1915^ OuK Mountain Shkubs 99 



man to lay our your grounds, lie is almost sure to use some 

 of these as marginal planting for the rhododendron and azalea 

 borders, to fill in beneath them and touch the ground. Its 

 name is yellow root, so called on account of the very bright 

 yellow root. The stem also is yellow. This yellow pigment 

 makes a persistent dye that was much used by the Indians, 

 and is, I think, still used by the mountain people of this 

 section. The plant has a little greenish blossom with a slight 

 tint of purple. 



The naming of plants is not entirely a bit of imagination, 

 though some of it is. Many plants are named for their 

 qualities, but many are named for men or states or countries, 

 and some even for sentimental reasons, as to compliment a 

 sweetheart. 



Carolus Linnaeus, the great Swedish botanist, and 

 founder of botanical nomenclature, named many of our 

 plants that were sent to him by collectors in the early days. 

 He used every possible consideration in naming plants, fre- 

 quently as a compliment to his friends, anf often to perpetu- 

 ate the names of the collectors or states. But often he was 

 purely fanciful, and sometimes perpetrated jokes with his 

 naming. 



There is a genus of flowers, some of them wild here, that 

 is closely related to the Wandering Jew. They have pretty 

 blue flowers that are conspicuous along embankments here. 

 In studying the flowers of one of these plants Linnaeus found 

 that they had two kinds of stamens; some perfect that pro- 

 duced pollen, and others sterile that produced nothing. When 

 he saw this it reminded him of three Dutch friends of his 

 named Commelin. They were brothers and all botanists. 

 Two of them were energetic men and published a good leal 

 of botanical investigation. The other brother was intelligent 

 but too lazy to publish anything. He would not take that 

 much trouble. So Linnaeus named this plant after the Com- 

 melin brothers who were also of two kinds, fertile and sterile. 



Here is the witch hazel which all of you know. It is from 

 this, by distillation, that they make the witch hazel that is 



