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Call of the Wildflower

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<h2>V</h2> <h3>BOTANESQUE</h3> What is it? a learned man Could give it a clumsy name. Let him name it who can, The beauty would be the same. Tennyson. Among the difficulties that waylay the beginner must be reckoned the botanical phraseology. We have heard of "the language of flowers," and of its romantic associations; but the language of botany is another matter, and though less picturesque is equally cryptic and not to be mastered without study. When, for example, we read of a certain umbelliferous plant that its "cremocarp consists of two semicircular-ovoid mericarps, constricted at the commissure"—or when, with our lives in our hands, so to speak, we experiment in fungus-eating, and learn that a particular mushroom has its stem "fistulose, subsquamulose, its pileus membranaceous, rarely subcarnose, when young ovato-conic, then campanulate, at length torn and revolute, deliquescent, and clothed with the flocculose fragments of[Pg 44] the veil"—we probably feel that some further information would be welcome. A friend who had been reading a series of articles on botany once remarked to me that "they could scarcely be said to be written in any known language, but were in a new tongue which might perhaps be called Botanesque." But it is of the botanesque nomenclature that I now wish to speak. The faculty of bestowing appropriate names is at all times a gift, an inspiration, most happy when least laboured, and often eluding the efforts of learned and scientific men. By schoolboys it is sometimes exhibited in perfection; as in a case that I remember at a public school, where three brothers of the name of Berry were severally known, for personal reasons, as Bilberry, Blackberry, and Gooseberry, the fitness of which botanical titles was never for a moment impugned. But botanists rarely invent names so well. The nomenclature of plants, like that of those celestial flowers, the stars, is a queer jumble of ancient and modern, classical learning and mediæval folk-lore, in which the really characteristic features are often overlooked. In this respect the Latin names are worse offenders than the English; and one is sometimes tempted, in disgust at their pedantic irrelevance, to ignore them altogether, and to exclaim with the poet: What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. [Pg 45] But this would be an error; for a name does greatly enhance the interest of an object, be it boy, or bird, or flower; and the Greek and Latin plant-names, cumbrous and far-fetched though many of them are—as when the saintfoin is absurdly labelled onobrychis, on the supposition that its scent provokes an ass to bray—form, nevertheless, a useful link between botanists of different nations and a safeguard against the confusion that arises from a variety of local terms. Among the English names also there are some clumsy appellations, and in a few cases the Latin ones are much pleasanter: stellaria, for example, as I have already said, is more elegant than "stitchwort." "What have I done?" asks the small cousin of the woodruff, in Edward Carpenter's poem, when it justly protests against its hideous christening by man: What have I done? Man came, Evolutional upstart one, With the gift of giving a name To everything under the sun. What have I done? Man came (They say nothing sticks like dirt), Looked at me with eyes of blame, And called me "Squinancy-wort." But on the whole the English names of flowers are simpler and more suggestive than the Latin; certainly "monk's-hood" is preferable to aconitum, "rest-harrow" to ononis, "flowering rush" to butomus; and so on, through a long list: and it[Pg 46] therefore seems rather strange that the native titles should sometimes be ousted by the foreign. I have met botanists who had quite forgotten the English, and were obliged to ask me for the scientific term before they could sufficiently recall the plant of which we were speaking. The prefix "common" is often very misleading in the English nomenclature. Anyone, for example, who should go confidently searching for the "common hare's-ear" would soon find that he had got his work cut out. There are, in fact, not many plants that are everywhere common; most of those that are so described should properly be classed as local, because, while plentiful in some districts, they are infrequent in others. Botanical names fall mainly into three classes, the medicinal, the commemorative, the descriptive. The old uses of plants by the herbalists mark the prosaic origin of many of the names; some of which, such as "goutweed," at once explain themselves, as indicating supposed remedies for ills that flesh is heir to. Others, if less obvious, are still not far to seek; the "scabious," for example, derived from the Latin scabies, was reputed to be a cure for leprosy: a few, like "eye-bright" (euphrasia, gladness), have a more cheerful significance. When we turn to such titles as centaurea, for the knapweed and cornflower, some explanation is needed, to wit, that Chiron, the fabulous centaur, was said to have employed these herbs in the exercise of his healing art.[Pg 47] The commemorative names are mostly given in honour of accomplished botanists, it being a habit of mankind, presumably prompted by the acquisitive instincts of the race, to name any object, great or small—from a mountain to a mouse—as belonging to the person who discovered or brought it to notice. In the case of wildflowers this is not always a very felicitous system of distinguishing them, though perhaps better than the utilitarian jargon of the pharmacop&oelig;ia. Sometimes, indeed, it is beyond cavil; as in the fit association of the little linnæa borealis with the great botanist who loved it; but when a number of the less important professors of the science are immortalized in this way, there seems to be something rather irrelevant, if not absurd, in such nomenclature. Why, for example, should two of the more charming crucifers be named respectively Hutchinsia and Teesdalia, after a Miss Hutchins and a Mr. Teesdale? Why should the water-primrose be called Hottonia, after a Professor Hotton; or the sea-heath Frankenia, after a Swedish botanist named Franken; and so on, in a score of other cases that might be cited? The climax is reached when the rubi and the salices are divided into a host of more or less dubious sub-species, so that a Bloxam may have his bramble, and a Hoffmann his willow, as a possession for all time! The most rational, and also the most graceful manner of naming flowers is the descriptive; and here, luckily, there are a number of titles, English or[Pg 48] Latin, with which no fault can be found. Spearwort, mouse-tail, arrow-head, bird's-foot, colt's-foot, blue-bell, bindweed, crane's-bill, snapdragon, shepherd's purse, skull-cap, monk's-hood, ox-tongue—these are but a few of the well-bestowed names which, by an immediate appeal to the eye, fix the flower in the mind; they are at once simple and appropriate: in others, such as Adonis, Columbine, penny-cress, cranberry, lady's-mantle, and thorow-wax, the description, if less manifest at first sight, is none the less charming when recognized. The Latin, too, is at times so befitting as to be accepted without demur; thus iris, to express the rainbow tints of the flowers, needs no English equivalent, and campanula has only to be literally rendered as "bell-flower." In campanula hederacea, the "ivy-leaved bell-flower," we see nomenclature at its best, the petals and the foliage of a floral gem being both faithfully described. A glance at a list of British wildflowers will bring to mind various other ways in which names have been given to them—some familiar, some romantic, a few even poetical. Among the homely but not unpleasing kind, are "Jack by the hedge" for the garlic mustard; "John go to bed at noon" for the goat's-beard; "creeping Jenny" for the money-wort; and "lady's-fingers" for the kidney-vetch. Of the romantically named plants the most conspicuous example is doubtless the forget-me-not, its English name contrasting, as it does, with the more realistic Latin myosotis, which detects in the shape[Pg 49] of the leaves a likeness to a mouse's ear. None, perhaps, can claim to be so poetical as Gerarde's name for the clematis; for "traveller's joy" was one of those happy inspirations which are unfortunately rare.[Pg 50] <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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