THE NAMES OF FLOWERS 



PEOPLE who are not gardeners often complain 

 that the names of unfamiliar flowers are apt to 

 be ugly, inappropriate, and difficult to remember. 

 A beautiful pink trumpet-shaped blossom catches 

 their eye and they ask you the name of it. When 

 you tell them Incarvillea Delavayi, they are not 

 satisfied. 1 They demand an English name, a name 

 appropriate to its beauties, and one that will call 

 them to mind by its mere look and sound; a name, 

 in fact, like daffodil or honeysuckle. They forget, 

 or they do not know, that all flowers, even those 

 which have the prettiest fancy names, have also 

 business names for purposes of identification, which 

 are often no prettier and no more significant than 

 Incarvillea Delavayi itself. Honeysuckle, for in- 

 stance, when botanists talk about it, becomes Loni- 

 cera. The buttercup is Ranunculus acris and the 

 daisy Bellis perennis. Now honeysuckle was prob- 

 ably called honeysuckle in England long before it 

 got the name of Lonicera; but newly discovered 

 plants do not carry pretty names on collars round 

 their necks. Names have to be invented for them for 

 purposes of identification; names, too, that will serve 



1 A new fern at the Holland House Show (London), July, 1916, is thus chris- 

 tened: Polystichum angulare divisilobum plumosum Perry's No. 1. L. Y. K. 



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