BULB BARNS, NAMES, AND GROWERS 115 



hot poker, as also you call it. If you must have 

 some other name than Kniphofia (though I do 

 not myself perceive that it is necessary or the one 

 easier than the other), if you must, I say, well 

 then, it is perhaps best you have * red-hot poker,' 

 it is at worst but childish and shows no mistake 

 in classification. But you would far sooner have it 

 a lily, I know ; all things must be called ' lily ' now, 

 I cannot tell why — Gladiolus, 'the Sword Lily,' 

 Vallota, ' the Scarborough Lily,' — the Scarborough 

 Lily ! One can almost as well have called it the 

 Margate Potato ! 



" It is the one thing I have against the English 

 amateurs — not all, of course, but many — they will 

 not call a plant by its name, they will have what 

 they call a 'simple' or perhaps ' old-fashioned ' 

 name. But it is ridiculous. If a flower has long 

 had a simple name, as the primrose, the foxglove, 

 well and good ; if it has had it in the common 

 language so long or longer than it has another of 

 the botanists, why then one has no quarrel with 

 a man for using it. But if it is a flower of late 

 days, and there has come to it first the name of 

 the botanist — the man who makes it some other 

 ' simple ' name, which is also quite erroneous, and 

 seems to class it as lily or as some other when it 



