rin ip 
SOME VERNACULAR NAMES OF PLANTS. 
Rev. FREDERIC ADDISON, M.A., 
Thirsk. 
Ir is often observed that the spread of education among the working 
and other classes will cause future generations to regret if proper 
care is not now taken to record peculiar words, which, though not 
recognised in classical English, have a philological value. I have 
lately been trying to clear up the derivation of some of the vernacular 
plant names, and have found much assistance from a work by the 
present Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, the Rev. John Earle ; 
and also from a ‘ Nomenclator Octilinguis,’ printed at Geneva in 
1619, and founded on the work of Adrianus Junius. This latter 
work professes to include equivalent English names, but in the case 
of plants, trees, shrubs, and parts of plants, it is totally silent ; 
probably at that period, any works by our English botanists would 
be almost unknown on the Continent. 
I have selected a few examples, which I hope may prove of 
interest, and may lead others, who have greater facilities by means 
of public libraries, to pursue the subject. 
Mr. Earle shows that there has been another name for the rose 
in England. We may imagine that the monks and the few learned 
men in the Middle Ages would prefer to use the word Rose, on 
account of its Latin and Greek origin. But in early times the word 
heopa signified rose. It is hiufa in Old High Dutch. We have at 
present, in the vernacular around Thirsk, a compound name for the 
fruit of the wild rose: the prefix is ca¢, and the ending is jwg. 
Hip, by gradual transition from Old Saxon hiopa, in Cumberland 
(where I resided nearly forty years ago, and the antiquarians were 
much interested in the word), becomes choops; and Mr. Earle says 
that the briar is thus called the choop-tree. This word is the 
connecting-link to our cat-jug. 
This prefix cat, I would say, has no reference to the animal of 
that name, although certain plants are called cat-mint, etc. I trace 
its use from cat-jug, to cat-haw (in this locality used for the word 
haws), and to the fruit of the ash tree, called in Teesdale ¢at-i-hees ; 
and in some places in the North, called cat-and-keys ; also kitty-kees 
in north-east Cleveland. This last joins on with dumble-kite (in our 
locality), meaning the fruit of the bramble. This prefix dumdle is 
no doubt derived from the old German for a bushy place (nidere 
Baumlin). I may observe that a many vernacular forms of common 
words in this locality are from the Belgian and German, on account 
April 1892, 
