274 ' COMMON NAMES OF PLANTS. [^September, 



blossom has a beautiful appearance^ and belongs to the genus 

 Bignotiia. 



I should like to know what the word cat is derived from, and 

 its original meaning. 



Gold Flowers. — I find several of our plants have taken their 

 names, from the precious metal ; and it appears to me that they 

 have been so named with reference more to the colour of the 

 flowers and fruit than to their qualities. I give you the result 

 of my reading, and hope it may find a place in the pages of the 

 ' Phytologist.^ 



In the glossary to Tyrwhitt's edition of Chancer, " Gold " is 

 said to be " a flower commonly called a Turnsol.^^ Gower says 

 that Leucothea was changed 



" Into a floure was named golde, 

 Which stood governed of the sonne." 



Phillips's Dictionary says, " Turnsole, a plant so called, because 

 its flowers turn towards the course of the sun. Goldilocks, or 

 Golden-tufts, a sort of herb. Marigold, a flower of a golden or 

 yellow colour. Golding, a kind of Apple. Gold en -rod, a herb 

 of a cleansing and binding quality. Gold-of-pleasure, the name 

 of a certain herb." Gerarde has, " Gold-flowers, Golden Moth- 

 wort or Golden Cudweed, Golden Flower- of-Peru, Golden Thistle, 

 Golden Trefoil, Golden-drops, Golden Flower-gentle." We have 

 Apples called the Golden Pippin and the Golden Rennet ; also 

 the Golding, which an old dictionary says is a kind of Apple. 



Dr. Trench, in his ' English, Past and Present,^ p. 235, says, 

 with reference to the Orange, that " it is no doubt a Persian 

 word, which has reached us through the Arabic, and which the 

 Spanish Naranja more nearly represents than any form of it 

 existing in the other languages of Europe. But what so natural 

 as to think of the Orange as the golden fruit, especially when 

 the ' aurea mala' of the Hesperides were familiar to all anti- 

 quity ?" There cannot be a doubt that aurum, or, made them- 

 selves felt in the shapes which the word assumed in the languages 

 of the West, and that here we have the explanation of the change 

 in the first syllable, as in the low Latin aurantium, orangia, and 

 the French orange, which has given us our own. 



It is probable that some of the readers of the ' Phytologist ' 

 can add more to this golden list, and give us further information 

 and synonyms. 



