100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (9 page)

Michaux was washed ashore, unconscious, lashed to a spar. He survived, along with his collection of dried plants.

Crape myrtles were sometimes called “China berries,” and the berries were used for rosaries. They are called “crape” or “crêpe” myrtles from the Latin
crispus
(curled), as the blossoms are crinkled, like crêpe paper or crêpe de Chine. They were often planted near stables as they were supposed to keep away flies.

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Crocus
.
FAMILY
:
Iridaceae
.

Crocuses flower about Valentine's Day, just when we need a reminder that winter is over and we really do love one another after all. “Krokos” was the Greek name for the autumn-flowering saffron crocus, which has been cultivated from antiquity, but which hardly anyone grows today. The nicest legend about its origin is of Zeus and Hera making love so passionately that the heat of their ardor made the bank on which they lay burst open with crocuses.

The first spring crocuses were sent to England from France by Jean Robin, curator of the Jardin du Roi in Paris. John Gerard's famous
Herball
describes the “wilde or Spring Saffron” as a novelty compared to the “best-knowne” saffron. Saffron crocuses are pale purple, and Gerard talks about the new colors of white and a “perfect shining yellow colour, seeming a far off to be a hot glowing cole of fire.” The purple spring crocus, he says, “lovers of plants have gotten into their gardens” too.

Saffron was always a valuable crop. Measured ounce for ounce it
was often more valuable than gold; it takes four thousand stigmas to make just one ounce of saffron. In the Middle Ages it was sometimes used instead of real gold leaf to illuminate missals. The rich used it for flavoring food (the poor had to make do with calendula petals), and it was also thought to be “good for the head.” Apparently this had its own dangers: Joseph de Tournefort “saw a lady of Trent . . . almost shaken to pieces with laughing immoderately for a space of three Hours, which was occasioned by her taking too much Saffron.”

The saffron crocus's name originally comes from the Arabic
za'faran
, used in the Middle East from ancient times. The best story about its introduction is Hakluyt's, in
English Voiages
(1589). He says “a pilgrim, proposing to do good to his countrey, stole a head of Saffron, and hid the same in his Palmer's staffe, which he had made hollow before of purpose, and so he brought the root into this realme with venture of his life, for if he had bene taken, by the law of the countrey from whence it came, he had died for the fact.” It was dangerous stuff to fool with: conviction for adulterating saffron carried the death penalty, and in the fifteenth century Jobast Findeker was burned alive in Germany, along with his bags of impure saffron.

Crocus roots, or corms, are actually thickened stalks, and these were brought over to America by settlers. Mice and rats love them, but a few must have arrived safely and come up in cheerful clusters around cabin doors after the first grueling winters. Squirrels dig them up too, and birds love to peck the petals off—although they are, like Gerard, fonder of the yellow ones.

COMMON NAMES
: Cyclamen, sowbread.
BOTANICAL NAME
:
Cyclamen
.
FAMILY
:
Primulaceae
.

The way cyclamen got its name is perhaps less colorful than debate over its use. Pliny the Elder's famous first-century
Natural History
claimed that the roots of a plant he called
aristolochia
were used by fishermen to poison fishes. The Renaissance botanist Nicolo Leoniceno disputed this, saying in 1492 that the root Pliny meant was a wild European cyclamen, which he himself had seen used by fishermen in Campania. Pandolfo Collenuccio, in a defense of Pliny, argued that fishermen used several plants (including cyclamen) this way and there was no reason to suppose Pliny mistaken.

Before the science of botany developed, this kind of theoretical debate preoccupied scholars, and cyclamen's medicinal uses were tailored to fit many theories. During the Renaissance, the influential Doctrine of Signatures, popularized by Paracelsus, held that the appearance of different plants conveniently indicated the use for which they had been created. Cyclamen, because it had a leaf shaped much like an ear, was used to treat earaches.

The English botanist William Turner warned that cyclamen was
such a potent aid to childbirth that it was dangerous for pregnant women even to step over cyclamen roots. Poor Turner knew about childbirth. He complained that his living quarters were so crowded that “I can not go to my booke for ye crying of childer and noyse yt is made in my chamber.” He wrote the first popular English herbal, published in 1551, which called cyclamen “Sawesbread.”

The name “sowbread” refers to the supposed use of cyclamen tubers as food for pigs, although Canon H. N. Ellacombe, in 1895, said that some pigs had got into his garden and dug up a bed of cyclamens without eating any of them. The name “cyclamen” comes from the Greek
kyklos
(circle) and probably refers to the seed stalks, or pedicels, which after flowering curl up and ripen among the leaves. The Greek name for cyclamen was
chelonion
(tortoiseshell) because the tubers look like little turtles.

The wild European cyclamens are enchantingly diminutive versions of the gross hothouse cyclamens more often grown today. These are descendants of the Persian cyclamen, which came to Britain in the 1650s, and are an example of freak gigantism that Victorian plant breeders were able to exploit. They make handsome houseplants that the Victorian writer John Loudon claimed lived for years and were “easily raised from seed” to produce “from fifty to eighty blossoms.” They do not have the magic of the meek (but hardy) wild cyclamens that will grow in America south of climatic zone 5 and that will, if content, spread to make brilliant clumps. Most of us feel triumphant if we manage to keep the conservatory cyclamens alive at all for more than one season, let alone growing them from seed. The Victorians must have been better gardeners, or better liars, than we are.

COMMON NAMES
: Daffodil, narcissus, jonquil.
BOTANICAL NAME
:
Narcissus
.
FAMILY
:
Amaryllidaceae
.

The difference in meaning between the names of daffodils, narcissi, and jonquils is still unclear, but we seem to agree that all daffodils are narcissi, though not all narcissi are daffodils, and it has to do with length of trumpet and number of flowers per stem.

The confusion over the name “daffodil” may have started early, when the British, who preferred the imported asphodel to their native daffodil, allegedly called the former “bastard 'affodil.” “Jonquil” comes from the Spanish
jonquillo
(rush), referring to the rush-like leaves. Daffodils may have been brought to Britain by the Romans, who believed their mucilaginous sap could heal wounds, although in fact it contains sharp crystals that prevent animals from eating the plant and may in fact irritate the skin. But John
Parkinson says, “Know I not any in these days, with us, that apply any of them as a remedy for any griefe, whatsoever Gerard or others have written.” Parkinson was right, for the sap of daffodils contains crystals of calcium oxalate, an irritant, which is why, in a vase of mixed flowers, daffodils will soon make the other blossoms wilt. The asphodel also has sharp crystals in its sap which protect it from being eaten, although its roots, unlike the daffodil's, are said to be edible and were used in times of famine by the Greeks.

Narcissus, who was exquisitely beautiful, saw his own image in a pool, leaned over to possess it, and drowned, becoming the flower.

They were associated with death. In Greek myth, pale asphodels grew in the meadows of the Underworld, kingdom of the dead. Hades abducted Persephone after she had wandered away from her companions to pick the flowers. The stupefying quality of their sweet perfume was once thought to be as dangerous as any narcotic, and many people find the scent overpowering. The Victorians suspected narcissi of having harmful “effluvia.”

The name “narcissus” is most often associated with the Greek youth Narcissus, with whom the nymph Echo fell in love. He spurned her, and she hid in a cavern where she died of a broken heart, leaving only her voice. Meanwhile Narcissus, who was exquisitely beautiful, saw his own image in a pool, leaned over to possess it, and drowned, becoming the flower. People do love themselves when they think they love another, but they don't
change into flowers—which was often a handy solution to a problem in Greek mythology.

The daffodil, for many, is spring itself. Describing the daffodils she and her brother William saw on a walk, Dorothy Wordsworth said, “Some rested their heads on these stones as on a pillow.” This is good to remember when looking at daffodils after a storm: they are simply resting their heads. Dorothy noted that the daffodils “tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, they looked so gay and glancing.” One can't help wondering if William read her diary before writing his famous poem and wandering lonely as a cloud.