..k^■^ >. I 



TORREYA 



\'ol. 37 January-Fcl)ruary, 1937 No. 1 



Common names of common plants: Plant 

 lore from the dictionary 



Georgk T. Hastings 



Many, or most, of the common names of our plants came 

 from Europe, either with the plants, — as the daisy, dandelion, 

 and hundreds of others brought in purposely or accidentally — 

 or given to native plants related to or resembling Old World 

 ones.' Thus our Witch Hazel, Hamamelis virginiana, is unre- 

 lated to European plants of the same name, one an elm, Ulmus 

 montana, another a hornbeam, Carpinus. The name is from an 

 Old English word, wice or wic, meaning weak; the pliant twigs 

 of the elm were used in making bows, those of the hornbeam for 

 divining rods. Possibly because the name has been changed to 

 witch, magical properties have been assigned to the plant. In 

 "Travels Throughout the Interior Parts of North America," 

 written in 1778, supposedly by Jonathan Carver, it is stated 

 that "The Witch Hazel ... is possessed of the power of at- 

 tracting gold and silver, and twigs of it are made use of to dis- 

 cover where the veins of these metals lie hid." Hemlock is an 

 old Anglo-Saxon name for several poisonous umbelliferous 

 plants, especially Cicuttim and Conium, and given to our tree, 

 Tsuga, because of a slight resemblance of the leafy twigs to the 

 leaves of the poison hemlock, Conium. Mandrake is another 

 name applied to unrelated plants on opposite sides of the Atlan- 

 tic. In Mediterranean regions it is Mandragora officinalis of the 

 nightshade family, here it is the May Apple, Podophyllum pelta- 



^ Most of the derivations of the names given here are from Webster's 

 International Dictionary, others are from Murray's New English Dictionary. 

 In the American Botanist Wiilard Clute has been publishing articles on Plant 

 Names and their Meanings since 1919, describing chiefly scientific names, 

 but occasionally the common names as well. 



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