100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (16 page)

Apollo's ardor was also responsible for Daphne turning into a laurel
bush and Cyparissus changing into a cypress tree. So he left a tree, a bush, and a flower—almost a complete small garden of metamorphosed passion. With a tub or two of impatiens, it would be enough for a townhouse garden—or indeed any garden if one considers the implications.

The hyacinth was brought early to Europe from Turkey and was grown in Europe's first botanical garden, in Padua. It was observed and probably collected by the German physician Leonhardt Rauwolf when he went to Turkey in 1573. Rauwolf wrote an account of his travels that was translated into English by the botanist John Ray. He is the first Westerner to describe coffee, which, he noted, made him feel “curiously animated.”

The hyacinth quickly became a popular garden plant. Originally there were only four colors, but by 1725 there were two thousand named cultivars, including double hyacinths, which are rare in gardens today. Hyacinths seem to create passionate opinions, and some dislike their formal bearing and heavy scent. They can be forced to bloom in early winter, which some find cheering; others find a contrived spring of this kind unnerving and prefer to wait for the real event.

Catherine Morland, in Jane Austen's
Northanger Abbey
, informs Mr. Henry Tilney that she has “just learnt to love a hyacinth,” although she is “naturally indifferent about flowers.” He says, “But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.” Of course they are not really talking about hyacinths at all. They are in the middle of a story about love, misunderstanding, and jealousy, but this time, it has a happy ending.

COMMON NAMES
: Garden hydrangea, hortensia.
BOTANICAL NAME
:
Hydrangea macrophylla
.
FAMILY
:
Saxifragaceae
until recently, now
Hydrangeaceae
.

The garden hydrangea has a wonderful quality of changing from pink to blue, according to the soil in which it is grown. We have wanted the power to change the colors of flowers ever since Pliny suggested soaking seeds or bulbs in wine to achieve this (see “Lily”). Garden hydrangeas will turn from pink to blue if the soil is acid and if aluminum is available to them, but it still seems rather magical, and when they were first introduced it was inexplicable. It was initially thought that they might take their color from their surroundings, especially as cuttings from a plant of one color might well turn out the other color when propagated. By the beginning of the nineteenth century it was suspected that they could be made blue by adding iron or alum to the soil, but in 1832 John Loudon said this was “not yet ascertained,” and a mixture of sandy loam and fresh sheep's dung “produces the same effect.”

The garden hydrangea puzzled botanists in another way. It was introduced in about 1788, and its large, showy flower head, consisting mostly of sterile flowers with only a few fertile ones, made it hard to classify what were petals, what were sepals, and what were flowers, according to the Linnaean sexual system.

The American hydrangeas came to Britain in the eighteenth century. The name “hydrangea,” given by Linnaeus, came from the Greek
hydro-
(water) and
angeion
(vessel), and it is generally thought to refer to the cup-shaped fruits rather than to the fact that hydrangeas need a lot of water (a large one will take ten to twelve gallons a day in hot weather.

The garden hydrangea was named Hortensia by Philibert Commerson, who accompanied Bougainville on his voyage around the world in 1766 (see “Bougainvillea”). It is usually supposed that the name “hortensia” was after Mlle. Hortense, daughter of the prince of Nassau; the latter had joined Bougainville's expedition in order to escape his creditors. But it is worth noting that the woman named Jeanne Baret, who had sailed on the voyage disguised as a boy (called Jean), changed her name to Hortense when she settled in France. We will never really know why. Anyway, in 1830 the name was changed to
Hydrangea macrophylla
(large leaved), by which it is now known.

The big pink or blue garden hydrangea is as common in America as blue-haired old ladies, and has the same feel of dyed unreality. It always had slightly refined associations from the moment it arrived in England at the London docks and a special delegation, including the great Sir Joseph Banks himself, went down to meet it personally and hosted a breakfast reception in its honor! It clearly demands, and receives, more attention than other plants.

COMMON NAMES
: Impatiens, busy Lizzie,
touch-me-not.
BOTANICAL NAME
:
Impatiens
.
FAMILY
:
Balsaminaceae
.

Impatiens, from the Latin
impatiens
(impatient) is named from the way the seeds are jettisoned out of their pods. Erasmus Darwin (see “Foxglove”), in an appalling poem explaining the Linnaean system, said the impatiens “with rage and hate the astonished groves alarms / And hurls her infants from her frantic arms.” John Parkinson said impatiens seeds “will soone skippe out of the heads, if they be but a little hardly pressed betweene the fingers.” The plants propogate profusely because of their method of shooting out their seeds, and we're probably lucky that our garden impatiens are not frost hardy; otherwise we might scorn them as much as dandelions. Impatiens are in fact perennial, but the first frost turns them into limp black rags.

Jewel-weed, which is also an impatiens, grows wild, filling ditches and woods. Nobody values it much, even though the juice
from the leaves soothes poison ivy rash, the boiled stems are edible, and the whole plant yields a good yellow dye. Another impatiens, policeman's helmet or
Impatiens glandulifera
, was carefully imported to England from the Calcutta Botanic Gardens in 1839, and has taken over English streams.

The impatiens that we drape ubiquitously, like joyful flags, over gardens and in planters at the first sign of spring is
Impatiens sultanii
, called “busy Lizzie” in England. John Kirk sent it to Europe from Zanzibar in 1865, and Joseph Hooker named it in honor “of that distinguished potentate, the Sultan of Zanzibar to whose enlightened philanthropic rule eastern Africa owes so much.” It was later given the name
Impatiens walleriana
in honor of the Rev. Horace Waller, who was a missionary in central Africa.

John Kirk was British consul in Zanzibar. He had previously gone to Africa with the famous Dr. Livingstone. The hardships of that expedition were so terrible that Kirk came to the conclusion that “Dr. Livingstone is out of his mind.” He lost eight volumes of botanical notes and one hundred drawings when their canoe overturned in rapids. Once they climbed over rocks so hot they were badly burned. Midges plagued them so thickly that the local people were able to press the insects into cakes, which, said Kirk valiantly, “tasted not unlike caviar.”

The impatiens family is vast and botanically almost incomprehensible. Joseph Hooker, the famous botanist and director of Kew, was trying to sort it out when he died. He called it “deceitful above all plants” and “worse than orchids.”

COMMON NAMES
: Iris, flag, gladdon
(ancient)
.
FAMILY
:
Iridaceae
.

Iris was the messenger of the gods and the rainbow linking earth with other worlds. She escorted souls along her iridescent bridge to another life, and she herself used it to join the thoughts of gods and men. She was that longed-for connection to those whom we love intensely, but who are suffering without our awareness, and it was she who was sent to tell Alcyone, still praying for the safety of her husband Ceyx, that he had already drowned.

The “iris” is also what we call a part of the eye—into which we look in recognition. Eye color is one of the few human features that cannot be changed except by covering it. Maybe it too is a kind of bridge between the known and the unknown. There were irises carved on the temple at Karnak, and they were used to adorn gardens, graves, and the brows of Egyptian gods. White irises, the color of mourning, were planted on Muslim graves.

The flag iris is supposed to have saved the life of the sixth-century
Frankish king Clovis, who then succeeded in conquering much of France under the Christian banner. God, or common sense, showed Clovis, trapped by the Goths at a bend in the Rhine, flag irises growing where it would be shallow enough to cross the river and so escape. In gratitude he adopted the iris flower as his emblem, and it became the symbol for the kings of France. Irises were on Louis VII's banner during the Second French Crusade (1147) and were called
fleur de Louis
, which in turn became fleur-de-lis.

Irises were called fleur de Louis, which in turn became fleur-de-lis.

With its trinity of petals, the iris was an important religious flower, especially dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The leaves are sword-shaped, and some older dictionaries call the iris (and the gladiolus) “xiphium,” from the Greek
xiphos
(sword). The blade-like edges represented on one side the sharpness of Mary's pain at the sufferings of her son and, on the other, her sharp defense against the Devil.

Irises have been grown in Japan, China, Siberia, and almost all the temperate world. Tropical climates are the only places where they cannot be found. Although there are some native American irises, others were brought early to America from Europe. On May 26, 1811, Thomas Jefferson, writing to his granddaughter Anne about transition, said: “The flowers come forth like the belles of the day, have their short reign of beauty and splendor, and retire, like them, to the more interesting office of reproducing their like. . . . The Irises are giving place to the Belladonnas . . . as your mamma has done to you, my dear Anne . . . and as I shall soon and cheerfully do to you all in wishing you a long, long good-night.”