100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (26 page)

Plants of the beautiful plume poppy should be accepted from friends with caution. Gifts of them bring to mind the famous gardener, Miss Willmott, of whom Sir William Thistleton-Dyer said in her obituary: “As gardeners go she was not considered generous and one looked carefully at gift plants for fear they might be fearful spreaders.” Though plume poppies spread rampantly, they are extraordinarily beautiful and on summer mornings the large leaves are covered with tiny dewdrops that catch the light against their dull blue-gray surface.

The hardy plume poppy is called
Macleaya cordata
or
Bocconia cordata
, from the Latin
cor
(heart), because of its heart-shaped leaves, which really are more like the outstretched palms of blue hands, holding dozens of glinting pearls. The name “bocconia” is for the Sicilian botanist and medical doctor Paolo Bocconi. The plant first given his name would have been the
Bocconia frutescens
, which came from Peru or Mexico in 1739 and is not hardy.

The more robust Chinese plume poppy was sent to Kew Gardens by George Staunton in 1795. Staunton held the office of “minister plenipotentiary” on Lord George Macartney's unsuccessful expedition to China in 1792. This mission to obtain better trading conditions with China failed, despite presents for the emperor worth more than fifteen thousand pounds. But then the only person who spoke Chinese in the European party of one hundred strong was George Staunton's son, Thomas, who was eleven years old! Luckily for gardeners they managed to collect a surprising number of plants on the way back. The man who actually found the bocconia for Staunton was one of the two gardeners in the party, John Haxton. He was acknowledged botanically in 1831 when the haxtonia, a tree aster from Australia, was dedicated to him, but the name was later dropped.

The story of Macartney's embassy nevertheless became popular reading. In Jane Austen's
Mansfield Park
, written in 1814, the heroine, Fanny Price, is interrupted by her cousin Edmund, who resolves to save family propriety by taking part in a play he disapproves of. As he leaves to arrange this, he says to Fanny, “
You
in the meanwhile will be taking a trip into China, I suppose. How does Lord Macartney go on? (opening a volume on the table).” The plume poppy later acquired another name,
Macleaya cordata
, after Alexander Macleay, who was colonial secretary of New South Wales and secretary of the Linnaean Society in London.

The plume poppy has a plume-like flower, although it is usually grown for its distinctive leaves. As with all “invasive” plants, this characteristic can make it invaluable, if it can also be controlled. But that's a concept that doesn't only apply to the world of plants.

COMMON NAMES
: Poinsettia, Christmas flower.
BOTANICAL NAME
:
Euphorbia pulcherrima
.
FAMILY
:
Euphorbiaceae
.

The poinsettia was named for Dr. Joel Roberts Poinsett, U.S. ambassador to the newly independent Republic of Mexico from 1825 to 1829. He was also a keen botanist and gardener, and he introduced the American elm to Mexico as well as sending the poinsettia to America. The poinsettia, whose color comes not from its flowers (which are an insignificant yellow), but from its brilliant bracts, was used in Mexico to decorate churches at Christmastime and called
flor de la noche buena
, or “Nativity flower.”

The plant was not the only thing called after Poinsett. His policies in Mexico were unpopular, and the Mexicans coined the word
“poinsettismo”
to describe intrusive and officious behavior. He was an active politician at home and a member of the House of Representatives and of the Unionist party in South Carolina, which supported the Doctrine of Nullification—the rights of individual states to set aside federal
laws that violated their “compact” with the American Constitution. In 1837 he was secretary of war. He was also a founder of the National Institute for Promotion of Science and Useful Arts, which later became the Smithsonian.

Though it comes from mostly tropical Mexico, the poinsettia is a short-day plant and only sets flowers when the nights are long and the days short. In its native country it grows to sixteen feet, but it is widely raised here in greenhouses for Christmas. If you wish to make it bloom again next Christmas, you must practice a little
poinsettismo
against its natural inclinations and cover it like a pet parrot early every evening so it gets no light. It is a member of the euphorbia, or spurge, family, called after Euphorbus, physician to Juba, king of the ancient kingdom of Mauretania. King Juba was married to Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Antony and Cleopatra. There is a tradition that Dioscorides, who wrote the famous
De Materia Medica
, was Antony and Cleopatra's physician, so it is not too fanciful to suppose that Euphorbus had an interest in botany. The name “spurge” comes from the Old French
espurge
, and it was one of the powerful purgatives used in the Middle Ages to rid the body of “evil humors” like black bile and melancholy. Taken in quantity, however, the euphorbias are poisonous, and their sap can cause a blistery rash—so the Christ child's flower should be kept well away from animals and children.

Mexicans coined the word
“poinsettismo”
to describe intrusive and officious behavior.

COMMON NAMES
: Poppy, popple
(Old English)
.
BOTANICAL NAME
:
Papaver
.
FAMILY
:
Papaveraceae
.

An intensely simple, intensely floral flower,” said John Ruskin of the field poppy in
Proserpina
. “All silk and flame: a scarlet cup . . . like a burning coal fallen from Heaven's altars. . . . No sparing of colour anywhere—no outside coarseness—no interior secrecy.”

The botanical name is from the Latin
papaver
, possibly going back to
pap
, a milky food that could have associations with the opium poppy's milky juice. The field or corn poppy,
Papaver rhoeas
, takes its name from the Greek
rhoeas
, possibly from the root
rho
(red). The substance rhoeadine is found in the flowers, and when you see the intense, glittering mass of a poppy field, it is not surprising to find that the color is from a specific chemical.

Corn poppies thrive in soil that has been freshly turned, because the seeds need light to germinate. This is the sad reason why they flourished so exceedingly in the battlefields of France during and after the First World War. The ground had been churned and turned by
guns and battles, and poppy seeds, now exposed to the light, germinated by the millions. Forever after the red corn poppy has been associated with war.

The dried petals of the corn poppy contain a soothing substance that the ancients used medicinally, but it is not comparable to the milky latex of the opium poppy,
Papaver somniferum
, which has been known medicinally since before we really have records. The opium poppy's name comes from the Latin
somnus
(sleep) and
ferre
(to bring). The narcotic opium is derived from this latex, which is allowed to dry on the slashed seed pods and then scraped off; it gets its name from the Greek
opion
or
opos
, meaning “vegetable juice.”

It is quite legal to buy the white seeds of
Papaver somniferum
var.
hortense
in America too, and in fact many nurseries sell them, but it isn't technically legal to grow poppies from them.

The actual seeds of the opium poppy are not narcotic, and the dark seeds of the
Papaver somniferum
are used widely in bread and cakes. It is quite legal to buy the white seeds of
Papaver somniferum
var.
hortense
in America too, and in fact many nurseries sell them, but it isn't technically legal to grow poppies from them. The Oriental poppies, which are perennials, sound much more daring, but are in fact harmless as far as opium goes. Another garden poppy is the apricot and coral colored Iceland poppy, or
Papaver nudicaule
(from the Latin for “bare-stemmed”).

Shirley poppies were bred from field poppies
by the Rev. William Wilks, vicar of Shirley, in Surrey. While admiring a patch of corn poppies in the field behind his house, he noticed one of them had a small band of white along the edges of its bright red petals. He climbed into the field (he was not, one imagines, wearing his cassock), marked the poppy, and later sowed its seeds in his garden. Every year he selected out all the flowers except his white-edged variety, which gradually changed until he had bred a rainbow of new colors on a pure white petal base.

Poppies are easy to grow but cannot be moved. The seeds have to be thrown down where they will be. Even then the dabs of impressionist brilliance they give our gardens are not always where we plan them. “The Poppy is the slyest magician of the whole garden,” wrote Alice Morse Earle. “He comes and goes at will. This year a few blooms, nearly all in one corner; next year a blaze of color banded across the middle of the garden like the broad scarf of a court chamberlain. Then a single grand blossom quite alone in the pansy bed, while another pushes up between the tight close leaves of the box edging:—the poppy is
queer
.”

BOTANICAL NAME
:
Primula
.
FAMILY
:
Primulaceae
.