100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (11 page)

The botanical name comes from the Greek
hemera
(day) and
kallos
(beauty) because the flowers' beauty lasts but a day, which is also why they are called “day lilies.” They were named by Linnaeus, and the names “
fulva
” for the tawny lily and “
flava
” for the lemon lily are rare instances where he named specific plants by the color of their flowers.

Daylilies were used as food and medicine in China and Japan. They were dried or pickled in salt or cooked as vegetables. The flower buds of the
esculenta
variety were called
gum tsoy
(golden vegetable). The plants came to Europe early, possibly like rhubarb (also a medicinal plant), brought by traders along the silk routes from China. The Romans used them medicinally. The young leaves when eaten are said to be slightly intoxicating, and the Chinese had called the daylily
hsuan t'sao
, or the “plant of forgetfulness,” as it was supposed to help allay sorrow by causing forgetfulness. By the
time John Parkinson mentions them as “Asphodels with Lilly flowers . . . or Lillies with Asphodel rootes” which came from Germany, he says they “have no physicall use that I know, or have heard.”

Daylilies were a popular garden plant in North America in colonial times and soon escaped to grow along roadsides. They are now bred enthusiastically and there are hundreds of varieties available. The mammoth tetraploid daylilies, much prized by collectors, are created with the help of colchicine, a substance used for manipulating plant genes. Colchicine is an extract first isolated in the 1820s from the autumn crocus, or colchicum, by two French scientists. It prevents cell division by inhibiting elongation of microtubules (the threads that pull chromosomes apart into opposite corners of a cell), so the cell does not divide and will contain twice as many chromosomes as a normal cell. Mammoth plants and flowers with these new large cells develop. Recently, however, there has been a trend toward more modest and fragile blooms, as well as new colors.

Purists might disapprove, but daylilies are as much a part of America now as that other immigrant, apple pie.

Although they are not native American flowers, daylilies are so much a part of the wild landscape, so easy to grow, and so rewarding that they are often used in fashionable modern “wild” gardens. Purists might disapprove, but daylilies are as much a part of America now as that other immigrant, apple pie. Both, thank goodness, are here to stay.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Deutzia
.
FAMILY
:
Hydrangeaceae
.

Although deutzia was first described in 1712, it was not imported to Europe until the end of the nineteenth century. Its stems are hollow but they do not seem to have been used for flutes or pipes as other hollowstemmed plants were. In fact, the deutzia doesn't seem to have any poetical associations at all. It's reliable, handsome, and a pleasure to have around, like many respectable lawyers with whom we are acquainted and who make good neighbors.

It is, in fact, called after a lawyer, Johann van der Deutz of Amsterdam. He seems to have been reliable, and maybe he was handsome as well. He was a town superintendent, an alderman, and a councilor. Together with David ten Hove and Jan van de Poll he provided money for Carl Peter Thunberg to investigate the natural history of South Africa, Java, and Japan (see “Japonica”). In gratitude Thunberg dedicated his
Flora Japonica
to them and named the genera
Deutzia, Hovenia
, and
Pollia
after them.

Deutz corresponded with the long-lived botanist and explorer
Joseph Banks, who, like Deutz, was born in 1743 (see “Everlasting Flower”). The banksias, which bear his name, however, are far less commonly grown than deutzias, and Johann van der Deutz, who was carried off in his forties, has in a sense outlived Banks in gardens, for many gardeners know him by growing his namesake.

Kaempfer taught the island's Japanese interpreters astronomy and mathematics, in exchange for botanical specimens.

Deutzias are native to China but long cultivated in Japan, where their wood was used for bodkins and cabinets and their leaves as furniture polish. Englebert Kaempfer, who first saw and described the Japanese deutzia, was employed by the Dutch East India Company as a doctor at their Deshima Island base. He taught the island's Japanese interpreters astronomy and mathematics in exchange for botanical specimens (although he knew they risked their lives by giving them), and he started a botanical garden on Deshima (see “Japonica”). He accompanied the Dutch embassy to Tokyo to pay respects to the emperor and, although closely guarded, managed to collect plant specimens along the way.

Deutzias have curving branched stems, covered with double white blossoms in June. They need very cold winters or they will flower prematurely, so they do better in the northern United States than in Britain. They are extremely beautiful and really should have poetry written about them, like other no more lovely plants. But that happens, doesn't it? Sometimes the most unworthy subjects can inspire extraordinary art, while the lawyer next door, full of grace, gets only a respectful obituary.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Cornus
.
FAMILY
:
Cornaceae
.

Dogwood was supposedly used to build the Trojan Horse.
Cornus mas
, or cornelian cherry, was valued by the Greeks for its exceptionally hard wood, used to make javelins and spearheads. John Parkinson said, “The wood    is very hard, like unto horne, and thereof it obtained the name” (from
cornu
, Latin for “horn”).

How it became “dogwood” has to do with its edible and medicinal qualities. The berries of the
Cornus mas
are said to be edible and were supposedly fed to Odysseus's men when they were changed into pigs by Circe.
Cornus sanguinea
, or English dogwood, was called by John Parkinson “the Doggeberry tree, because the berries are not fit to be eaten, or to be given to a dogge.” The Victorian garden writer John Loudon said that it was named because a decoction of its leaves was used to wash fleas from dogs, and L. H. Bailey said in 1922 that it was used to bathe “mangy dogs.”

The American eastern dogwood,
Cornus florida
, is believed by some to be yet another “Crucifixion” tree (the tree on which Christ was crucified), although it is not native to the Middle East or Europe. Its
bracts, leaf-like organs that look like flower petals, are shaped like a cross and at the base of each is a brown stain, like a blood spot made by a nail. Dogwoods need cold winters to set flowers, but late frosts will ruin the spectacular bracts that surround the cluster of insignificant yellow flowers. The American Pacific dogwood, or
Cornus nuttallii
, has four to six bracts, and they are not dented at the top like those of the eastern dogwood. It is named after Thomas Nuttall (see “Larkspur”). Late-flowering Asian dogwoods such as the Kousa dogwood of Japan were introduced to America and Europe at the beginning of this century. They do not flower until their leaves are out, whereas the American dogwoods suddenly ornament bare branches with a mass of papery blooms.

The berries of the
Cornus mas
are edible and were supposedly fed to Odysseus's men when they were changed into pigs by Circe.

At different times, dogwood leaves, berries, and bark have been used to intoxicate fish, make gunpowder, soap, and dye (used to color the Turkish fez), make ink, and clean teeth (the twigs if chewed first will separate into a primitive toothbrush). Bark of the dogwood tree contains small amounts of quinine and “it is possible to ward off fevers by merely chewing the twigs” (Bailey). According to Peter Kalm, American settlers believed so strongly in the power of the dogwood that when cattle fell down for want of strength the settlers would “tie a branch of this tree on their neck, thinking it [would] help them.” He does not comment on whether this helped or not, but he does say that “it is a pleasure to travel through the woods, so much are they beautified by the blossom of this tree.” That, at least, is still true.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Oenothera
.
FAMILY
:
Onagraceae
.