Popular Names of Plants. 363 
Popular American plant names. 
FANNIE D. BERGEN. 
{At the request of the author and from plates kindly furnished by the editor of the 
Journal of American Folk-lore, Mr.W. W. Newell, the following is reprinted from that 
journal, both because of its intrinsic interest to botanists and for the sake of assisting 
the author in getting a more complete list of well authenticated local names. In this 
endeavor our readers are urged to codperate, by sending such names to Mrs. Fannie 
D. Bergen, 17 Arlington st., North Cambridge, Mass.—Ebs. } 
Tue following list of names of common wild and cultivated plants 
has been prepared in the hope that it may suggest to folk-lorists who 
have some acquaintance with botany the importance of recording 
and communicating such names as may come to their knowledge. 
This work has been very thoroughly done in Great Britain ; it is 
time that something like it should be attempted for our own flora. 
In some cases, when I have taken the name from some one’s de- 
scription, there has been uncertainty as to the species, although 
there was no doubt about the genus; so that, in a few instances, I 
have only been able to give the latter. : 
lt is interesting to notice the part certain nouns, used as adjec- 
tives or in composition, play in popular plant-names. Horse, cow, 
and du// have been generally used to designate unusually large and 
luxuriantly growing species, as the bull-thistle or horse-mint, or they 
are applied to coarse, common plants, as the horse-radish, the cow- 
Dog, pig, or sow generally seems to carry the idea of common- 
hess, as dog-fennel, pig-weed, sow-thistle. Goose and toad are less 
frequently used in much the same sense, ¢. g. ZO0Se-STASS, toad-flax. 
The word /zdian we find in constant use to distinguish wild species 
from those tame or more familiar ones which they somewhat closely 
Tesemble. Mollugo verticillata is thus called Indian chickweed, to 
distinguish it from the omnipresent common chickweed, S¢ellaria 
media, which is naturalized from Europe. Not iibrequen yy pe 
