Kitchen Dooryard at Wilbour Farm, Kingston, Rhode Island.
In that delightful book, The Rescue of an Old Place, the author has a chapter on the love of flowers in America. It was written anent the everpresent statements seen in metropolitan print that Americans do not love flowers because they are used among the rich and fashionable in large cities for extravagant display rather than for enjoyment; and that we accept botanical names for our indigenous plants instead of calling them by homely ones such as familiar flowers are known by in older lands.
Two more foolish claims could scarcely be made. In the first place, the doings of fashionable folk in large cities are fortunately far from being a national index or habit. Secondly, in ancient lands the people named the flowers long before there were botanists, here the botanists found the flowers and named them for the people. Moreover, country folk in New England and even in the far West call flowers by pretty folk-names, if they call them at all, just as in Old England.
The fussing over the use of the scientific Latin names for plants apparently will never cease; many of these Latin names are very pleasant, have become so from constant usage, and scarcely seem Latin; thus Clematis, Tiarella, Rhodora, Arethusa, Campanula, Potentilla, Hepatica. When I know the folk-names of flowers I always speak thus of them—and to them; but I am grateful too for the scientific classification and naming, as a means of accurate distinction. For any flower student quickly learns that the same English folk-name is given in different localities to very different plants. For instance, the name Whiteweed is applied to ten different plants; there are in England ten or twelve Cuckoo-flowers, and twenty-one Bachelor's Buttons. Such names as Mayflower, Wild Pink, Wild Lily, Eyebright, Toad-flax, Ragged Robin, None-so-pretty, Lady's-fingers, Four-o'clocks, Redweed, Buttercups, Butterflower, Cat's-tail, Rocket, Blue-Caps, Creeping-jenny, Bird's-eye, Bluebells, apply to half a dozen plants.
The old folk-names are not definite, but they are delightful; they tell of mythology and medicine, of superstitions and traditions; they show trains of relationship, and associations; in fact, they appeal more to the philologist and antiquarian than to the botanist. Among all the languages which contribute to the variety and picturesqueness of English plant names, Dr. Prior deems Maple the only one surviving from the Celtic language. Gromwell and Wormwood may possibly be added.
"A running ribbon of perfumed snow which the sun is melting rapidly."
There are some Anglo-Saxon words; among them Hawthorn and Groundsel. French, Dutch, and Danish names are many, Arabic and Persian are more. Many plant names are dedicatory; they embody the names of the saints and a few the names of the Deity. Our Lady's Flowers are many and interesting; my daughter wrote a series of articles for the New York Evening Post on Our Lady's Flowers, and the list swelled to a surprising number. The devil and witches have their shares of flowers, as have the fairies.