There is a touch of poetry in such names as: New Year’s Gift (Ess.), the winter aconite, Eranthis hyemalis; Summer’s Farewell (Dor. Som.), a variety of the Michaelmas daisy, Aster Tripolium; Fair Maids (Nrf. Hmp.), or February Fair Maids (Wm.), the snowdrop, Galanthus nivalis; Golden Chain (Midl. s. and sw.Cy.), the laburnum. The reminiscence of the Northern god Balder in Balder’s Brae (Nhb.), a name for the wild camomile, Anthemis cotula, is probably a borrowing from Scandinavia, cp. O.N. Baldrs-brā. The same name occurs also in Swedish and Danish dialects. ‘Thou may’st have some idea of the beauty of his hair when I tell thee that the whitest of all plants is called Baldur’s brow,’ Mallet, Northern Antiquities, 1770.
Old Names of Plants
We may still hear the plant-names Shakespeare knew, such as: Honey-stalks (War.), the blossoms of the white clover, Trifolium repens; and Love in idleness (Midl.), the pansy, a name often corrupted into Love and idols, or Loving idols; and many which Dr. Johnson included in his Dictionary, for example: Ale-hoof (Yks. Shr. Sus. Dev. Cor.), the ground ivy, Nepeta Glechoma, cp. ‘Alehoof ... Groundivy, so called by our Saxon ancestors, as being their chief ingredient in ale’; Ayegreen (Wm. Lan.), the house-leek, Sempervivum tectorum, cp. ‘Aygreen ... The same with houseleek’; Prick-madam (Cum.), the crooked yellow stonecrop, Sedum reflexum, cp. ‘Prickmadam ... A species of houseleek’; Herb of grace (Yks. Der. Lin. Som.), the rue, Ruta graveolens, cp. ‘Rue ... An herb called herb of grace, because holy water was sprinkled with it.’
Here did she fall a tear; here in this place
I’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace:
Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen,
In the remembrance of a weeping queen.
Rich. II, III. iv. 104-7.
There are other old names which can be traced even further back, for example: Way-bread (Sc. n.Cy. Wor.), the greater plantain, Plantago major, O.E. weg-brǣde, literally way-breadth, cp. O.H.G. wege-breita, the plantain; and Withy-wind (w. and sw.Cy.), the great bindweed, Convolvulus sepium, and also the field bindweed, C. arvensis, O.E. wiþe-winde, bindweed. ‘He bare a burdoun ybounde with a brode liste, In a withewyndes wise ywounden aboute,’ Piers Plowman, B. v. ll. 524, 525.
Miscellaneous Plant Names