302 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 440. 



Monk Wood and High Beech call to mind the fact 

 that in this forest, as in every other part of England, there 

 is hardly a hill or vale or even a thicket which has not 

 a name which it has borne for generations. Wintry Wood, 

 Epping Thicks, Broad Strood, Honey Lane, Long Running, 

 Black Bushes, Fairmead Bottom, Round Thicket, Button- 

 seed Corner, The Hawk Wood, The Great Shrubbage, 

 Rushy Plain and many more are picturesque reminders of 

 some feature, or interesting as preserving some bit of local 

 history. It is a pity that some of our own park-makers 

 could not take a lesson from this habit and use the old names 

 of the places which they have converted into pleasure- 

 grounds when any such exist, instead of inventing some 

 sentimental compound often from another language. 



This adhesion to the old name in the forest is part of the 

 conservative spirit which insists on letting everything 

 alone, so that even when a tree falls the branches are cut 

 away and the trunk is left to serve as a seat where the vis- 

 itor may rest. And just here comes a problem which will 

 grow more and more puzzling as time goes on. The peo- 

 ple who insist that the forest must remain just as it is ought 

 to know that these mutilated pollards are anything but 

 natural, that they are permanently disfigured and will 

 never make respectable upright trees. The managers of 

 the forest are aware of this, and they know that the pol- 

 lards stand too thickly for their own wholesome develop- 

 ment, while the dense growth of their spindling branches 

 will destroy the beautiful undergrowth which took posses- 

 sion of the ground when the lopping of the trees let in the 

 light and air. They are aware that these clipped and arti- 

 ficial trees should be severely thinned out, and although 

 some of the gnarled and twisted trunks should be left 

 for their picturesque qualities, a vigorous use of the axe 

 is the one thing which the forest most needs. And 

 yet in England, as in America, whenever a tree is felled 

 the people raise a clamor as if it were a desecration, when 

 really this is only helping nature to reassert herself and 

 encourage genuine woods to take the place of an unnatural 

 growth. Young trees in abundance are coming up, and 

 if an opportunity were only given to them the whole terri- 

 tory could be renovated in fifty years and be a thousand 

 times more lovely than it would be if let alone. 



And another problem will soon be pressing. Many 

 parts of the forest are now thronged with visitors, but 

 other parts are often so lonely that one can find in them 

 almost the solitude of some of our primeval woods. As 

 the giant city sweeps to the north and envelops the 

 Forest the numbers of people who come to refresh them- 

 selves in its dark recesses will multiply. It will then be 

 more difficult to preserve the charm of natural forest con- 

 ditions. The undergrowth will be trampled to death ; 

 there will be need of drainage to make dry walks, and 

 this will sap the life of some of the trees ; the by-paths 

 will be worn wider ; the turf in the green roads will be 

 ruined. Then will come the same problem which presents 

 itself to the park-makers in our own country, where land is 

 set apart for refreshing the bodies and the minds of invad- 

 ing multitudes — the problem how to provide for human 

 convenience most completely and yet save as much of the 

 poetic beauty of the wood as possible. 



Plant Names of Indian Origin. — V. 



Tamarack (Larix Americana). — " The numerous descend- 

 ants of the Dutch in New Jersey call it [Larix] Tamarack " 

 (Michaux, Ainer. Sylva). The name was in use in Penn- 

 sylvania also at an early period. If the word were Indian, 

 as all dictionaries tell us, it would be Algonkin and belong 

 to the Delaware dialect of that language. But no meaning 

 can be extracted from it in its present form, and I have not 

 been able to find any other. The Algonkin root tarn means 

 " to cut," and ah, as an inseparable suffix, designates a 

 " standing tree," but the presence of the r renders the word 

 meaningless. If we reject this letter, we have a word mean- 

 ing "tree cutter, "an eastern Algonkin name for the beaver. 



Two explanations suggest themselves: (1) The word may 

 be a corruption of tacamahac, another early name for the 

 same tree, or (2), more probably, an alteration of tamarick 

 (for Tamarix, the species Gallica of which is sometimes 

 called "Cypress" in England), and which may have been 

 fancifully applied to the American Larch by the early colo- 

 nists from England, to which the European species is not 

 indigenous. In a list of New York plants given in Macauley's 

 History of New York (1829), the popular name "Larch" is 

 accompanied with its proper scientific designation, but 

 opposite the name " tamarac " is placed the genus name 

 Tamarix, without any indication of species. It is evident 

 that the compiler of the list regarded the word tamarack as 

 a corruption of tamarisk, vulgo tamarik or tamrik. The 

 Larch does not seem to have been put to any important 

 economic use by our Indians, and there are, therefore, but 

 few Algonkin names for it. None of those in my possession 

 bears the least resemblance to the word under considera- 

 tion. The name has been transferred to several western 

 conifers. 



Titi, otTy Ty (Cassandra calyculata, var. angustifolia). — 

 A name of the plant in one of the Indian languages of 

 Florida. It probably belongs to a dialect of the Timucua 

 family, now extinct, but which formerly occupied most of 

 the peninsula. A root is sometimes, as in the word under 

 consideration, reduplicated in Indian languages (especially 

 in the Carib dialects, to which the Timucua is supposed to 

 have been related) to indicate that the object specified by 

 the name thus formed is of very common occurrence or 

 exists in great abundance. Such is the case with the Cas- 

 sandra, which, according to Williams {Territory 0/ Florida, 

 1837), grows in crowded masses and constitutes the prin- 

 cipal shrub of the Florida "galls" and swamps. The 

 name has been applied also to Cliftonia ligustrina. 



Tobacco (Nicotiana). — From tobaco, the Taino (Haytian) 

 name for a Y-shaped inhaler, the branches of which were 

 inserted into the nostrils, while the stem was thrust into 

 the smoke of the burning herb. The name of the plant 

 (N. Tabacum)in the same language was cohiba. 



Tomato (Lycopersicum esculentum) — Formerly spelled 

 tomata, from Aztec tomatl, through Mex. -Span, tomate. 

 It is stated in Appleton's Cyclopedia that the name 

 means " water-berry " ; but this is an error. The word is 

 from a radical toma (the meaning of which in this connec- 

 tion cannot now be ascertained), with the suffix //, used in 

 the Aztec language to form nouns. As far as we can judge 

 from its applications, it seems to have been used simply as 

 a name for "fruit" without restriction (as in the case of 

 tsapotl, "sweet fruit," and xocoll, "sour fruit") as to char- 

 acter. Hernandez, in his chapter " De Tomatl " (Thes. 

 Reriuii Medic. Mex., ed. Reecho, 1649, p. 295), describes 

 several different kinds of tomatl, and, among them, the 

 xilomall, or "gourd tomate,"* which his editor identifies 

 as the Poma Amoris (the Lycopersicum esculentum of 

 modern botany). The word, with qualifying prefixes, was 

 the name of the fruit of several different genera of plants — 

 Lycopersicum, Physalis, Solanum, Saracha, Phytolacca, 

 Arbutus, Quercus, etc. 



Tuckahoe (Orantium aquaticum). — "Out of the ground, 

 the [Virginia] Indians dig earth-nuts, wild onions and a 

 tuberous root fhey call Tuckahoe, which, while crude, is 

 of a very hot and virulent quality; but they manage to 

 make bread of it " (Beverly's Hist, of Virginia). This was 

 probably Peltandra alba. Clayton's Flora assigns the name 

 to the subterranean production called by Fries Pachyma 

 cocos, sometimes styled Indian Loaf (" ad panem confici- 

 endum Indi utuntur" — Clayton), and, by the Pamlico Al- 

 gonkins, okeepen, "earth-root" (Hariot). The name was 

 generic among the eastern Algonkins for round or roundish 

 roots, and was also the name of an Indian "loaf," because 

 of its shape, just as we say " roll " for bread so fashioned. 

 The word is from p'tukweoo, "it is round," " it is shaped 

 like a ball." 





* So called from its resemblance, in shape, to a small 

 xicalti. 



Mexican cucurbit called 



