7o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



came through this curious belief in signatures. Its three-lobed leaves 

 were supposed to bear some resemblance to the lobes of the liver ; hence, 

 according to the doctrine of signatures, the plant must possess virtues 

 that would heal the manifold complaints of that organ. Whitlow grass, 

 the Draba verna of the botanist, was thought to be good for the whitlow 

 or felon. Bloodroot, because of its red juice, could cure the bloody flux. 

 Dandelion, dent de Icon, was so called, according to Prior, by one 

 Meyster Wilhelmus, a surgeon, as set forth in the Ortus Sanitatis of 

 1486, from its wonderful virtue in the curing of disease, likening it 

 to a lion's tooth. Saxifrage, comfrey, birthwort, eyebright, self-heal 

 or heal-all, St. John's-wort, sanicle and a host of other more or less 

 familiar wild flowers, each bore some token of its use in the healing of 

 various diseases. 1 



There were many plants, however, that were named for other reasons 

 than that of signature, plants that were not reckoned in the art of 

 simpling. The daisy was the ' eye of day ' — daeges-eage — of the old 

 Anglo-Saxons, but the daisy that we know in America — the pest of 

 the farmer and the delight of the wayfarer — is not the daisy of Chaucer 

 and of Shakespeare. It is the great or ox-eye daisy, a plant of a differ- 

 ent genus. Why the ' wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r ' of Britain's 

 fields never gained a foot-hold in this country, while the great, white 

 ox-eye has become naturalized as our American daisy, is one of those 

 questions which the student of distribution has to solve. If we can 

 not have the poet's flower itself we must at least have the name; that 

 is the privilege of our inheritance. It matters little if we give the 

 name to another, even though it be a 'pernicious weed'; the name, 

 aside from the intrinsic beauty of the flower, endows it with a charm 

 that can never fade. Our eastern buttercups are mainly naturalized 

 species. The one that is truly indigenous — the early crowfoot (Ranun- 

 culus fascicularis) — grows on rocky hillsides and in open woods, not 

 in fields and meadows. There is little that touches the fancy in either 

 'butter' or 'cup,' but join the two in one word and you have a picture 

 of green pastures sprinkled with gold. The name is an old one. It 

 appears in early English speech, and some authorities would derive it 

 from ' button-cop,' literally ' button-head,' allied to the French bouton 

 d'or. 'Butter-cup,' however, has survived, possibly by virtue of its 

 golden chalice, and the name must always be associated with childhood 

 and with spring — with delectable places in the heyday of life. King's- 

 cups and gold-cups are other old names, and cuckoo-buds was still 

 another epithet given to these flowers, for we find it in old dialects and 

 in poetry — 



1 This same religious significance is found in the term ' lady,' or ' ladies,' 

 applied to many plants both in England and America as a corruption of ' Our 

 Lady,' reference being to the Virgin Mary. From a more remote source, in 

 the old pagan mythology, ' Venus ' has survived in certain of our plant names — 

 as in Venus slipper (Cypripedium) , Venus comb, Venus looking-glass, etc. 



