116 FAMILIAR TREES 



fifteenth-century as " pet-tre," a name I have found 

 nowhere else. 



Turner, in his " Names of Herbes," gives the first 

 botanical mention of the species in England. Under 

 " Cornus " he writes : ' The female is pletuous in 

 Englande, and the buchers make prickes of it, some 

 cal it Gadrise, or dog tree, howe be it there is an other 

 tree that they cal dogrise also." He seems here , to 

 recognise " rise " as meaning tree or rather under- 

 shrub ; but to have no suspicion of the meaning of 

 Gadrise or its connection with Dogrise. Neither 

 apparently had Gerard, when, enumerating it as 

 the Dogberrie-tree in the Catalogue of his garden, he 

 says in his " Herball " (1597), " In the North countrey 

 they call it Gaten tree, or Gater tree, the berries 

 whereof seem to be those which Chaucre calleth Gater 

 beries." 



It is interesting to come across this reference to 

 Chaucer in Gerard's " Herball " ; but the passage in the 

 " Nonnes Preestes Tale " to which it relates has the 

 further importance that it indicates the use of the 

 berries of the Dogwood as a laxative in the fourteenth 

 century, while Philip Miller in the eighteenth tells us 

 that they were often brought to market and sold as 

 those of the Buckthorn. Partelote, the hen, in 

 Chaucer's poem, recommends Chaunticlere, the cock, 

 to have " laxatives ... of gaitre-berries." 



Parkinson, too, evidently thinks the popular name 

 requires explanation, and adopts a bold one. " We 

 for the most part," he says, " call it the Dogge berry 

 tree, because the berries are not fit to be eaten, or to 

 be given to a dogge. I heare they call this in the 



