CII. — THE WELD. 
Reseda Liiteola Linne. 
I T certainly seems unfortunate that Linnaeus should have adopted two names so 
similar in sound and in significance for our two British species of Reseda as lutea 
and Luteola. Neither name can, however, be said to be inappropriate. By all our 
ordinary criteria the two plants are unquestionably placed in one genus, for which 
Pliny’s name Reseda is a suitable substantival term. Linnaeus, therefore, simply 
adopted Reseda lutea from John Bauhin’s “ Historia Plantarum ” (1650), in which 
lutea is merely an adjective meaning “ yellow,” although he might have made use of 
the Reseda vulgaris ot Caspar Bauhin’s “ Pinax ” ( 1 67 1 \ or the Reseda Plinii of Gerard. 
He might even have spelt the specific name lutea with a capital initial, since John 
Bauhin uses this name, taken from Pliny, generically. There seems, in fact, to have 
been the same doubt about the spelling of the name of this common dye in Classical 
times as there has been later with reference to its English name. Virgil treats it 
as a neuter lutum, though in his Fourth Eclogue it appears in the ablative case : — 
“ Ipse set! in pratis aries jam suave rubenti 
Murice, jam croceo mutabit vellera luto’* : 
“ But the ram in the meadows will now of his own accord change his fieece to a sweetly blushing red or to the yellow of 
weld,” 
where Messrs. Lonsdale and Lee unfortunately misrender the word by “ saffron.” 
Lutum was probably the earlier form of the name, luteus being an adjectival 
derivative implying “ that which pertains to lutum^" and hence “ yellow,” whilst lutea 
may have been originally a feminine agreeing with the noun herba^ not always 
expressed. 
In contradistinction to what they considered a larger related species, Lobel 
(1570), Johnson in his edition of Gerard’s “ Herbal,” Caspar Bauhin, Parkinson, and 
Ray, all call our Weld Luteola^ a diminutive from lutea ; and Linnasus in adopting 
this earlier generic name specifically does spell it with a capital. 
The plant, if boiled whole, when in bud, affords a beautiful yellow dye for 
wool, linen, silk, or cotton, or a green when used after woad or indigo. With 
aluminium or tin mordants these colours are bright and fast to light. The colouring- 
matter, luteolin^ is said to be most abundant in the seeds. It has been prepared 
artificially, but the process is expensive. Once widely cultivated throughout Europe 
for this use, the plant is now used only to a limited extent, especially for yellow 
woollen cloth and braid for military uniforms. The existence of the Latin names 
above mentioned, and of another and entirely distinct series of Teutonic source, 
suggests the independent and possibly primitive origin of the use of the plant as 
dye. The names IVoold^ Wold^ and Weld are, perhaps, connected with the word 
yellow^ and even with gold itself, the German Geld and gelb ; whilst their similarity — 
probably no mere coincidence — to woad, the Early English wad, has led to endless 
