Oh, the power of written words! when by these few lines I can carry forever in my inner vision this spire of starry blueness. To that writer, now in the Elysian Fields, an honest teacher if ever one lived, I send my thanks for this beautiful vision of blueness.
CHAPTER XII
PLANT NAMES
"The fascination of plant names is founded on two instincts,—love of Nature and curiosity about Language."
—English Plant Names, Rev. John Earle, 1880.
Verbal magic is the subtle mysterious power of certain words. This power may come from association with the senses; thus I have distinct sense of stimulation in the word scarlet, and pleasure in the words lucid and liquid. The word garden is a never ceasing delight; it seems to me Oriental; perhaps I have a transmitted sense from my grandmother Eve of the Garden of Eden. I like the words, a Garden of Olives, a Garden of Herbs, the Garden of the Gods, a Garden enclosed, Philosophers of the Garden, the Garden of the Lord. As I have written on gardens, and thought on gardens, and walked in gardens, "the very music of the name has gone into my being." How beautiful are Cardinal Newman's words:—
"By a garden is meant mystically a place of spiritual repose, stillness, peace, refreshment, delight."
There was, in Gerarde's day, no fixed botanical nomenclature of any of the parts or attributes of a plant. Without using botanical terms, try to describe a plant so as to give an exact notion of it to a person who has never seen it, then try to find common words to describe hundreds of plants; you will then admire the vocabulary of the old herbalist, his "fresh English words," for you will find that it needs the most dextrous use of words to convey accurately the figure of a flower. That felicity and facility Gerarde had; "a bleak white color"—how clearly you see it! The Water Lily had "great round leaves like a buckler." The Cat-tail Flags "flower and bear their mace or torch in July and August." One plant had "deeply gashed leaves." The Marigold had "fat thick crumpled leaves set upon a gross and spongious stalke." Here is the Wake-robin, "a long hood in proportion like the ear of a hare, in middle of which hood cometh forth a pestle or clapper of a dark murry or pale purple color." The leaves of the Corn-marigold are "much hackt and cut into divers sections and placed confusedly." Another plant had leaves of "an overworne green," and Pansy leaves were "a bleak green." The leaves of Tansy are also vividly described as "infinitely jagged and nicked and curled with all like unto a plume of feathers."