JUNE 1981

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A NEWSLETTER

OF THE

WESTERN CAROLINA JSOTA N ICRL CLU Q

CONTENTS Of THIS ISSUE

PLANT NAMES

SPRING FLOWERS AT CAROLINA VILLAGE
LOOK AGAIN!

ENERGY SOURCE — THE SKUNK CABBAGE

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PLANT NAMES

(Partially copied from an article compiled by Robert W.

Joerger in August of 1974 pertaining to the background
of the naming of plants. Most interesting and informative,
this article should have appeal to many of our members— so
please read on. )

The same plant may have the simple English name of blue bells, but known to
botanists as Merten sia Virginica. Why this difference is the subject of
this essay.

Let's consider some common names first with occasional reference to its
Greek or Latin equivalent, and then explore the need of the latter for
better understanding.

Simplest of all, pernaps, are flowers with colors ranging the spectrum:
pirucs, cardinal flower, lemon and orange, yellowwood and goldenrod, lilac
and- violet, bluets, blue bonnet, and such Greek words as phlox (for flame),
iris (the whole rainbow).

The time of bloom gives rise to morning glory, four-o’clock, evening prim-
rose; the day lily reflected in Greek as Hemsrocailis, lasting only a day;
when by season we get spring beauty, rlay flower, June berry, wintergr een
(Chimaphila, winter friend in Greek); and perhaps eternity with pearly
everlasting.

Women of all degrees are represented by bouncing bet (suggesting to Burroughs
a lorkshire housemaid), olack-eyed Susan, Quaker Ladies, ladies’ thumcs and
tresses, Queen Anne's lace; and of course, Lady's Slipper, which in Greek
becomes Cypripedium, Venus' sandal. The tree, Paulownia, was named after
a Russian princess.

Religion contributed a number of names for our plants. Many are known by
the name Mary; in Marigold we really have Mary's gold. Others: Madonna lily,
St. John 1 s-wort, Star-of-3ethlehem. Veronica (from vera eicon, true image)
recalls the impression of Christ's face registered cn the cloth used by the
maiden.

Nasturtium (nose twister) remind us that some odoz s are foul as with skunk
cabbage (.3. foetidus) or carrion flower; but also sweet-smelling like Sweet
Shrub, Meadowsweet; while strawberries carry the Latin name Fragaria, fragrant.

Many ofte»-used English names come from other languages. Even a desk diction-
ary will show that Pansy comes from the French word, pensee, thoughts;
dandelion from dent-de-lion or lion's tooth (for the leaves )i And from the
Latin we get Aster (star shaped), saxifrage, or rock breakders); wort is Old
English for herb; and many from the Greek like Anenome, wind-shaken; Helianthus
sun flower; Hepatica, liver, from shape of leaves; Chrysanthemum, golden
flower, whose member, the ox-eye-daisy, Chaucer wrote

"That well oe reason man call it Daisie, or, the eye of day. "

Horse means coarse wr.en used in norse radisn, chestnut, mint, weed, etc.

Other animal associations are numerous and various: lizard tail and fox tail
(grass), trout ana tiger lilies, pigweed and sew thistle, rattlesnake root
or plantain, sheep laurel or larcoskiil (actually poisonous) lupine (Latin for

2.

wolf, said to destroy crop fertility); goat's beard, monkey flower, chickweed,
toad flax, dragon-head, crow's foot; also goosefoot family, Greek Chenopodiaceoe,
for shape of leaves. Then there is dog hobble, dog bane (Greek, Apocynum —

"away with dogs" as far as we know, no threat); and dogwood, so named when
the English used a decoction of its bark to bath mangy dogs; its name;- Cornus
came from Latin cornu, horn, referring to the hardness of the wood as in Cornus
Florida.

From what has been said so far, one gets the distinct impression that most
plant names are trivial, haphazard in origin, and of course differ in the
various languages. Only a small part of the estimated 550,000 plants now
known have either English, French, German,- or dther names. Some universal
language should be used. All this was largely resolved when we come to that
remarkable man known as Carl Linnaeus ( 1707-1778 )» the great Swedish naturalist,
often called "the father of botany. "

He brought to it sex and system. His two claims to fame; he applied the
so-called sexual system, using the arrangement of sex organs (pistils, stamens,
ovaries) as a means of classifying plants; and secondly, he devised the bi-
nomial method of two parts; a capitalized generic noun, a descriptive specific
adjective.

Linnaeus used Latin (or latinized Greek) as it was understood in all
countries and this has been continued ever since because it is precise in
writing and speaking, effective and beautiful. What a tremendous work to re-
name thousands of plants gathered in his day by botanists from all over the world.

His greatest book of 1200 pages, Species of Plants (1755) is considered
the turning point of systematic botany. For the genera, he used names from
classical myths and literature, some already mentioned above. For example,
Achillea, derives from Achilles who used the leaves of yarrow to make an ointment
for t.ie wounds of his soldiers. Sven today about half of the names of the plant
families are of this origin. Where he needed new names, he used those of
x’riends and botanists which so commemorated Zinnia, Looellia, Rudbeckia, Trades-
cantia, Manolia; and in our own country with such as the tree Franklinia,

Glintonia (Governor or Hew York), Lewisia redivivia for the bitter root of
Lewis and Clark, Poinsettia, Catesby ( trillium ) , Michaux in Saxifrage michauxii ;
bartonia, Kalmia, Mitcheila, and so forth. Though an accurate definition of
species is impossiole, generally it means a group of individuals regarded by
experts after careful study of likenesses and differences (such as habit,
shape, stature, color, season, fragrance, etc. ),

H. L. Rickett in his great survey of wild flowers states that most have
no English names, and that some of those are confusing, so a botanical name is
a prerequisite. First to identify, to give one name to each, to clarify, and
it must appear in publication. Second to classify, to assign it to the right
niche in the tree of life. Common names lack precision, their utility is
limited. Thirdly, a name is not merely letters in a book or on a Herbarium
sheet, it is the record of a living plant; a plant sought and scrutinized,
admired and then named for all time. And from that great laboratory, the out-
of-doors, the hills and fields teeming with life, there is much that is not
known, all of which requires more study.

References used; How Plants Get Their Names

How We Got Our Flowers
Plants and Their Uses
Plant Names

A Second Book of Plant
Names and Their Meaning
The Family Tree of Flowers
(has excellent chart)

L. K. Baily Dover, 19^5

A. W. Anderson Dover, 1966

F. L. Sargent Holt, 1950

T. S. Lansay

Willard N. Glut a
F. E. Clements B W . J . Showalter
National Geographic Magazine
1927, p. 555-565, reprint in
Greenville Library 5^10

X

SPRING FLOWERS AT CAROLINA VILLAGE

As you. observe this chart of the flowering tine span of some forty plants
growing in the Carolina Village Wildflower Garden, it can only reflect the
trained mind of a capable scientist — who else but Helen Turner.

March 10 20 10 20 ^0

Spring beauty (Virginiana)

Spring beauty ( Caroliniana )

Violet (blue and confederate)

Hepatica

Bloodroot

Shortia

Rue anemone

Giant chickweed

Jacob’s ladder

Trout lily

Columbine >

White trillium

Dutchman's breeches ,

Chrysoganum

Halbert leaved violet (yellow)

Wood anemone ( quinquef olia)

Viola rotundifolia (yellow)

Birdsfoct violet ,

Bluets (white) .

Wild ginger (canadense) .

Wild geranium

Foam flower

Larkspur

Iris (verna and cristata)

White violet

April

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2017 with funding from
IMLS LG-70-15-0138-15

https://archive.org/details/shortianewslette3219west

4

March 10 20 JO 10 20 JO April

Yellow stargrass

Forget-me-not

Fire pink

Solomon's seal

Heart leaf wild, ginger

Sellwort

Canada violet (or striata)

Alumroot

Sweet cicely —

Atamasco lily —

Blue-eyed grass — -

Lady's slipper (pink) —

Yellow triliium —

Jack-in-the pulpit

Dwarf white itis

March and April Spring flowers - Time of
flowering in one small (4Cx40) plot at
edge of pond — Carolina Village (wooded
area)

As of May 1 — the only one that might open in one or two days — Anemone canadensis.
There have been no new ones today. One robin's plantain came open April 10 —
more are about to open.

I have not listed buttercup, cinquefoil, or wood sorrell — or dandelions. One
Clintonia is in big bud. I will keep checking. My next list will be called
Summer flowers.

LOOK AGAIN I Article by Dick Smith on following page.

(Editor's comment: Not only is Dick a discerning botanist,

he is an excellent line drawing artist. )

5-

f

One of the difficulties that we amateur
"botanists have with unillustrated keys is that
the characteristics cited to differentiate
similar species often appear to be minor ones
and give the impression that we are going to
have trouble deciding which is which.

Actually, it usually comes as a surprise
that the second species, when we finally come
across it, looks so unlike the first - and in
so many respects.

<70oe/t

'if era. reruns

The two species of rattlesnake plantain
orchid (Goodyera) found in our area are good
examples. The average amateur probably will see
hundreds of the relatively abundant Goodyera
pubescens before finding his first Gk repens ,
which is much less common. When he does, it
will indeed look very different, but since he
might put it down as a depauperate pubescens, it would be well
to fix the differences in his mind beforehand:

In the first place, Goodyera repens is a
smaller plant, and it is this, more than any-
thing else, that is immediately evident. It
is perhaps two-thirds as tall as G^ pubescens,
the leaves half as long, and the raceme defi-
nitely shorter. Also, the flowers are fewer,
less crowded, and distinctly secund.

But the best field mark
(and this will serve for
year-round identification)

is the leaf venation. G^ pubescens has a prom-
inent whitish midvein and a network of numerous
fine, pale green veinlets. In G^ repens these
markings are dark green instead of light, and
g ■ in our plants (which ere distinguished from the

. European ones as "var. ophioides") they are
bordered in greenish white. The veinlets seldom are branched, run
roughly at right angles to the veins, and having wider bands of
white axe more conspicuous than the veins.

Goodyera repens is confined to a more northern range than
G. pubescens, and in our region grows in the cold Canadian- type
forests of the mountains. Look for
it under spruces and firs along the ~~7\ •

Blue Ridge Parkway, for instance.

And think small!

&. jOuArscens