100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (30 page)

The Greeks had a pleasant interest in garlands and used them on sad, happy, and triumphant occasions. Dionysus is supposed to have made the first wreath out of ivy, and the use of wreaths spread to sacrificial animals, to priests, and to the people. In spring Athenians garlanded children who had passed the perilous period of infancy and reached their third year. Brides and grooms wore wreaths of flowers and heroes were crowned with them. Different flowers and evergreens were used for different occasions, depending on convention and availability.

Spireas may have been used particularly for weddings as many are covered with small white flowers that seem appropriate to brides. Anyway it was called “bridewort” early on in Britain and is called “bridal wreath” today. It is often interplanted with inflamed, red azaleas. Those who think this is a good combination might benefit from being bound with flexible branches and left to contemplate their creation for a while.

COMMON NAMES
: Stock, stock-gillyflower
(old)
.
BOTANICAL NAME
:
Matthiola
.
FAMILY
:
Brassicaceae
.

The herbalist John Gerard, after describing “Stocke Gillo-floures” growing in “most Gardens throughout England,” concluded, tantalizingly, that “they are not used in Physick, except amongst certaine Empericks and Quacksalvers, about love and lust matters, which for modestie I omit.”

A “gillyflower” was from
girofle
(see “Carnation”), a flower with the scent of cloves. A “stock-gillyflower” was one with a woody stock or stalk, like the cabbage, from the Anglo-Saxon
stocc
(stick). Stocks came from the Mediterranean in the late Middle Ages or the early sixteenth century.

The botanical name,
Matthiola
, is after Pierandrea Mattioli, an Italian doctor who went to Prague as physician to the emperor Ferdinand I. He was most famous for translating Dioscorides's
De Materia Medica
into Italian and then Latin, along with his own commentaries. His work was so successful that it was reprinted repeatedly for the next two hundred years.

“They are not used in Physick, except amongst certaine Empericks and Quacksalvers, about love and lust matters, which for modestie I omit.”
—John Gerard

Stocks have been continually bred to produce new colors and better flowers. Weavers of Upper Saxony grew stocks competitively in their spare time and, in order to keep the shades distinct, only one color was permitted in each village. Philip Miller's
Gardener's Dictionary
(1731) describes “ten weeks” stocks, which “will produce Flowers in about ten Weeks after sowing.” The Brompton stocks were bred in the famous Brompton Park Nursery, near London, whose value, according to Stephen Switzer in 1715, was “as much as all the Nurseries of France put together.”

There were many theories on how to obtain the prized double stocks whose flowers look like small mauve and pink roses. As late as 1922, L. H. Bailey's
Standard Cyclopedia
said that the best way of obtaining doubles was to identify the seed pods (the doubles being shorter), after which the single ones could be removed “by hand . . . mostly by women and children.” A Monsieur E. Chaté in
Traité des giroflées
recommended taking off all the seed pods except a few, thereby increasing the sap flow to them and getting, he said, 80 percent of double flowers. The nicest suggestion, in an 1887
Dictionary of Gardening
, is the method of “degustation of the buds”: “the single plants can be recognised by their crispness and greater consistence, and can thus be weeded out. The disadvantage attending this method is that the plants . . . must all be grown up to the period when these buds are tolerably well advanced.” Another disadvantage might have been the taste of the buds because, although said to be edible, stocks were only eaten in times of famine. But who knows; maybe there were compensatory effects. We were never told what happened to those Empericks and Quacksalvers whom Gerard described.

Weavers of Upper Saxony grew stocks competitively in their spare time.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Helianthus
.
FAMILY
:
Asteraceae
.

Helios was the Greek god of the sun. His flower is named from the Greek
helios
, “sun,” and
anthos
, “flower,” because the flowers always turn toward the sun. Helios was drowned by his uncles, the Titans, and then raised to the sky, where he became the sun. He himself was loved by a mortal, Clytie, who died of love for him, because he was indifferent to her—not surprisingly, because she had caused her own sister, whom Helios loved instead, to be buried alive. Clytie was rooted in her despair and followed the course of Helios's journey every day, just as does the sunflower, “who countest the steps of the Sun” (William Blake).

Sunflowers actually come from America, not Greece, so Clytie was probably turned into something other than helianthus. When they were first introduced, Nicolas Monardes described the flowers as “greater than a greate Platter or Dishe” and “marveilous faire in Gardines.” John Gerard grew them, and winningly described the middle of the sunflowers “as it were of unshorn velvet, or some curious cloath
wrought with the needle.” The seeds, he said, were “set as though a cunning workman had of purpose placed them in very good order, much like the honycombs of Bees.” They were reputed to grow to enormous heights, one report claiming they attained forty feet in the Padua botanic garden.

Crispian de Passe was an engraver who, in 1614, published
Hortus Floridus
. Until the invention of colored lithographs, illustrations were engraved and then painted by hand. The English version of
Hortus Floridus
includes detailed instructions about painting the sunflower: the petals were to be “tempered with a little lack, made shyninge and shadovved with sad yellow,” the center was to be of a “berry yellow,” merging into the “saddest of all.” Early botanists and artists seemed almost to become a part of the flowers they described, making us feel their textures and follow the contours of their shaded colors.

The native American Jerusalem artichoke is also a sunflower, called “Jerusalem” as a corruption of the Italian
girasole
, “turning with the sun.” It is edible but contains inulin, which is indigestible and causes “a filthie loathsome stinking winde within the body” (John Goodyer). Sunflowers were grown more for their usefulness than their beauty. The oil from their seeds is used for food, soap, paints, and cosmetics, among other things. They are high in protein and minerals. In North America they are grown and sold widely as bird food, because our destruction of natural habitats means that birds, if we want them in our gardens, have become increasingly dependent on us for their food, which we serve to them on “rustic” bird tables. This seems an inside-out procedure—although not from the point of view of a capitalist economy. The birds don't care either way, as long as they can find food and shelter—and they might be lucky and find a rustic birdhouse too.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Lathyrus odoratus
.
FAMILY
:
Fabaceae
.

Sweet peas are, not surprisingly, members of the pea family; their botanical name is Greek for “pea.” Sweet peas are
Lathyrus odoratus
—or “fragrant peas.” But although they look alike, there is an important difference. Most peas are edible, including the wild, or “sea” peas, which in 1555, a year of famine, “miraculously” appeared on beaches of the Suffolk coast and saved the lives of the starving poor who gathered them by the sackful. But sweet peas are poisonous, and there is even a medical term, lathyrism, to describe sweet pea poisoning, which has serious consequences including convulsions, paralysis in the legs, and unconsciousness.

Sweet peas, so called for their sweet scent, are latecomers to our gardens. They were discovered by a Franciscan monk in Sicily, Father Franciscus Cupani, who wrote a description of them in
Hortus Catholicus
, which was published in 1697. In 1699 he sent seeds to Dr. Robert Uvedale, who was headmaster of Endfield Grammar School. Dr. Uvedale was a “very methodical and curious” botanist who was especially
interested in hothouse plants or “rare exotics.” He was one of the earliest hothouse owners in Britain and had six or seven of them. He was also the happy owner of a myrtle tree “cut in the shape of a chaire.” He first raised sweet peas in his hothouses but then found them to be hardy outside.

The original blossoms, though fragrant, were small and purple. They were painted by Redouté, and Thomas Jefferson planted sweet peas in an oval bed accompanied by an exotic unknown called
Ximensia encelioides
, sent him by André Thouin in Paris. Still, the flowers did not become popular until the mid-nineteenth century, when they were “improved.” From the 5 varieties originally available, there were 264 varieties shown in the famous Crystal Palace. The first frilled variety was bred by Silas Cole, gardener to the earl of Spencer, and it was tactfully named ‘Countess Spencer.'