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An essay by Francis Darwin |
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The Traditional Names Of English Plants |
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Title: The Traditional Names Of English Plants Author: Francis Darwin [More Titles by Darwin] 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 Jacobæa, 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:—
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 androsæmum, 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 _œillet, a word derived from the Latin ocellus, a little eye. So that the ancestry of the name runs thus:—Ocellus—œillet—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.
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:—
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 cœli, 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.
{100a} The name, however, is apparently not as old as the ceremonies. It is said by Britten and Holland (Dictionary of Plant-names) to have been invented by Gerard (1597). {100b} Prior, The Popular Names of British Plants, ed. iii., 1879, p. 89. {100c} Blomefield (formerly Jenyns) was a contemporary of my father’s at Cambridge, and was remarkable for wide knowledge, and especially for the minute accuracy of his work. He kept for many years a diary of the dates of flowering of plants and of other phenomena, which the Cambridge University Press republished in 1903 as A Naturalist’s Calendar. {106} Guy Mannering, vol. ii., ch. xxiv. {107} Britten and Holland. {114} Bentham, Illustrations of the British Flora, 5th ed., 1901, p. 68. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |