100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (4 page)

Douglas had brought so many new plants to Europe that he apologized for seeming to “manufacture” them “at my pleasure.” “I can die satisfied with myself,” he wrote in his diary. “I have never given cause for remonstrance or pain to an individual on earth.” Nowadays we look more carefully at mass importations and exchanges of plants, but in those days he, and others, died for the sake of spreading the wonders of nature wherever they could.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Platycodon
.
FAMILY
:
Campanulaceae
.

Vita Sackville-West described the balloon flower's puffed-up bud as “a tiny lantern, so tightly closed as though its little seams had been stitched together, with the further charm that you can pop it . . . if you are so childishly minded.” Its botanical name comes from the Greek
platys
(broad) and
kodon
(bell).

The Chinese platycodon was first described by a German professor, Johann Georg Gmelin, in the court of Catherine the Great. Gmelin was sent to explore Siberia and bring his scientific and botanical discoveries back to St. Petersburg. The going was so slow and the conditions so hard that the expedition took him ten years to complete. In winter his party could hardly travel at all, and he described ice three inches thick on the windows of his cabin. In summer the mosquitoes were so bad he had to wear two pairs of gloves while writing in his journal. At Yakutsk, where he risked being captured by hostile Tartars, his cabin burned down and he lost everything, including his botanical collection.

In winter Gmelin's party could hardly travel at all, and he described ice three inches thick on the windows of his cabin.

The Japanese balloon flower,
Platycodon grandiflorus
var.
mariesii
, was discovered and named for Charles Maries, who collected for the English firm of Veitch. The
Viburnum plicatum
var.
tomentosum
is also named ‘Mariesii' after him, but he is not credited with introducing many plants. He survived earthquakes, fire, and shipwreck, but his plants often didn't. He once had to replace his whole collection when a box of his seeds was in a boat that capsized and sank. Then, in China, he was robbed and his collection was again destroyed. In 1882 Joseph Hooker sent him to superintend the gardens of an Indian maharaja—where he remained until his death.

The balloon flower is one of the most coveted blue flowers for the garden. It is perennial and hardy. Those who aren't, like most gardeners, greedy for blue, can get it in pink and white as well—but that seems a waste.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Acanthus
.
FAMILY
:
Acanthaceae
.

These large, spectacular thistles are widely grown in Europe but have only more recently come to American gardens. They were grown by the Greeks and the Romans, and the botanical name is from the Greek
akanthos
(thorn). The name “bear's breech” or “bear's breeches” is thought to come from the plant's soft hairy leaves or stalks, resembling respectively the rump or legs of a hairy bear. More certain is the species name
mollis
, meaning “soft,” which refers to the same soft bristles.

The design of the Corinthian column is based on acanthus leaves. A story that Vitruvius tells in
De Architectura
is of an architect, Callimachus, who passed a grave on top of which a tile had been put; an acanthus plant had grown up around it, forming a circular fringe of leaves which inspired the leafy top of the Corinthian column. A sentimental Victorian version of this story says that a young girl had died a few days before her marriage and that the tile covered a basket containing the veil she would have worn. This is just the kind of tearful
tale of purity that the Victorians adored, and what's wrong with a bit of sentimental elaboration? Anyway, Callimachus is credited with designing the Corinthian column, an architectural innovation because, unlike the Ionic column, which must be seen from the front, it was decorative all the way around.

The acanthus came early to Europe. Alexander Neckham, abbot of Cirencester and foster brother of Richard, Coeur de Lion, mentioned it in
De Naturis Rerum
in 1190, and John Parkinson called it a “thistle.” It was among the plants collected by Joseph de Tournefort, a doctor in Louis XIV's court who botanized in Europe and the Middle East. His system of classifying plants, based on the petal structure of flowers, was used until superseded by the Linnaean system. Tournefort was quite a character. He was one of those avid gardeners (whom we all know) who does not include methods of acquiring plants within his normal moral code. Once when he climbed over a garden wall to steal plants, the irate gardener bombarded him with stones; seeming not to suffer any remorse, he merely complained that he had had to run for his life. After surviving many adventures he was run over by a carriage on the Paris street now called rue de Tournefort.

The design of the Corinthian column is based on acanthus leaves.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Kolkwitzia amabilis
.
FAMILY
:
Caprifoliaceae
.

The beauty bush, although widespread, is a relative newcomer to our gardens. It was named for Richard Kolkwitz, a professor of botany in Berlin who wrote
Pflanzenphysiologie: Versuche und Beobachtungen an höheren und niederen Pflanzen einschliesslich Bakteriologie und Hydrobiologie mit Planktonkunde
, which some people may have read.
“Amabilis”
is another way of saying, in Latin, that it's lovely.

This plant has rarely been seen in the wild, which is odd because it propagates easily. Ernest Wilson sent seeds of it to Veitch's nursery in England in 1901, and it bloomed there in 1910. In 1914 Henry Veitch, who had no heirs, sold the nursery, although it had been in business for five generations, and the beauty bush disappeared too. It was introduced again to America, this time by a Dutch botanist, Frank Meyer, who found it in China between 1905 and 1918.

Meyer, many of whose expeditions were sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was the epitome of colorful, adventurous
botanists. He was a magnificent bearded figure who once walked from Holland to Italy just to see the orange groves. He nearly died in the Alps on the way. He walked all over China and, since he needed no roads, went to regions that had never been accessible to Westerners before. He sent hundreds of food plants back to America—eighteen varieties of soybean alone—and President Roosevelt used his photographs of bare, treeless hills in China to illustrate his pleas for conservation here. Meyer was a gentle Buddhist, and David Fairchild described his eyes “filling with tears” when he found that some imported bamboos had died for lack of proper care. But he was a strangely violent man too. Although he spoke eight other languages, he refused to learn Chinese, and when his interpreter was afraid to continue their journey he threw him and their coolie down stairs in a fit of rage. He died under extremely odd circumstances—his body was found in the Yangtze River. It was presumed he had fallen off a boat traveling downstream to Shanghai, but no one ever knew what had really happened, whether it was an accident, suicide, or murder.

“Amabilis”
is another way of saying, in Latin, that it's lovely.

Oddly enough he wasn't a lover of flowers. It was his fascination with plant diseases and economically useful plants that drove his long overland treks. Nevertheless, the beauty bush, with its clouds of misty pink flowers in spring, might remind gardeners of this strange, exciting man and the inaccessible places where he wandered.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Begonia
.
FAMILY
:
Begoniaceae
.