100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (7 page)

The first camellia was sent to England by James Cunningham, who was the only survivor of a massacre of East India Company officials in 1705. Lord Petre, whom Peter Collinson had called “the best botanist in England,” killed it in too hot a greenhouse. But his gardener, James Gordon, had taken cuttings, which survived.

Camellias arrived in America in the late eighteenth century and soon became so much a part of Southern gardens they seem to be native there. Maybe their perfect purity is just a little bit deceptive, because they do not have a sweet scent, and no one has been able to breed one into them. They are flawless flowers without the mystery of perfume, and indeed that is why Marguerite Gauthier preferred them, for scented flowers made her cough. Like herself, they are utterly beautiful, but far from perfect.

COMMON NAMES
: Candytuft, candy mustard.
BOTANICAL NAME
:
Iberis umbellata
.
FAMILY
:
Brassicaceae
.

One would think candytuft got its name from its pink and white flowers, which look like confectioners' sugar lollipops. Actually the name comes from Candia, or Crete, from where it was imported to England in Elizabethan times.

Lord Edward Zouche was credited with bringing it to England. Lord Zouche was said to have spent so much on his garden that he became impoverished and had to travel abroad to “live cheaply.” For a while the famous botanist Matthias de l'Obel was employed by him as his gardener in Hackney before he became gardener to King James (see “Lobelia”). Zouche was on the New England and Virginia councils, was lord warden of the Cinque Ports, and was a friend of the poets Ben Jonson and William Browne. None of this tells us much about him, but what does was that he was the only peer to acquit Mary, Queen of Scots, at her trial and to dissent from the death sentence for her. He brought seeds home to John Gerard “for which,” Gerard notes, “I think myself much bounde unto his good Lordship.” Among them were seeds of the candytuft or, as it was then called,
Thlaspi candiae
, or “Cretan cress.”

John Parkinson called it “Treacle Mustard,” and it was used as a cheap condiment. It grew “in Spaine and Candie, not farre from the Sea side.” Its botanical name,
Iberis umbellata
, means it has flowers in umbels, or tufts, and comes from Spain (Iberia).

The annual common candytuft is very easy to grow and consequently has always been a standby of children's and cottage gardens. It doesn't like hot weather, so it isn't seen in eastern American gardens much. The perennial candytuft, or
Iberis sempervirens
(Latin
semper
, “always”;
virens
, “flourishing”) is more popular because in spring it forms nice evergreen mats covered with tiny white flowers.

Lord Zouche was said to have spent so much on his garden that he became impoverished and had to travel abroad to “live cheaply.”

Candytuft is tough, but isn't a particularly interesting flower, apart from its name. Though uninteresting inhabitants of the world can serve a useful purpose, horticultural show-offs probably won't plant it—they have their own ways of enjoying themselves.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Dianthus
.
FAMILY
:
Caryophyllaceae
.

Dianthuses are ancient flowers, and derivatives of their different names and forms are various. The Greek botanist Theophrastus, who first classified plants according to their form and structure, called them
“dianthus,”
from the Greek
dios
(divine) and
anthos
(flower). The most common garden dianthuses are carnations, pinks, and sweet Williams.

Some scholars think that the name “carnation” is from
coronation
or
corone
(flower garlands), as it was one of the flowers used to make ceremonial crowns in Greece (see “Spirea”). Others say this name comes from
carnis
(flesh), referring to the color of the flowers, or possibly from
incarnacyon
(incarnation), referring to the incarnation of God, made flesh. The flowers were also symbolic of marital bliss and fecundity, and at his wedding ceremony Maximilian of Austria was instructed by the bishop of Trèves to search under his bride's wedding dress for a carnation hidden there—which he did, we are told, first tentatively, and then with increasing enthusiasm.

Pinks first came to Britain in the middle of the sixteenth century. It seems that they would have been so named because their color is pink, but actually it was the reverse. Pink was not a specific color until the eighteenth century, and almost certainly came from the name of the flower. Some say the word comes from the Middle English
poinken
, which originally meant “to pierce holes” in leather or cloth, and then came to mean decorating the edges—in a similar manner to the pinked edges of dianthus petals.

The name “clove pink” or “clove gillyflower” is probably derived from the French
clou de girofle
, or “nail of the clove tree,” once called
Caryophyllus
(from the Greek
caryon
, “nut,” and
phyllon
, “leaf”). In any case the pink's clove-like fragrance led to its association with Crucifixion nails, because cloves are shaped like nails. Sometimes the infant Jesus is shown in paintings innocently playing with a carnation or pink, as a dreadful reminder of his future. This could also, of course, refer to the fact that he was “God incarnate.”

The name came from the French
oeillet
, “eye,” which became “Willy.”

Sweet Williams, the biennial pinks, are also a mystery of nomenclature. Some say the name came from the French
oeillet
(eye), which became “Willy” and then “William.” Some say it was from Saint William, whose festival is on the twenty-fifth of June, when the flowers bloom. John Gerard said they were not useful medicinally but were grown “for their beauty to decke up gardens, the bosomes of the beautifull, garlands and crownes for pleasure.”

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Helleborus
.
FAMILY
:
Ranunculaceae
.

The Christmas rose blooms at Christmastime. It really does, and even in Pennsylvania the flowers push out of the snow. The blooms last for weeks and the plant lasts for years.

It is supposed to have bloomed outside the stable at Bethlehem, although scholars have taken pains to discover that it is not native to the Holy Land. While applauding their industry, some people don't care anyway, and still think of the stable in the snow, the hovering angels, the kneeling donkey, and the other details that may not fit climate, gravity, or animal behavior patterns. The Christmas rose fits nicely into the story, for its legend tells us that a little country girl visited the stable and wept because she had nothing to give the Christ child. Her tears fell in the snow and a hovering angel landed and showed her the Christmas rose poking through the snow to use as her gift.

It's actually not at all the thing to give to a newborn baby as it's very poisonous, and its botanical name is from its Greek name
helleboros
. It was used from ancient times (with caution) as a medicine, especially to cure worms in children. Gilbert White mentions it in his letters from Selborne but warns that it is a “violent remedy” that kills the worms but might also kill the patient. John Gerard said it was good for “mad and furious men . . . and for all those that are troubled with blacke choler, and molested with melancholy.”

It was used in ancient Greece by Melampus to cure the daughters of Proetus, king of Tiryns. These young women had treated with contempt a statue (some say of Hera, others of Dionysus). As a punishment they were deprived of their senses and streaked naked through the Peloponnesus. Melampus, who was a shepherd, somehow got them to stop long enough to drink milk from his goats, which had eaten hellebore, and they were cured. Melampus asked for, and got, quite a bit of Proetus's kingdom for curing his daughters.

The Christmas rose is surely a miraculous plant, regardless of its name's unscientific origins. For one thing, its seeds are spread by, of all things, snails. They eat the oil covering the seed and carry the rest away in their slime. Certainly a different process than that of being born from tears, but slime and tears glitter equally on moonlit nights and both are mysterious. It's certainly no normal plant, as anyone who has come out on a January morning and looked at it will attest. The flowers are literally frozen solid and yet, when the ice falls away, the petals are soft and fresh as spring blossoms. There is surely a scientific explanation for this, but some just marvel at it anyway.

COMMON NAMES
: Chrysanthemum, mum, tansy.
BOTANICAL NAMES
:
Chrysanthemum, Dendranthema
.
FAMILY
:
Asteraceae
.