100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (27 page)

The primrose is the
prima rosa
, the “first rose” of the year. It was also named
primaverola
, from
fior di primavera
, the “first spring flower,” or
primarole
, as in Chaucer's miller's wife who was a “primerole” and “blisful on to see.”

The short-lived primrose years, the primose paths of dalliance—these were the seasons when our grandmothers warned us not to pick up young men on buses and we jumped on buses anyway and didn't care. The wild European primrose,
Primula vulgaris
, stood not only for spring but for first love, often half-hidden and growing suddenly in unexpected places, sometimes “no sooner blown than blasted.” John Ruskin compares them to newborn yellow ducklings peeping out of their rosette of leaves.

Garden primulas, although of the same family, are different. They are sophisticates in the flower world, the darlings of breeders, often named for those who did not wish to be forgotten or half-hidden. Many came from China, where they had been hybridized for so long that the original wild ones were extinct. Others were collected in the Alps.

On November 21, 1861, Charles Darwin described the dimorphic condition of the primula to the Linnaean Society, commenting that plants with flowers showing the globular stigma at the mouth of the corolla are called “pin-eyed,” and those displaying the stamens are called “thumb-eyed.” This difference in structure favors cross-fertilization, which not only made breeding primulas easier, it also altered the appearance of the flower and so was important to breeders of show primulas, or auriculas (so called from the Latin
auricula
, “an ear,” because the leaves are shaped like ears). Village children, Darwin said, noticed this difference in the flowers, as they could best make necklaces by threading and slipping the longer corollas of the long-styled flowers into one another.

Willmott had a Napoleon fixation and built a hut in her garden which was an exact replica of one where Napoleon slept when crossing the Alps.

By the nineteenth century, florists' societies of specialized breeders, mostly working-class men, met all over England. There would be a dinner, with plenty to drink and speeches, before the flowers, displayed on elaborately and beautifully built wooden stages, were judged. The winners would be named for the breeders, conferring horticultural fame on them, or would be given names like ‘Glory of England,' ‘Privateer,' and ‘Empress of Russia.' The rules about the flowers' appearance were rigid—they had to have a velvety texture and distinct hues, no shading, no pin-eyes, sometimes a gray
or white edge, sometimes a “mealy” texture from a waxy powder on the petals. They were far removed from the modest spring primroses of hedgerows.

Miss Ellen Willmott, the famous rich spinster gardener who lived at the beginning of this century and had gardens in France, Italy, and England, was also an enthusiastic breeder of primula hybrids. A primula was one of the many flowers named
willmottiae
after her. She herself was arrogant, extravagant, and, even by those who admired her, not really liked. She had a Napoleon fixation and built a hut in one of her gardens that was an exact replica of one where Napoleon slept when crossing the Alps. It was all a far cry from the little wild English primrose and what it stands for—the difference between carefree youth and the power of money. In the end, Miss Willmott lost all her money, and her great gardens were deserted. But perhaps wild primroses grew in her abandoned woods again and the tenderness of reckless first love triumphed after all.

The wild European primrose stood not only for spring but for first love.

COMMON NAMES
: Red-hot poker, torch lily.
BOTANICAL NAMES
:
Kniphofia, Tritoma
.
FAMILY
:
Liliaceae
.

Gardening is many things, amongst which is fashion, and gardeners are quick to dismiss as vulgarity what they do not embrace. Maybe because the flower stalks of kniphofia do look extraordinarily like actual red-hot pokers, they challenge our concept of a garden seeming to have been created by Nature rather than by ourselves—a concept that, ever since the time of Gertrude Jekyll, has tended to be the aim of fashionable gardeners.

The red-hot pokers came late to our gardens. The first were introduced from the Cape of Good Hope in about 1707, but they were thought to be greenhouse plants until the nineteenth century, when they were grown out of doors. According to Alice Coats they were particularly popular in the west of Scotland, where they were called “Baillie Jarvie's Poker.” Baillie Jarvie, in Sir Walter Scott's
Rob Roy
, “seized on the red hot coulter of a plough . . . and brandished it with such effect that . . . he set the Highlander's plaid on fire.”

Linnaeus first described the red-hot poker as
Aloe uvaria
because the flowers look like a little bunch of grapes (Latin,
uva
). But in 1794 the botanist Moench created the genus
Kniphofia
, in honor of Johann Hieronymus Kniphof, whose eighteenth-century
Herbarium vivum
was illustrated with “nature prints” made from actual inked plants. Meanwhile, another botanist, Ker Gawler, called them
Tritoma
. This name comes from the Greek
tri-
(three) and
tome
(a cut) because of the three sharp edges on the ends of the leaves. They are still sometimes called “tritomas,” even though the name “kniphofia” was settled on by botanists in 1843.

The
Kniphofia northiae
was introduced and named for Marianne North, a Victorian lady who traveled around the world by herself to observe and paint “tropical vegetation in all its natural abundant luxuriance.” In her reminiscences she described cold, mud, hunger, and giant leeches sticking to her long skirts. She stayed for a while alone in a huge deserted mansion and delightfully described hanging as decoration a bunch of bananas where the chandelier had once been.

Kniphofias are beginning to be seen more often in American gardens. It sometimes happens with fashion that we look later with new eyes at what once we saw with scorn. The kniphofias, with their cumbersome name and amusingly pedestrian disguise, can suddenly be seen for what they are: rows of exquisite blossoms tiered to a point, shading gradually from fiery red to creamy white. They're not vulgar, they're beautiful, and now incredibly fashionable!

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Rhododendron
.
FAMILY
:
Ericaceae
.

The name “rhododendron” was originally applied to oleanders (and it still includes azaleas—see “Azalea”), but in 1563 Andrea Cesalpino mentioned the
Rhododendron ponticum
in
De Plantis
. It was introduced to Britain in the 1670s. The name “rhododendron” comes from the Greek
rhodon
(rose) and
dendron
(tree). The name
“ponticum”
comes from the territory of King Pontus, who was king of the Black sea and the son of Gaea, goddess of the earth. The Black Sea was where, aged fifty, the poet Ovid was mysteriously banished and consoled himself until his death by writing letters and poetry. Xenophon described Greek troops retreating from Asia Minor in 400
B.C
. and being poisoned by honey from the
Rhododendron ponticum
after they raided some local beehives. The Romans would not
accept the usual tribute of honey from Pontus but took a double amount of beeswax from there instead. The nectar of members of the Ericaceae family, which includes the rhododendron and our mountain laurel, contains poisonous andromedotoxin, and beekeepers have to be careful where they put their hives in spring. Every year a few people get sick from toxic honey.

After the
Rhododendron ponticum
, the American rhododendrons were the next to come to Britain. The Quaker botanist John Bartram sent the wild
Rhododendron maximum
to Peter Collinson, who, on July 20, 1756, wrote that “this year the Great Chaemerhododendron flowered for the first time it is a Charming plant.”

Other American rhododendrons and azaleas came to Europe, and “American gardens” containing them and American trees became fashionable. In the mid-nineteenth century Joseph Hooker transformed the landscape of Britain with rhododendrons sent from the Himalayas. His adventures included being captured for several weeks by hostile Tibetans and suffering such discomforts as leeches which, he said, “get into the hair and all over the body.” Once he described having to sit on a plant until it thawed sufficiently for him to dig it out.

The Romans would not accept the usual tribute of honey from Ponticum but took a double amount of beeswax from there instead.

Rhododendrons continued to be brought from the Himalayas to Britain and one great collector, Lionel Rothschild, devoted his life and
fortune to them, creating a magical park of them at Exbury (from which many get their name). Because, given an acid soil, rhododendrons are rewarding to grow, they are sometimes overdone. Purists dislike seeing them in gardens like Stourhead, which predate their introduction and do not fit the original design. Victorian-style shrubberies, impenetrable with rhododendrons, are gloomy and overwhelming and make one wonder if there is a murdered housemaid buried somewhere amongst them. Even so, they deserve our respect, if not our homage. When the
Rhododendron calophytum
first flowered at Wakehurst Place (now a branch of Kew), Lord Rothschild, Lord Aberconway, and Gerald Loder were seen in a procession, walking round and round the bush, raising their hats to it. Are we, perhaps, a little blasé?