principle of "similia similibus curantur;" so that a plant, which in one form produced nose-bleeding, would, when otherwise administered, be the natural remedy. But I now think that all these suggested plants must give way in favour of the common Couch-grass (Triticum repens). In the eastern counties, this is still called Speargrass; and the sharp underground stolons might easily draw blood, when the nose is tickled with them. The old emigrants from the eastern counties took the name with them to America, but applied it to a Poa (Webster's "Dictionary," s.v. Speargrass).
[278:1] "Hippurus Anglice dicitur sharynge gyrs."--TURNER'S Libellus, 1538.
In this passage, Stover is probably the bent or dried Grass still remaining on the land, but it is the common word for hay or straw, or for "fodder and provision for all sorts of cattle; from Estovers, law term, which is so explained in the law dictionaries. Both are derived from Estouvier in the old French, defined by Roquefort--'Convenance, necessite, provision de tout ce qui est necessaire.'"--NARES. The word is of frequent occurrence in the writers of the time of Shakespeare. One quotation from Tusser will be sufficient-- "If house-roome will serve thee, lay Stover up drie,
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