PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
119 
Dr. Prior has decided that “ ‘ Filbert ’ is a barbarous com¬ 
pound of phillon or feuille , a leaf, and beard , to denote its 
distinguishing peculiarity, the leafy involucre projecting beyond 
the nut.” But in the times before Shakespeare the name was 
more poetically said to be derived from the nymph Phyllis, 
Nux Phyllidos is its name in the old vocabularies, and Gower 
(“ Confessio Amantis ”) tells us why— 
“ Phyllis in the same thro we 
Was shape into a Nutte-tree, 
That alle men it might see; 
And after Phyllis philliberde 
This tre was cleped in the yerde ” (Lib. quart.), 
and so Spenser spoke of it as “ 1 Phillis ’ philbert ” (Elegy 
o )- 1 
The Nut, the Filbert, and the Cobnut, are all botanically 
the same, and the two last were cultivated in England long 
before Shakespeare’s time, not 
only for the fruit, but also, and 
more especially, for the oil. 
There is a peculiarity in the 
growth of the Nut that is worth 
the notice of the botanical 
student. The male blossoms, 
or catkins (anciently called 
“ agglettes or blowinges ”), are 
mostly produced at the ends of 
the year’s shoots, while the pretty 
little crimson female blossoms 
are produced close to the branch; 
they are completely sessile or 
unstalked. Now in most fruit 
trees, when a flower is fertilized, 
the fruit is produced exactly in the same place, with respect to 
1 “ Hie fullus—a fylberd-tre.”— Nominale, 15th cent. 
“ Fylberde, notte—Fillum.” 
“ Filberde, tre—Phillis .”—Promptorium Parvidorum. 
“ The Filbyrdes hangyng to the ground .”—Squyr of Lowe Degre , 37. 
