What would you expect of a plant named Chittagong Chickrassy? Is it related to chickweed, or does it have to do with temple gongs and rickshaws?
They tell us that the Greeks had a word for it, but so did the Romans. And when we mix the two and add a dash of patois from the four comers of the earth where plants grow, we have something!
Catalog makers and standardized would have all plant names reduced to their lowest common denominator. Nothing but a Lilium could be called a lily, for example.
No more could we call Belamcanda a blackberry lily, agapanthus an African lily, or nerine a Guernsey lily.
But what would we do with convallaria when we wanted to get familiar and call it lily-of-the-valley? What a pity to discard such a melodious name!
Plant Names Refuse To Be Completely Standardized
At least, common names refuse because they have been growing for so long. Their roots go back to the founding fathers of the gardening fraternity.
Plenty of them furnishes a description of the plant. Hens-and-chickens tells you more than Sempervivum tectorum, doesn’t it? And isn’t piggy-back plant a perfect description of Tolmiea menziesii?
This is not to be construed as a suggestion that we prefer common names over formal botanical names. Far from it! But let’s live with plant names as they are and enjoy their idiosyncrasies.
Let’s learn to roll Pachysandra terminalis as neatly on the tongue as geranium. Greek and Latin plant names are not half so hard to pronounce as some new drug names are becoming household names.
A Joyful Bond
And what a joyful bond with the past it is to know that we are not only still growing the same things that our forebears did but are still calling them by the same names.
If we enjoy saying piney because it calls to mind a dear old lady in a lace cap bending over the first red shoots of spring, which is to insist that we give the word a more scholarly pronunciation?
A host of genera, species and horticultural varieties of plants have names commemorating some person.
William Forsyth, Dr. Garden, Joel Poinsette, and Andreas. Dahl is among the first to come to mind.
Was Forsyth as sunny a man as the cheerful yellow-flowered shrub bearing his name? Were Poinsette and de Bougainville as flamboyant as their namesakes?
Did Dr. Caspar Wistar regret the adaptation of his name that produced wisteria instead of wistaria to honor him?
Roses Named After Public Figures
Rose names alone are a fascinating field for investigation and speculation.
What a parade we would have if all the people could be assembled for whom roses have been named! Probably every profession and trade, every art and nationality would be represented.
Public figures from every land would pass before us — Francis Scott Key and General MacArthur, Amelia Earhart, Marechal Foch, Miss Edith Cavell, and Governor Alfred E. Smith. Can’t you see them?
Here come the glamor girls of the stage: Ellen Terry with Grade Fields, Sarah Bernhardt with Shirley Temple, Lily Pons and Dinah Shore, Rose Bampton, Greer Garson, and Rosalind Russell.
The writing profession could be led by Leonard Barron, Editor McFarland, Richardson Wright, and Pearl S. Buck. And the titled heads! They would range through countesses, dukes, earls, princesses, queens, and kings of every continent.
But perhaps most charming of all would be the debutantes of the rose growers’ own families, the bright-eyed daughters who have carried their proud fathers’ names from one generation of rose lovers to the next are the following:
- Alida
- Bess
- Mary Lovett
- Anne
- Karen
- Kirsten Poulsen
- Auguste
- Cathrine
- Minna Kordes
- Margaret McGredy
- Marie Guillot
- Angele Peraet
- Joanna Hill
- Betty Prior
- Dagmar Spath
- Charlotte Armstrong
- Dorothy Perkins
- Ema Grootendorst
- Lucy Nicholas
- Chaperoned by Maman Cochet and Mutter Brada
Whose Ami Was Quinard
But who were the many, many others whose names have been given to roses? Who was D. Maria do Carmo de Fragoso Carmona? Who, for that matter, was Betty Uprichard? Whose Ami was Quinard?
Maid Marion and Queen Mab should strike up a friendship, but Annie Laurie might not take so well to Long John Silver.
Rose names aside, one can enjoy a field day in continent-hopping by skimming over a list of plant names!
Bombay sumbul, Mecca myrrh tree, Siam gamboge tree, Burma toon, and Sierra Leone copal tree set the tom-toms and temple bells ringing in one’s ears. Almost every state 1ms lent its name to some species of plant.
To imagine the circumstances under which each species was discovered and classified and the uses to which it has since been put would be a task indeed.
A Witch’s Bouquet
Is there a dark corner of your soul that shows itself only in the dead of a dreary night? Then perhaps in your garden of memories, you will want to plant some black henbane, Java devil pepper, and Gargan death carrot, bordered by bushman’s poison and bitter nightshade.
They should make a nice witches’ bouquet.
And for comedy relief, you might point out your guinea peach fathead tree, your cablin’ patchouli, your wooly bucket bumelia, your gumbo limbo, your fish fuddle tree, or your risky tread softly.
“What’s in a name?” There’s a great deal in a plant name — romance and history, adventure and imagination. The name itself is part of our priceless heritage in the world of plants.
44659 by Katherine E. Meikle