Plant Names 293 



of the Deity. Our Lady's Flowers are many and 

 interesting; my daughter wrote a series of articles 

 for the New York Evening Post on Our Lady's 

 Flowers, and the list swelled to a surprising num- 

 ber. The devil and witches have their shares of 

 flowers, as have the fairies. 



I have always regretted deeply that our botanists 

 neglected an opportunity of great enrichment in 

 plant nomenclature when they ignored the Indian 

 names of our native plants, shrubs, and trees. The 

 first names given these plants were not always 

 planned by botanists ; they were more often invented 

 in loving memory of English plants, or sometimes 

 from a fancied resemblance to those plants. They 

 did give the wonderfully descriptive name of Moc- 

 casin-flower to that creature of the wild-woods ; and 

 a far more appropriate title it is than Lady's-slipper, 

 but it is not as well known. I have never found the 

 Lady's-slipper as beautiful a flower as do nearly all 

 my friends, as did my father and mother, and I 

 was pleased at Ruskin's sharp comment that such a 

 slipper was only fit for very gouty old toes. 



Pappoose-root utilizes another Indian word. Very 

 few Indian plant names were adopted by the white 

 men, fewer still have been adopted by the scientists. 

 The Catalpa speciosa (Catalpa) ; the Zea mays 

 (Maize); and Yucca filamentosa (Yucca), are the 

 only ones I know. Chinkapin, Cohosh, Hackma- 

 tack, Kinnikinnik, Tamarack, Persimmon, Tupelo, 

 Squash, Puccoon, Pipsissewa, Musquash, Pecan, 

 the Scuppernong and Catawba grapes, are our only 

 well-known Indian plant names that survive. Of 



