JASMINE.—Perfumes and flowers play an important part in the poetry of India, and the Jasmine, which Hindu poets call the “Moonlight of the Grove,” has furnished them with countless images. Thus, in Anvár-i-Suhailî (translated by E. B. Eastwick), we read of a damsel entering the king’s chamber, whose face charms like a fresh Rosebud which the morning breeze has caused to blow, and whose ringlets are compared to the twisting Hyacinth buried in an envelope of the purest Musk:—
“With Hyacinth and Jasmine her perfumed hair was bound,
A posy of sweet Violets her clustering ringlets seemed;
Her eyes with love intoxicate, in witching sleep half drowned,
Her locks, to Indian Spikenard like, with love’s enchantments beamed.”
De Tassy, the translator of the allegories of Aziz Eddin, points out that the Arabian word yâs-min is composed of the word yâs, despair, and min, an illusion. In the allegories we read: “Then the Jasmine uttered this sentence with the expressive eloquence of its mute language: “Despair is a mistake. My penetrating odour excels the perfume of other flowers; therefore lovers select me as a suitable offering to their mistresses; they extract from me the invisible treasures of divinity, and I can only rest when enclosed in the folds and pleats which form in the body of a robe.”——An allusion to the Jasmine is made in the following poetic description of a young girl drooping from a sudden illness:—“All of a sudden the blighting glance of unpropitious fortune having fallen on that Rose-cheeked Cypress, she laid her head on the pillow of sickness; and in the flower-garden of her beauty, in place of the Damask-Rose, sprang up the branch of the Saffron. Her fresh Jasmine, from the violence of the burning illness, lost its moisture, and her Hyacinth, full of curls, lost all its endurance from the fever that consumed her.”
——The Indians cultivate specially for their perfume two species of Jasmine—viz., the Jasminum grandiflorum, or Tore, and the J. hirsutum, or Sambac. The Moo-le-hua, a powerful-smelling Jasmine, is used in China and other parts of the East as an adornment for the women’s hair.——It is believed that the Jasmine was first introduced into Europe by some Spaniards, who brought it from the East Indies in 1560.——Loudon relates that a variety of the Jasmine, with large double flowers and exquisite scent, was first procured in 1699 from Goa, by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and so jealous was he of being the sole possessor of this species, that he strictly forbade his gardener to part with a single cutting. However the gardener was in love, and so, on the birthday of his betrothed, he presented her with a nosegay, in the midst of which was a sprig of this rare Jasmine. Charmed with its fragrance, the girl planted the sprig in fresh mould, and under her lover’s instructions was soon able to raise cuttings from the plant, and to sell them at a high price: by this means she soon saved enough money to enable her to wed the gardener, who had hitherto been too poor to alter his condition. In memory of this tender episode, the damsels of Tuscany still wear a wreath of Jasmine on their wedding days, and the event has given rise to a saying that a “girl worthy of wearing the Jasmine wreath is rich enough to make her husband happy.”——Yellow Jasmine is the flower of the Epiphany.——To dream of this beautiful flower foretells good luck; to lovers it is a sure sign they will be speedily married.
JERUSALEM.—Many plants are found to have been named in olden times after the Holy City. The Lungwort, Pulmonaria officinalis, is the Jerusalem Cowslip; Phlomis is Jerusalem Sage; and Teucrium Botrys is the Oak of Jerusalem, called so from the resemblance of its leaf to that of the Oak. In these three cases the prefix “Jerusalem” seems to have been applied for no particular reason—probably because the plants had an Eastern origin. Salsafy, Tragopogon porrifolius, is the Star of Jerusalem, so named from the star-like expansion of its involucre; and Helianthus tuberosus is the Jerusalem Artichoke, a plant of the same genus as the Sunflower, called Artichoke from the flavour of its tubers. The soup made from it is termed Palestine Soup. In the last two cases, Dr. Prior thinks the prefix “Jerusalem” is simply a corruption of the Italian word girasole, turn-sun, and has been applied to these plants from a popular belief that they turn with the Sun. The Lychnis Chalcedonica is the Jerusalem Cross, which has derived its name from the fact that a variety of it has four instead of five petals, of the colour and form of a Jerusalem Cross.
JEWS’ EARS.—The Auricula Judæ is a Fungus resembling in shape the human ear, which grows usually upon the trunks of the Elder, the tree upon which Judas Iscariot is said by some to have hung himself. Sir John Maundevile relates that he actually saw the identical tree. Bacon says of this excrescence, “There is an herb called Jewes-Eare, that groweth upon the roots and lower parts of the bodies of trees, especially of Elders, and sometimes Ashes. It hath a strange propertie; for in warme water it swelleth, and openeth extremely. It is not greene, but of a darke browne colour. And it is used for squinancies and inflammations in the throat, whereby it seemeth to have a mollifying and lenifying vertue.”
JOAN’S SILVER PIN.—The red-Poppy (Papaver Rhœas) has acquired the name of Joan’s Silver Pin, because, according to Parkinson, the gaudy flower is “fair without and foul within” (in allusion to its yellow juice). Joan’s Silver Pin was a contemptuous term applied to some tawdry ornament displayed ostentatiously by a sloven.