The Plant World 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF POPULAR BOTANY 



OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE WILD FLOWER PRESERVATION SOCIETY 



OF AMERICA. 



VoL V. AUGUST, 190^. No. 8. 



ORIGIN OF PLANT NAMES. 



By Grace Niles. 

 U HISTORY. 



COMMON names of plants originated long before the Ionian and 

 Thessalian names of the Greeks or the Latin names of the 

 Romans were thought of ; possibly even centuries before Homer 

 sang or those early herbalists of Arcadia first determined to test and 

 designate the mystic and healing properties of plants ; the pre-human 

 type of the wandering Arabs and Gipsy bands of the interior lands of 

 Asia designated plants according to their healing or poisonous virtues 

 instinctively, as the lower order of people and beasts of the fields do 

 to-day. The modern scientific names are the outgrowth of advanced 

 civilization, and the Greek and Latin appellations, therefore, are but the 

 explanations of the earliest known common names. 



We are prone to ask the origins of many names which have fre- 

 quently quite outlived the identity of the species themselves. The 

 earliest records of plants, inclusive of their designations, virtues, poison- 

 ous and healing properties may be traced to Hippocrates, Aristotle, 

 and Theophrastus (500-400 B. C). These authors' works are filled with 

 oracular echoes of the traditions before them. 



Plant names in reality outlive their true origin, as the early poets 

 outlived their poems. The original names of flowers, therefore, have 

 clung to many species christened centuries before Christ, ever gathering 

 synonyms and confusion, through revision from Theophrastus' and 

 Dioscorides' day to our present century. 



