100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (24 page)

Orchid hunters mostly searched for riches rather than knowledge of the wondrous plant world. Nobody seemed to care that huge areas were stripped of native orchids, and we cannot much pity collectors who met with trouble. Even now, orchids are more often corsages for the rich than comfort for those who live in poor places. Their beauty, although undeniable, is not the beauty of simplicity.

COMMON NAMES
: Oregon grape holly, mahonia.
BOTANICAL NAME
:
Mahonia
.
FAMILY
:
Berberidaceae
.

Mahonia was brought from the far west by Lewis and Clark and called, by Thomas Nut-tall, after Bernard M'Mahon, a refugee from political persecution in Ireland. M'Mahon found American gardening “in its infancy” and set to work to “introduce a love of flowers and fruit.”

Within a few years, the catalogue from his seed shop in Philadelphia included one thousand species. The shop was presided over by his wife, and it soon became a meeting place for botanists. In 1806 he published
The American Gardener's Calendar
, which although not actually the first book about American gardening, was the first popular publication on this subject. It was an immediate success that for fifty years (during which time it was reprinted eleven times) was the standard American reference
book on gardening. President Thomas Jefferson had a copy and bought seeds from M'Mahon. The correspondence between the president and the nurseryman continued until M'Mahon died in 1816. Seeds were ordered and sent, and there were friendly comments too. In April 1811, Jefferson told M'Mahon in a letter that “I have an extensive flower border, in which I am fond of placing
handsome
plants or
fragrant
. Those of mere curiosity I do not aim at, having too many other cares to bestow more than a moderate attention to them.” In February 1812, M'Mahon wrote to Jefferson (and one can vividly picture the scene), “Excuse the confused manner in which I write, as there are several people in my store asking me questions every minute.”

The fragrant flowers of the mahonia look like yellow lily-of-the-valley, the shiny holly-like leaves turn brilliant colors in autumn, and the blue-black fruit is edible and can make jelly or wine.

It was a temptation for American gardeners to make the New World an image of the Old. Only recently have we begun to appreciate that America does not have to mirror Europe. There were gardens here long before Europeans arrived, and some of our loveliest garden flowers are native to America. The fragrant flowers of the mahonia look like yellow lily-of-the-valley, the shiny holly-like leaves turn brilliant colors in autumn, and the blue-black fruit is edible and can make jelly or wine. It is a barberry and, strangely enough, related to our woodland May
apple. The Latinized Arabic word
berberis
may have come via the medical school of Salerno, where it was an important medicinal plant.

But mahonia is its American name. That it bears M'Mahon's name is a tribute to a man who believed in American ideals and thought only of the “probable good I can render . . . to my fellow-men.” M'Mahon said, “I do not begrudge a share to such of the brute animals as can possibly be benefitted thereby.” This is the tribute of a man who maybe had universal ideals. But presumably it was not what he said when he found American groundhogs had eaten his garden.

COMMON NAMES
: Oswego tea, monarda, bee balm, bergamot.
BOTANICAL NAME
:
Monarda
.
FAMILY
:
Lamiaceae
.

Oswego tea is perhaps better known as “bee balm” or “monarda,” but here it is called Oswego Tea in recognition that too few of our plants are known by Native American names, even though they were used for food or medicine long before Europeans came along. The Oswego Indians, who came from the region of the Oswego River (which means the “pouring-out place”), drank tea made from the monarda and taught the European settlers its uses.

Naming plants has always meant more than mere identification, and European settlers laid claim to American plants and animals by giving them European names. After the Declaration of Independence, Americans were eager to break all dominating ties with England, and we find new plants and animals being called for American botanists and explorers, even though the names were still Latinized. Native American names, however, were seldom used.

The Boston Tea Party led to a shortage of tea in America, so Oswego tea was used widely as a substitute for imported tea. Its scent is like that of oil of bergamot, one of the ingredients of Earl Grey tea. Earl Grey was on a diplomatic mission to China, and he had a special tea mixed for him with a secret recipe that he gave to Jackson of Piccadilly in 1830. Actually oil of bergamot comes from a kind of citrus called after Bergamo in Italy.

The name “bee balm” implies that the plant is attractive to bees. It is, but its long flower makes it less accessible to bees but easily accessible to hummingbirds. Hummingbirds were a source of delight and wonder to early American settlers. Peter Kalm (see “Mountain Laurel”) wrote that “an inhabitant of the country is sure to have a number of these beautiful and agreeable little birds before his window all summer long, if he takes care to plant a bed with all sorts of fine flowers under them.” This advice still applies today, for fashions in bird tastes alter less than fashions in gardening, and a bed of bee balm will be constantly visited by hummingbirds.

The name “monarda” is after Monardes (see “Nasturtium”) and is appropriate because he was particularly interested in medicinal plants from the New World. As he said, “The corporalle healthe is more excellent, and necessarie then the temporall goodes,” and he studied new plants, hoping to find new cures. The
Monarda fistulosa
, commonly called “wild bergamot,” gets its name from the Latin
fistulosus
(hollow), because of the long pipe-shaped flowers. It doesn't really matter which name you call it—as long as you plant it in your garden for the hummingbirds, because as Kalm further observed, “It is indeed a diverting spectacle to see these little active creatures flying about the flowers like bees.”

COMMON NAMES
: Peony, paeony, pinny.
CHINESE NAMES
:
Chishaoyao
(red peony),
sho yu
(most beautiful).
BOTANICAL NAME
:
Paeonia
.
FAMILY
: Until recently
Ranunculaceae
(buttercup), now
Paeoniaceae
.

Pliny the Elder tells us that the peony received its Greek name from Paeon, the pre-Apollonian physician of the gods. In the
Iliad
there is a description of Paeon stanching wounds with herbs that thicken the flow of blood, like rennet curdling milk. Some stories say that the healing god Asclepias became dangerously jealous because Paeon possessed the healing root, and Zeus changed Paeon into a plant to save him. By the time of Pliny (who died in the eruption of Vesuvius, in
A.D
. 79) the peony was attributed with the power to cure twenty different ills.

Some of the plants that the Greek gods created to eternalize those they loved hardly seem worthwhile, because they aren't very long
lived—but peonies can live for a hundred years or more if undisturbed. Indeed, they sometimes are the immortal remains of rural American families whose farms were abandoned and whose houses have crumbled. Where walls are barely traceable, a brilliant peony flowers in the wilderness of what was once a busy front yard. How peonies came from China to Europe is too far back for us to know, but very probably they came to Britain with the Romans. The first peony was the
Paeonia mascula
(or “male” peony), which was grown widely in medieval England, especially in monastery gardens. By 1548,
Paeonia officinalis
(“medicinal” peony), our most common peony today, had been introduced from Crete. But the two kinds of peony were thought for some time to be masculine and feminine versions of the same plant. The
Paeonia mascula
had a long, tapering root and pinnate leaves, and was used to treat male illnesses; the
Paeonia officinalis
, which had feathery leaves, was used for female illnesses. John Gerard said that peony seeds glow in the dark, but he dismissed the belief that they could only safely be dug up at night and other “superstitious and wicked ceremonies . . . found in the books of the most Antient Writers . . . vainly feined and cogged in for ostentation sake.”

John Gerard said that peony seeds glow in the dark, but he dismissed the belief that they could only safely be dug up at night and other “superstitious and wicked ceremonies.”

Though ancient peonies probably came from China too, the first
“Chinese” peony,
P. lactiflora
(milky-flowered), was sent to Joseph Banks at Kew in 1784 by the German naturalist Peter Pallas. It had been an important healing plant in China for centuries, but by this time the peonies' use in British gardens was mostly decorative, and when they were taken to America by settlers, it was not as healing plants.