100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (34 page)

Yarrow was brought to America with the earliest colonists and soon used by Native Americans as well as settlers. It spread fast and became a farmers' weed that cattle would not eat because of its bitter taste. The leaves contain tannin and make an astringent solution. It was also used for brewing beer. Surely it was effective and powerful, but it might have been overrated. In 1682 Abraham How, who kept a shop at Ipswich and wrote a book on healing, recommended combining yarrow with brandy and gunpowder for pain in the back as part of his method “to force Nature out of its own ordinary way.” Such a medicine must have been potent—but perhaps not because of the yarrow.

COMMON NAMES
: Yucca, Adam's needle, bear's grass.
BOTANICAL NAME
:
Yucca
.
FAMILY
:
Agavaceae
.

We are good at taking miracles for granted, but the pollination of the yucca has to astound us.

The yucca can only be fertilized by the female yucca moth,
Pronuba yuccasella
, who uses the plant exclusively to rear her young. Other insects feed on the nectar and pollen, but the yucca moth has another plan. When evening comes and the flowers are out, she collects pollen from the anthers and makes a sticky ball of it. After she has collected a ball a little larger than her head she wedges it under her chin and climbs the pistil of a different flower. Into this pistil she injects her eggs and then deposits her pollen ball on top of the stigma, rubbing and fixing it firmly. Thus, and only in this way, is the flower pollinated. In a few days the flowers wither and the moth larvae hatch. They eat some of the seeds in the pod and then drop to the ground, spin a cocoon, and later turn into adult moths. The remainder of the seeds make new plants.

With his customary meticulous observation, John Parkinson noticed
that the yucca flowers dropped off after blooming “without bearing any seede in our Country, as farre as ever could be observed.” He goes on to say that the yucca was first brought to England from the West Indies “by a servant of Master Thomas Edwards, an Apothecary of Exeter” and given to John Gerard. Gerard had named the plant “yucca,” “supposing it to bee the true
Yuca
 . . . wherewith the Indians make bread, called
Cassava
.” Parkinson knew that it was not the cassava, or
Manihot esculenta
, but concluded that “not knowing by what better name to call it, let it hold still his first imposition, untill a fitter may be given it.”

In fact it retained the name, although it was also known as “silk grass,” because of the fibers that can be taken from the leaves, and “Adam's needle,” because of its spiny leaves. Parkinson said he found the threads “so strong and hard” that they could not have been used for cloth. But William Byrd of Virginia wrote in 1728 that the Indians made aprons of it, which they “wear about their middles, for decency's sake.” They also made ropes and baskets from the fibers. The fruits, called “datile,” are said to be edible, and the roots contain saponin, which makes a soap-like lather.

The yucca became a popular garden plant that could be propagated by root cuttings, if not by seeds. It was a prized plant in the garden of Count Johann of Nassau at the Castle of Idstein. Count Johann employed Johann Walter of Strasbourg to make a
florilegium
, or flower list, and in it his yucca is illustrated with the proud note that on June 23, 1653, it bore 253 flowers. This garden fell into disrepair after the count died, and Idstein was destroyed by French troops in May 1795. Probably all that remains of the yucca is in the
florilegium
—one instance where the ancient and mysterious partnership that evolved between the yucca and the pronuba came to nothing.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Zinnia
.
FAMILY
:
Asteraceae
.

The zinnia, like the cosmos (from the Greek
kosmos
, “orderly arrangement”), was sent from Mexico by Professor Casimir Gomez de Ortego to his friend the marchioness of Bute in Madrid.

The name “zinnia” comes from Johann Gottfried Zinn, who was a medical professor at Göttingen University. He wrote a description of the flora around Göttingen and, in 1753, he also published a book on the anatomy of the eye. He was the first to describe the iris of the eye in detail, a description that is accurate even now. He claimed that the eyeball of a man is larger than that of a woman, regardless of their height. He is said to have written his book under severe but unspecified “domestic difficulties.” Could his wife have been jealous of his passion for eyeballs? He died in 1759, aged only thirty-two, from a “most consumptive disease,” and is remembered by a part of the eye called “Zinn's zonule,” as well as our garden flower.

The zinnia in its native Mexico was called
mal de ojos
by the
Spaniards, because the flowers were small and considered ugly to the eye. In fact, although they were named for Zinn by Linnaeus, nobody took much notice of them for two hundred years.

Zinn might have been pleased to see how nicely zinnias strike the eye these days. They were not really improved until this century, when one flower in a whole field of experimental zinnias, grown by Burpee, was used as the basis for breeding most of the hybrids we know. It was in the sixty-sixth row and known in the trade as “Old 66.”

The zinnia in its native Mexico was called
mal de ojos
by the Spaniards, because the flowers were small and considered ugly to the eye.

The marchioness of Bute who had sent the seeds to London was wife of the British ambassador to Madrid and daughter-in-law to John Stuart Bute (for whom the stewartia tree is named). Bute was the director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. When Frederick, Prince of Wales, died “by standing in the wet to see some trees planted” and getting pneumonia, his widow Augusta continued to supervise the Kew gardens closely. In 1785 Bute had published a nine-volume
Botanical Tables
, “composed solely for the amusement of the fair sex.” One hopes they appreciated it. His admiration for the fair sex included Princess Augusta, and “as soon as the Prince was dead, they walked more and more, in honour of his memory.”

Bute died an appropriate botanist's death. He fell off a cliff while reaching for a rare plant and never recovered from his injuries. In the language of flowers, zinnia stands for “thoughts of absent friends”!

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