100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (25 page)

Peonies can live for a hundred years or more if undisturbed.

Although their name comes from the healing powers of a physician, the word “paean” also means a hymn of praise—originally to Apollo. That perhaps is what we should associate with the name these days. With great puffs of exorbitant bloom they heal the spirit, if not the body, every spring; and once with us they are here forever. Could any flower more merit hymns of praise?

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Petunia
.
FAMILY
:
Solanaceae
.

The petunia did not come to Europe from South America until the nineteenth century. At the same time it was being imported to France, Napoleon was putting his relatives on thrones all over Europe. His brother was on the Spanish throne, so there was no objection from the Spanish government when a French commission was sent to evaluate resources in South America and, in 1823, sent
Petunia nyctaginiflora
, or the “night-scented petunia” (now
P. axillaris
), to Paris. In 1831 James Tweedie sent
Petunia violacea
, or the “purple-flowering petunia,” to the Glasgow botanical gardens. All our modern hybrids are descended from these two petunias.

Tweedie had been the head gardener at the Royal Botanic Garden
at Edinburgh. But other passions pulled him, for when he was over fifty, he left this comfort and security and immigrated to South America. He supported himself by keeping a small shop in Buenos Aires, from where he went on botanizing trips all over the continent. Once he walked two thousand miles and returned so shabby and dirty his friends did not even recognize him.

Once Tweedie walked two thousand miles and returned so shabby and dirty his friends did not even recognize him.

Unprotected Europeans out exploring were in danger of terrible, if justifiable, revenge if they ran into the persecuted native inhabitants. Tweedie survived these dangers and political intrigue and still managed to explore Patagonia when he was over seventy (once living on pinecones when he was near starvation). He died in Santa Catalina, aged eighty-six. In his life we see the pull of strange passions, and their rewards.

The young Charles Darwin, who was in South America at the same time, must have seen wild purple petunias growing everywhere, as Tweedie did, but there is no record of his sending them back to Joseph Hooker at Kew. By the time Darwin died though, in 1882, they were popular garden flowers. In 1834 John Loudon called petunias “the most splendid ornaments of the flower garden,” and a Victorian gardener is said to have made a petunia bed twenty-one feet in circumference by training petunias over metal hoops to
form a “table.”

The name “petunia” comes from
petun
, a Brazilian word for “tobacco,” and petunias can be crossed with their tobacco cousins. Luther Burbank advertised a “nicotunia” plant, which was a cross between petunias and large-flowering nicotianas (see “Tobacco Plant”).

John Loudon called petunias “the most splendid ornaments of the flower garden.”

Petunias continue to be hybridized to be stripy, fluffy, frilly, and generally as different as it is possible to make them. But the seeds of these hybrids will revert quickly to the small, aggressive purple wildflower that Tweedie and Darwin saw everywhere on their travels. We nurture the new hybrids, buy them afresh every year, and pluck off their sodden blossoms after every rain. If we wanted to, we could simply let the old purple petunias seed themselves every year, and they would pretty much fill our gardens, being strong enough to survive almost everything. But that, of course, probably won't happen—at least not while gardeners are still some of America's best shoppers and gardening is a multi-million–dollar business. So is tobacco, for that matter. Who would have thought that two South American weeds could have had such an influence on twentieth-century commerce and civilization? It only goes to show how little we know.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Phlox
.
FAMILY
:
Polemoniaceae
.

Native phloxes are to be found only in North America, but they belong to the widespread polemonium family, which includes the Jacob's ladder. The perennial phloxes from the East Coast came to Britain first. Their name was originally applied to another flower, described by Theophrastus but now unidentified, and is derived from the Greek
phlox
, meaning “flame.” In 1732 a phlox was mentioned by the botanist Johann Jacob Dillenius as one of the many plants in Dr. James Sherard's famous garden at Eltham. Sherard commissioned Dillenius to write a description of his garden, and he also introduced him to Linnaeus, who, Dillenius had said disdainfully, had “thrown all botany into confusion.” Linnaeus soon converted Dillenius so well that he was “in tears” when he left, and presented Linnaeus
with a copy of his
Hortus Elthamensis
and several North American plants (which might well have included the phlox).

Sherard's phlox was the
Phlox paniculata
, which gets its name from its formation of flowers in panicles or loosely bunched clusters. It is the ancestor of our perennial border phloxes. Another eastern American phlox is
Phlox subulata
, named by Linnaeus from the Latin
subula
(awl), referring to its pointed leaves. The name everybody associates with phlox, however, is that of Thomas Drummond, who sent the annual
Phlox drummondii
home to Britain.

Few gardeners can resist them, and Vita Sackville-West called them “monuments of solidity,” but also said they smelled like pigsties.

Drummond was curator of the Belfast Botanic Garden and went to America in 1831 as an independent plant collector, exploring much of the Northwest by himself. He sent his guide away and spent one winter completely alone in a brush hut. He survived by chewing on an old deerskin when, because of snow blindness, he could not see to shoot game. He deterred grizzlies by rattling his specimen box at them, but this was less effective when he got between a mother and her cub and was nearly killed. He later survived a shipboard epidemic of cholera, nearly starved while wintering alone on Galveston Island, lost the use of his hand for two months, and suffered such severe boils that he was unable to lie down. In spite of all this, he applied for a grant of land in Texas, intending to bring his family over
to America. In the meantime he went to Cuba, but in 1835, he died there from unrecorded causes. One of the last plants he sent home was the
Phlox drummondii
, which Sir Joseph Hooker of Kew named in his honor, to “serve as a frequent memento of its unfortunate discoverer.” Soon Victorian gardeners were developing and hybridizing it. The phlox's beauty was appreciated from the start. Only seven years after Drummond's phlox was sent to Britain it was seen by James Drummond, Thomas's brother, growing in Australia. Peter Kalm included phloxes among the flowers that caused America to “abound with the finest red imaginable.” They come in many colors but mostly variations of fiery red and magenta. Few gardeners can resist them, and Vita Sackville-West called them “monuments of solidity,” but also said they smelled like pigsties. Whether this is true or not (and most people are unacquainted with pigsties these days), there are few modern gardens without them.

COMMON NAMES
: Plume poppy, tree celandine.
BOTANICAL NAMES
:
Macleaya cordata, Bocconia cordata
.
FAMILY
:
Papaveraceae
.