THE NAMES OF FLOWERS
BY GEOFFREY DEARMER.
REBELS die unhonotired but not unsting—when they are right, and those who rebel against grammar, although they are often buried in oblivion whilst the grammarian is immortalized by a funeral, are often right. Perhaps the best instance of this was the child who, after being taught never to end a sentence with a preposition, shouted out : " Whatever made you -choose that grammar to be read to out of from for ? "
English is a shameless mongrel. She has so many parents she doesn't know what to do ; few of them were " the children of gentlemen only," as the schoolmistress said ; many are of doubtful origin. Slangy English has a short life but a merry one. A young poet recently began a poem to a tree with the couplet :- It isn't strange beloved tree
That you should have the bulge on me.
And the lines though not immortal are spontaneous. " Roughage " in art, as in life, is often inextricable from vitamin A, and where there is no roughage there is little but vitamin B.
This is extraordinarily true of the names of flowers which have three predominating origins—Medicine, Fancy and Proper—in the nominal sense.
Medicine is confined chiefly to wild flowers and to the- old herbals. The irreverent minor poet referred to above once went to a poetical party where a lady rhapsodized about the Fancy department of my classification. More irritatedd-than inspired, the M.P. remonstrated herhally :- "Yes, yes " he said " in no small measure The names of wild flowers give,us pleasure- Such-pleasure, why, it almost hurts ! For instance there are all the Worts—.
There's Lousewort, Mugwort, Toothwort, Ditchwort, Soapwort, Pilewort, Lungwort, Stitchwort. And then there's stinking Hellebore And Kidney Vetch : and I adore The Banes, both Flea and Hen ! They bring The cottage and the sound of Spring, To me ! And Garlic-0 to wreathe The Garlic and to hear it breathe, And Scabious—isn't that a name To make a poet itch for fame ? And House-leek—do not Leeks suggest Our April weather at its best ? And Sow-thistle—would I could browse On thistles that resemble sows !"
The M.P. was turned out. But he was right, so was the rhapsodizing lady who had, of course, already quoted the passage in the Winter's Tale and several modern efforts in prose and poetry from Sutton to Squire. Of these three classifications the greatest is Fancy, and the greatest enemies of her superbly named flowers are the botanists themselves with their rage for Latin. Flowers must, of course, be given Latin business names by which they can be universally identified. But the rage in common use grows apace. Woodbine was Honeysuckle long before it was renamed Lonicera. To-day, perennial Larkspurs are becoming universally known as Delphiniums ; the beau- tiful Columbine is being shouted down by the squealing Aquilegia, Antirrhinum is killing the Snapdragon, Digi- talis the Foxglove. Indeed, a time is fast approaching when people will refer to the thrifty white sea pink as Armeria Maritima Alba, the spotted dog saxifrage as Canis Dalmatica, the cobweb houseleek as Arachnoideum, (God save us !), and finally, when we are all doomed and dammed the small child sent into the garden will return with a " lovely basket of liliums and rosas, Mummy."
But false fancy is worse than fancy. Rather Narcissus triandus albus than " Angels' Tears." " Foam flower " and " Madonna's Jewels " are pretty, but they never came to stay like Bachelor's Buttons and Love-in-a-Mist. Some fancy names are good enough to survive, as, for instance, " Goldilocks " for lielichrysum, "Lady's Laces for variegated grass, " Pearls of Spain " for the white grape hyacinth, and " Rosaruby " for the red Adonis.
Our business is, obviously, like Mr. Robinson in his English Flower Garden, always to use the English names where we can without affectation, not forgetting that Fashion decides what is affected and what is not. It would perhaps he bordering on affectation to use Peren- nial Larkspur now that Delphinium is commonly accepted, but if we are not careful it may soon be necessary to say as little for the Red-hot Poker now threatened by Kniphofia. Words once dead can seldom be revived, as the Pre- Raphaelites discovered when some of them tried to sub- stitute " folk-wain " for " omnibus."
Proper names are a different story. Here the remedy, is in our own hands, and the remedy is " don't."
" Irish Glory " and " Irish Modesty " are charming names for tea roses, but what can be said for Gruss an Teplitz for a fine new rose and Bairii 2 for a fine old one ? Why should a new flower be used to commemorate its discoverer ? It is not polite to the discoverer, since his name is hardly ever recognized and invariably mis- pronounced. Wistaria is a word as melodious as "mala- ria," and seems to connote the lovely languor of its trailing mauve-plumed branches, but what if the American. anatomist, Wistar, after whom it was named had been Silas P. Quogg ? Herr Fuchs, the sixteenth-century German botanist who discovered that drooping-flowered shrub, the fuchsia, would not recognize his name as we pronounce it; and Dahl would shriek from the end of the eighteenth century if he could hear us talk about dahlias. Perhaps, too, the French navigator Bougainville should have changed his name before allowing (if he did) his dis- covery to bear it. The gardener who called a parsnip " Tender and True," and the child who dubbed a wild-flower " Johnny-go-to- bed-at-noon " or ground ivy " Till-creep-by-the-ground " were wiser, and indeed it is wiser to consider the lilies of the field than to name them Eschscholtzia or Tschichatchewia or " La Remarkable " for a new variety of daffodil that deserves a better start. It would be easier to sing " Every day I bring thee I3ladderwort " or " Strew on her stinking Hellebore but never a Kidney Vetch," and much less unpoetical.
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