116 FAMILIAR TREES 
fifteenth-century as “ pet-tre,” a name I have found 
nowhere else. 
Turner, in his “ Names of Herbes,” gives the first 
botanical mention of the species in England. Under 
“Cornus” he writes: ‘The female is plétuous in 
Englande, and the buchers make prickes of it, some 
cal it Gadrise, or dog tree, howe be it there is an other 
tree that they cal ‘dogrise also.” He seems here. to 
recognise “rise” as meaning tree or rather under- 
shrub; but to have no suspicion of the meaning of 
Gadrise or its connection with Dogrise. Neither 
apparently had Gerard, when, enumerating it as 
the Dogberrie-tree in the Catalogue of his garden, he 
says in his “ Herball ” (1597), “In the North countrey 
they call it Gaten tree, or Gater tree, the berries 
whereof seem to be those which Chaucre calleth Gater 
beries.” 
It is interesting to come across this reference to 
Chaucer in Gerard’s “ Herball” ; but the passage in the 
“ Nonnes Preestes Tale” to which it relates has the 
further importance that it indicates the use of the 
berries of the Dogwood as a laxative in the fourteenth 
century, while Philip Miller in the eighteenth tells us 
that they were often brought to market and sold as 
those of the Buckthorn. Partelote, the hen, in 
Chaucer’s poem, recommends Chaunticlere, the cock, 
to have “laxatives . . . of gaitre-berries.” 
Parkinson, too, evidently thinks the popular name 
requires explanation, and adopts a bold one. “We 
for the most part,” he says, “call it the Dogge berry 
tree, because the berries are not fit to be eaten, or to 
be given to a dogge. I heare they call this in the 
