38 POPULAR NAMES 



CAPON'S TAIL, from its spreading white flowers, 



Valeriana officinalis, L. 



CAPBIFOLY, M.Lat. caprifolium, goat's leaf, a mistake 

 for capparifolium, caper-leaf, the woodbine, which, in an 

 Anglo-Saxon translation of Dioscorides quoted by 0. Cock- 

 ayne (v. ii. p. 302), is spoken of as one ")>e man capparis 

 and oj>rum naman wudubend hate^," which is called cap- 

 paris, and by another name woodbine. The similarity of 

 the leaf of this shrub to that of the caper, and its habit of 

 growing about walls and rocks, very naturally led the 

 northern nations to confuse them together, and the blunder- 

 ing mistake of cappari for eapri has given rise to the Fr. 

 chevrefeuille, G. geiss-blatt, etc. Lonicera Caprifolium, L. 



CARDOON, Fr. cordon, L. cardunculus, dim. of carduus, a 

 thistle, Cynara Cardunculus, L. 



CARLINB THISTLE, L. Carolina, so named after Charle- 

 magne, Carl de groote, of whom the legend relates, as we 

 learn from Tabernsemontanus (vol. ii. p. 391), that " A 

 horrible pestilence broke out in his army, and carried off 

 many thousand men, which greatly troubled the pious 

 emperor. Wherefore he prayed earnestly to God, and in 

 his sleep there appeared to him an angel, who shot an 

 arrow from a cross-bow, telling him to mark the plant upon 

 which it fell, for that with that plant he might cure his 

 army of the pestilence. And so it really happened." The 

 herb thus miraculously indicated was this thistle. 



Carlina vulgaris, L. 



CARNATION, incorrectly derived in general from the flesh 

 colour of the flowers, and supposed to -be connected with 

 L. carne, but more correctly spelt by our older writers 

 coronation, as representing the Vetonica coronaria of the early 

 herbalists, and so called from its flowers being used in 

 chaplets, corona. So Spenser, in his Shepherd's Calendar : 

 " Bring coronations and sops in wine 

 "Worn of paramours." 



Dianthus Caryophyllus, L. 



