100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (17 page)

COMMON NAMES
: Japonica, flowering quince,
cydonia.
JAPANESE NAME
:
Boke
.
BOTANICAL NAMES
:
Chaenomeles speciosa, Chaenomeles japonica
.
FAMILY
:
Rosaceae
.

Japonica blossoms burst out of bare branches in earliest spring before there are green leaves anywhere. They are sometimes white, but more usually red or brilliant coral, and they seem more like an implausible statement against the darkness of winter than real flowers. Henry Reed, the World War II–era poet, uses their “silent eloquent gestures” in his poem “The Naming of Parts” as a statement against the darkness of war:

Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the
neighbouring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts

The naming of the japonica itself is complicated. The first japonica was named by the Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg, a pupil of Linnaeus. Thunberg learned enough Dutch to be allowed on Deshima Island as chief surgeon for the Dutch East India Company. Deshima was an artificial island on thirty-two acres in Nagasaki Harbor. No one who was not Dutch, or pretending to be Dutch, was allowed there, except about two hundred Japanese servants, interpreters, and prostitutes. The Dutch were not allowed to leave the island for the mainland, but Thunberg ingeniously bypassed this restriction by sifting through the hay brought for the livestock to Deshima and gathering enough new botanical material to enable him to write
Flora Japonica
in 1784. In it he described and named the thorny
Pyrus japonica
, or “Japanese pear.”

Japonicas are sometimes white, but more usually red or brilliant coral and they seem more like an implausible statement against the darkness of winter than real flowers.

After this, the japonica played for a while a kind of nomenclatural musical chairs. A thorny plant from China was first named
Pyrus japonica
and then renamed
Pyrus speciosa
, but was still popularly called “japonica.” Meanwhile, the original japonica was renamed
Pyrus maulei
, or Maule's pear (Maule was a nurseryman in Bristol known for cultivating it). Neither plant was found to be a member of the pear family, and for a while they were classed as quinces and called “Japanese quinces” or “cydonias,” named
for Kydon, in Crete, where the quinces were supposed to have originated. The poet Keats, in an 1819 letter to his sister, used the name “japonica” referring to a camellia that he described shading a globe of goldfish in a window looking out over the Lake of Geneva.

Finally japonicas came to rest botanically by being classed as
Chaenomeles
, from the Greek
chainein
(to gape) and
melon
(apple), referring to a perception that the fruit was split. Thunberg's original plant and its descendants became
Chaenomeles japonica
, and the plant from China and its descendants became
Chaenomeles speciosa
. Both are more often called “japonicas” or “flowering quince.” Both produce brilliant blossoms in early spring, followed by a hard pear or quince-like fruit that can be made into jelly.

COMMON NAMES
: Jasmine, jessamine.
BOTANICAL
NAME
:
Jasminum
.
FAMILY
:
Oleaceae
.

The name comes from the ancient Persian name for the plant,
yasmin
. The
Jasminum officinale
has been cultivated so long that it is uncertain how it came to Europe. The Persians valued it highly and knew how to extract its scent by steeping the blossoms in sesame oil. In England jasmine was used to cover arbors. Some people found the scent overwhelming, including Gilbert White, who wrote in his journal in 1783, “The jasmine, now covered with bloom, is very beautiful. The jasmine is so sweet that I am obliged to quit my chamber.”

The Chinese winter jasmine, or
Jasminum nudiflorum
, is so called because the yellow flowers are borne on the naked winter branches. It was introduced in 1844 by Robert Fortune (see “Bleeding Heart”) who compared the blossoms to “little primroses.” The Chinese used them to make aromatic
Heung Pin
(Fragrant Leaves), which is green tea combined with dried jasmine blossoms.

The American or Carolina jasmine,
Gelsemium sempervirens
(always green), is of the Loganiaceae family, and isn't really a jasmine.
Gelsemium
comes from
gelsomino
, Italian for “jasmine.” It is evergreen with bold yellow flowers that are poisonous and have no fragrance. Thomas Jefferson grew it and planned to cover large tracts of unused garden with “Jessamine, honeysuckle, sweetbriar, and even hardy flowers which may not require attention.” This was to be “an asylum” for wild animals except, he says, “those of prey.” He doesn't say how to keep out the animals of prey, or the poison ivy, but it is an alluring concept of cohabitation as lovely as democracy—and we are still working on both ideals.

The
polyanthum
jasmine, so called because it has many flowers (Greek
poly
, “many,” and
anthos
, “flower”) was sent from China by George Forrest, who had explored there for twenty-eight years. In 1905 he had survived a massacre when eighty missionaries and other Europeans were waylaid by nationalist Tibetans; all but fourteen were killed or captured. Forrest saved himself by rolling down the steep mountainside. He was hunted for eight days, discarding his boots to elude their dogs and living on a handful of dried peas that were in his pocket. He finally walked to safety over remote mountain paths, in spite of a sharp bamboo stake penetrating his foot.

The only drawback of jasmine is its floppy habit of growth, which John Gerard describes as a “need to be supported or propped up, and yet . . . [it] claspeth not or windeth his stalkes about such things as stand neere unto it, but onely leaneth and lieth upon those things.” But he adds that jasmine is “good to be anointed after baths, in those bodies that have need to be suppled and warmed”—which surely includes the bodies of all gardeners.

COMMON NAMES
: Kerria, bachelor's button.
JAPANESE NAME
:
Yama buki
(Kaempfer).
BOTANICAL NAME
:
Kerria japonica
.
FAMILY
:
Rosaceae
.

Many of our most cheerful flowers are called “bachelor's buttons.” Is this because they manifest a prenuptial
joie de vivre
, or because they are considered symbols of availability? Tudor and Stuart men wore clothes as elaborately embroidered with flowers as those of women. Even at the Battle of Edgehill, in 1642, Charles I wore a purple military sash embroidered with carnations, roses, and tulips. Men wore flowered clothes on and off until the nineteenth century, when embroidered waistcoats were still worn, one of the most famous being the waistcoat in “The Tailor of Gloucester,” written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, which was “embroidered with pansies and roses” and was only finished in time for the lord mayor's wedding by the nocturnal assistance of a mouse.

The introduction of real flowers worn on the lapel is sometimes
attributed to Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband. The prince, in a passionately unfrugal gesture at the termination of his bachelorhood, was said to have taken a rose out of her wedding bouquet, split open his lapel, and stuck it in. Whether or not this is true, boutonnieres were commonly worn by Victorians, bachelors or not, the most famous being Oscar Wilde's chrysanthemum.

Kerria was introduced by William Kerr in 1805. Kerr was a young gardener sent out from Kew to China by Sir Joseph Banks, who especially instructed him to search for new fruit trees. Kerr was to do this on a meager salary of one hundred pounds a year. He sent as many plants as he could home on merchant ships, but there was a high rate of attrition in this era before the invention of the Wardian case (see “Bleeding Heart”).

Kerr had other problems too. After his arrival in Canton, it was reported that he was “unable to prosecute his work, in consequence of some evil habits contracted, as unfortunate as they were new to him.” He had probably become an opium addict. He is supposed to have introduced, among other things, the tiger lily and the nandina bamboo. In 1810, Banks recommended him as superintendent of the new botanical garden in Ceylon. He worked there from 1812 until his death in 1813. No one knows how he died; officially it was of “some illness incidental to the climate.”

His legacy, the kerria, became an immensely popular plant, grown in cottage gardens all over Britain. Its flowers are clear yellow, double or single. They flourish with no care and, like many shrubs from China, do well in America. There's nothing like a carefree shrub, or a carefree bachelor for that matter, to cheer one up.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Alchemilla
.
FAMILY
:
Rosaceae
.

The botanical name,
Alchemilla
, is from the Arabic
al kimiya
, meaning “alchemy,” possibly referring to the land of Khemia (Egypt) where such arts originated. Extracting the juices of plants was said to be the first step in changing base metal into gold with the hope of obtaining untold riches, curing all diseases, and infinitely prolonging life.