100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (22 page)

Montbretias are to Britain what orange daylilies are to America: anyone who has any sort of garden can, and does, grow them, and even if there is nothing else in the garden they are sure to be there. Most fancy garden books leave them out altogether. After all, like common daylilies, they are orange, which is not considered a tasteful color—especially as Nature has provided so many purply pink flowers that are apt to juxtapose themselves right next to them and distress the poor gardeners who are trying so hard not to be vulgar.

Montbretias are called after Antoine François Ernest Conquebert de Montbret, one of the botanists who accompanied Napoleon on his expedition to conquer Egypt in 1798. It went well at first. Montbret and Alire Raffenau-Delile, the chief
botanist, studied the sacred lotus. Redouté painted. They made a botanical garden in Cairo. They even created a menagerie in a villa garden. The captain of artillery, Boussard, found and took French possession of the famous Rosetta stone. But, as unfortunately often happens, the cultural triumph needed military security as well. The British fleet under Lord Nelson destroyed the French fleet at Abukir, and one disaster followed another. Napoleon escaped and went back to France, leaving the botanists stranded. Finally the botanists who were left after the fighting were allowed to go back to France with a shipment of plants that Raffenau-Delile would not abandon. The British admiral admired his pluck and let him take them home, but the Rosetta stone was taken by the British and is still in the British Museum.

“Crocosmia” comes from the Greek
krokos
, or “crocus,” and
osme
, “smell,” because the dried flowers smell like saffron.

Montbretias are actually a hybrid of tritonias and crocosmias, both of which come from South Africa and which are very closely related. “Crocosmia” comes from the Greek
krokos
, or “saffron crocus,” and
osme
, “smell,” because the dried flowers smell like saffron. “Tritonia,” with stamens like a weathercock, may refer to Triton, controller of oceanic winds. The famous French plant breeder Victor Lemoine (see “Lilac”) first crossed them in 1880 to get the montbretia. This turned out to be hardier than either parent, and it flourished to excess in British gardens. It is also called
Crocosmia
X
crocosmiiflora
, which literally and idiotically means “crocosmia crossed
with flowers like crocosmia.” It reminds one of a European monarch's family tree, but far from being debilitated by convoluted genealogy it has taken over Britain and is increasingly found over here, sometimes sold as montbretia and sometimes as crocosmia. However montbretias won't survive in colder regions and have to be dug up and stored, so the daylilies are probably safe.

Crocosmias were found by William Burchell, who was an eccentric English plant explorer. In 1810 he gave up his post as a schoolteacher and traveled round South Africa at his own expense. He lived and traveled in an oxen-drawn covered wagon from which he flew the British flag. He took no notice of warnings about dangerous territories and would take no companion with him. He stopped occasionally and played his flute to any natives who would listen—and apparently was so bizarre that even in areas highly dangerous to foreigners he was left unharmed. He was passionate about flowers, noting in his diary that he had “feelings of regret that at every step my foot crushed some beautiful plant.” His diary also included notes on the best way to cook ostrich eggs. The gaudy montbretia, which spreads where it wants and has no respect for civilized taste, is a good flower for him to have introduced.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Ipomoea
.
FAMILY
:
Convolvulaceae
.

It is called “morning glory” because the flowers bloom early in the day and shut in the afternoon. If, as Reginald Arkell said, you don't look at them before breakfast, you probably don't see them at all. Its botanical name is from the Greek
ips
, “worm,” and
homoios
, “like,” because of its worm-like stem.

Blue morning glory, called ‘Heavenly Blue,' is native to tropical America and was introduced to Britain in about 1629. It was known as “Indian bindweed.” According to whether you are a mouse or an eagle, looking at it from below or above, morning glory always twines clockwise or counterclockwise around its support. However you see it, the direction does not vary, regardless of heat, cold, light, climate, or even hemisphere. It is genetically programmed. The honeysuckle and the bindweed twist in opposite directions. Shakespeare may be referring
to this when Titania tells Bottom that “I will wind thee in my arms, / So doth the Woodbine the sweet Honeysuckle / Gently entwist.”

In Charles Darwin's study,
The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants
, he describes experiments on the twining properties of plants, including the hop (which twists in the opposite direction to the morning glory). He rather touchingly includes in this scientific study that “my sons visited a hop-field for me” to confirm how the leaves were placed in relation to the spiral.

The bindweed or convolvulus, from the Latin
convolvere
, (to intertwine) is a close relative of the morning glory, as is the sweet potato. Moonflowers are similar to morning glories, but their large white flowers open at noon. If both are grown on the same trellis, the moonflowers take over when the morning glories fade. They were also called
Calonyction
, from the Greek
kalos
(beautiful) and
nyktos
(of the night).

In
Old Herbaceous
(1951), by Reginald Arkell, Mrs. Charteris sees morning glories on the French Riviera, “as though someone had torn great masses out of a morning sky. It was so blue, so blue that it positively hurt.” Her gardener obtains seeds from Kew and plants them in her greenhouse as a surprise:

Once again she felt that tug at the heart, a kind of suffocation that almost hurt. Once again she was drifting over the blue sea, under a blue sky, into a lovely land of blue nothingness . . .

“O, Pinnegar,” she said, “how kind of you—how very, very kind!”

Anyone who has managed to get up before breakfast, to sit under a trellis loaded with blue morning glories in bloom, will know exactly how she felt.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Kalmia
.
FAMILY
:
Ericaceae
.

Linnaeus named the mountain laurel
Kalmia
after his pupil, Peter Kalm. In 1748, the Swedish government sent Kalm to explore Northern America and look for new plants, especially dye plants and medicines that might be useful to Sweden and would grow in northern latitudes. Kalm had accompanied Linnaeus to Russia and was loved by him “as was his own child.”

Kalm's first description of the mountain laurel includes its possible uses. It was called the “spoon tree” by the Swedish settlers, he said, because “the Indians used to make their spoons and trowels of its wood.” Its hard wood was also used to make the axles of pulleys and weavers' shuttles. The English called it a “laurel” tree because its leaves “resemble those of the Laurocerasus.” Actually, even though it shares its thick, shiny leaves, mountain laurel is not even a member of the laurel, or
Lauraceae
, family, but is of the heath, or
Ericaceae
, family. The
Laurocerasus
, or
“cherry” or “English” laurel (known simply as “laurel” and widely grown there), is similarly named from the leaves and is a
Prunus
, or plum, a member of the
Rosaceae
, or rose, family.

Price drank the “laurel-water” and died in front of a delegation of fellows, headed by Sir Joseph Banks, that had come to talk to him about the fraud.

Kalm's description of the mountain laurel includes details that not everyone would notice. Its poisonous leaves, when thrown on the fire, he said, “crackle like salt.” If stags that have fed on it are shot and their offal is given to dogs, the dogs become very ill and “act as if drunk.” This poison is called andromedotoxin and is shared by other members of the heath family (see “Rhododendron”). Leaves of the English laurel contain prussic acid, and an infusion of them was used by the botanist and fellow of the Royal Society James Price to commit suicide when his claim to change quicksilver into gold was disproved in 1782. He drank the “laurel-water” and died in front of a delegation of fellows, headed by Sir Joseph Banks, that had come to talk to him about the fraud.

The flowers of the mountain laurel have no scent but, said Kalm, “so equally and justly does nature distribute her gifts; no part of the creation has them all, each has its own, and none is absolutely without a share of them.” He described the mountain laurels flowering in May, when “their beauty rivals that of most of the known trees in nature.” The flowers are pink, fading to white, and “they resemble ancient cups.” His journal is full of vivid little descriptions like this: how hummingbirds
make sounds like “little turning spinning wheels”; how glowworms make the ground seem “as if it were sown with stars.” His winsomeness shines through the journal. No wonder he was Linnaeus's favorite pupil. When Kalm returned to Sweden (accompanied by a young wife he met in America), Linnaeus rose from his sickbed to greet him. Kalm said that Linnaeus “because of the peculiar friendship and kindness with which he has always honored me has been pleased to call this tree . . . Kalmia latifolia.” For once, however, one is inclined to think that it was the plant that was honored as well as the person. Peter Kalm was as distinctive and beautiful a person as the shrub he honors.

Leaves of the English laurel contain prussic acid.