100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (32 page)

Tulips, first observed by Westerners in men's turbans, seem to be a somewhat male-dominated flower. They were used as units of speculation during the famous “tulipomania” in Holland, when the numbers financially represented by them were far greater than the actual bulbs grown. Various disaster stories were told of bulbs being eaten and great fortunes being lost, and of their being exchanged for vast sums of money, houses, and carriages. One account tells of a breeder who gave his blanket to a tulip bed and died of cold. All these adventures involved men who wanted to make money. The most prized and expensive tulips were the “broken” or striped flowers. One reason these were good speculations was that it was not known, until recently, how the “breaking” occurred—it could just appear, and
make the grower rich. Now we believe it is usually the effect of a virus, transferred by aphids. In 1637 the tulip market in Holland crashed, and finally the government forbade speculation in them. But by then the Dutch had become skilled in growing tulips, and the plants gradually became commercially important in Holland again.

In 1637 the tulip market in Holland crashed, and finally the government forbade speculation in them.

Turks, Pierre Bélon (see “Lilac”) said, wore tulips “snugly in the folds of their turbans [but thought] little of their smell. They are unscented flowers we do not associate with solace and romance, but once they must have grown wild on Turkish hillsides, unexpected treats of beauty that would surprise whomever came across them. The tender, isolated blossoms, piercing the scrubby slopes, must have been loveable indeed, before they were transformed by the rich, the powerful, and the greedy.

COMMON NAMES
: Violet, pansy, heart's-ease, Johnny-jump-up, love in idleness.
BOTANICAL NAME
:
Viola
.
FAMILY
:
Violaceae
.

According to John Gerard, the name “viola” came from Io, “the yoong Damsell” whom Zeus loved but changed into a heifer to protect her from his jealous wife, Hera. Zeus gave Io a field of violets to eat, “which being made for hir received the name from hir.” Hera saw the tender little white heifer with purple violets in her mouth, and such perfect beauty aroused her suspicions. She asked Zeus to give her the calf, and he was trapped into assenting. Hera then had Io in her spiteful power and harassed her mercilessly, finally sending a gadfly to torture her until, unable to sleep or eat, she plunged madly into the Ionian Sea, also named after her. Finally Hera was able to extricate a promise from Zeus not to look at Io again, and, in exchange, turned her back into a girl.

Violets, then and later, were linked with love. The fairy spirit Puck employed their juice in
A Midsummer Night's Dream
to make “man or woman madly dote / Upon the next live creature that it sees.” Most
Elizabethans called them “heart's-ease” and often associated them with an innocent, unspoilt love; they are appropriate for that because the violet flowers do not produce seeds, “as in all other plants that I know” (Parkinson). The seeds come from unopened, self-pollinating flowers later in the year, a quality called “cleistogamy.”

In 1810 Thompson saw the first “blotched” pansy, “a miniature impression of a cat's face steadfastly gazing at me,” as a stray flower in a bed.

When Napoleon was banished to Elba, he said he would “return with the violets.” When he did return, Josephine was dead, and he picked violets from her grave before being exiled again to St. Helena. They were found in a locket, along with a lock of her hair, when he died.

The tricolored violet, or Johnny-jump-up, was the ancestor of our pansy, which is a relatively new flower, bred by Mr. T. Thompson, gardener to Lord Gambier who was Admiral of the Baltic fleet. Thompson crossed varieties of
Viola tricolor
with the yellow
Viola lutea
and
Viola altaica
(from Turkey and the Crimea). In 1810 Thompson saw the first “blotched” pansy, “a miniature impression of a cat's face steadfastly gazing at me,” as a stray flower in a bed. Afterward, pansies became more and more “fancy” and were a popular florists' flower, grown and shown competitively. Purple violets were still used as boutonnieres in “pink” hunting jackets, and many were grown in conservatories for this purpose.

In the nineteenth century huge quantities of violets were also
grown for perfume, especially on the French Riviera. By 1893, however, two German scientists, Tiemann and Kruger, had discovered the chemical formula of violet scent (which is also present in orris root—see “Iris”) and patented it, calling their product “Ionone.”

The tricolored violet, or Johnny-jump-up, was the ancestor of our pansy.

A pansy, or
pensée
(from the French
penser
, “to think”), is what is in our thoughts, and we rely on purity of thought not to see the world crooked. Violets and pansies represent love, but love in its highest form. Violets, as John Gerard said, “do bring to a liberall and gentle manly minde, the remembrance of honestie, comlinesse, and al kindes of vertues.” “God send thee Heartsease,” wrote William Bullein in 1562, “for it is much better with poverty to have the same, than to be a kynge with a miserable mind. Pray God give thee but one handful of Heavenly Heartsease which passeth all the pleasant flowers that grow in this worlde.”

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Nymphaea
.
FAMILY
:
Nymphaeceae
.

Monet's famous water garden may have been inspired by M. Bory Latour-Marliac's new water lily hybrids, which were just becoming available in France. In 1898, Latour-Marliac told the Royal Horticultural Society how he had made these hybrids, crossing tropical water lilies with European varieties by a complicated process: the stamens have to be cut “at the very first moment of expansion” and the stigma brushed with the pollen of the crosses; after fertilization, the ovary sinks and ripening takes place underwater; the ripened seeds float up, looking like small pearls, and have to be collected at once or they soon sink again.

In warm climates, though, the most spectacular water lily is the gigantic
Victoria amazonica
. The explorer Aimé Bonpland is said to have tumbled into the water with astonishment when he first saw it. The Amazon water lily first flowered in England in 1849, in a tank
built especially for it by Joseph Paxton, gardener to the duke of Devonshire and designer of the Crystal Palace (which he modeled on the structure of the amazonica's ribbed leaves). Queen Victoria was presented with a flower and told the plant was to be named
Victoria regina
, after her. But when it was found that in 1832 the explorer Eduard Poeppig had already described it and named it
Euryale amazonica
, after one of the three Gorgons, the rules of nomenclature would not bend, and no one dared tell the queen its true name. Then botanists decided that the amazonica was not of the euryale family, so it could be renamed
Victoria amazonica
. This didn't help matters though, because any connection with Amazons was felt to be “totally unsuited . . . with the name of Her Most Gracious Majesty.” So the proper botanical name was simply kept a secret until after Queen Victoria had died, and the amazonica could be properly labeled at Kew.

The rules of nomenclature would not bend, and no one dared tell the queen.

The Egyptians revered the water lilies and lotus flowers, emerging from the water in the morning and sinking again when the sun set, like the passing of the day. Statues of the god Osiris, who was murdered by his brother Set, were bedecked with them. Set chopped up and scattered the dead body, but Osiris's wife/sister, Isis, collected all the pieces except, some accounts say, the phallus, which was eaten by a crab. Anyway, Isis was able to revive Osiris sufficiently so that (with or without the crab's dinner) he could conceive the solar god, Horus.

Water lilies are said to be edible and their root, according to Herodotus, tastes “fairly sweet.” The botanical name is from the Greek
nympha
(a water nymph). The ancient Greeks believed they had anti-aphrodisiac properties, and in the Middle Ages nuns and monks made “electuaries,” or pastes, of ground water lilies and honey to preserve chastity (but we do not have the instructions on how to apply these).