274 CHAPTER XX XV II. 



eatable. Botanically speaking, a fruit need not be eat- 

 able. He took the flower which I held in my hand, 

 parted the tassel of stamens, and looked where the 

 ovary should be. " No," said he, with a sagacious 

 air, " that flower cannot produce any seeds, because 

 it has no pod." Now the " pod," as gardeners call it, 

 of the Caper flower is stipitate, that is to say, it is 

 perched upon a particularly long stalk, so that it 

 occupies the position usually held by the stigma. 

 That is why the gardener failed to find it. A little 

 knowledge is a dangerous thing ! 



The Ni^ois gardeners' rendering of plant-names 

 is very amusing : " Habrothamnus " becomes 

 " Brotanus," " Heliotrope " is " Vanille," and so on. 

 Our English gardeners also play some strange tricks 

 with Greek and Latin, and even with English, words. 

 A gardener in the Nottingham Arboretum told me 

 that he had just been planting an " Edger Golly." 

 I made him say the word again : no variation. Did 

 he know the botanical name ? No, not he ! Then I 

 asked to see the plant. What was it ? " Je vous le 

 donne en vingt." A " Hedge hog holly." Too many 

 consecutive aspirates. 



How can we wonder that a gardener should be 

 puzzled by some of the botanical names. What is an 

 illiterate person to make of " Mesembryanthemum " ? 

 We cannot blame him much if by means of metathesis, 

 crasis, and other grammatical expedients he simplifies 

 these sesquipedalian terms. After all this is the self- 

 same process by which our modern languages have 

 been enriched. " Eleemosune " is far too long : Ger- 

 man reduces it by half, " Almosen," three syllables 

 instead of six ; French cuts these down to two, 



