153 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
“ Round thee blow, self-pleached deep, 
Bramble Roses, faint and pale, 
And Long Purples of the dale .”—A Dirge, Tennyson. 
But in both these passages the plant intended is the Lythrum 
sa/icaria, or Purple Loosestrife. 
The meadow Orchis, though so common, is thus without 
any common English name; for though I have often asked 
country people for its name, I have never obtained one; and 
so it is another of those curious instances which are so hard fo 
explain, where an old and common English word has been re¬ 
placed by a Greek or Latin word, which must be entirely without 
meaning to nine-tenths of those who use it. 1 There are similar 
instances in Crocus, Cyclamen, Hyacinth, Narcissus, Anemone, 
Beet, Lichen, Polyanthus, Polypody, Asparagus, and others. 
The Orchid family is certainly the most curious in the 
vegetable kingdom, as it is almost the most extensive, except 
the Grasses. Growing all over the world, in any climate, and 
in all kinds of situations, it numbers three thousand species, of 
which we have thirty-seven native species in England; and 
with their curious irregular flowers, often of very beautiful 
colours, and of wonderful quaintness and variety of shape, they 
are everywhere so distinct that the merest tyro in botany can 
separate them from any other flower, and the deepest student 
can find endless puzzles in them, and increasing interest. 
Though the most beautiful are exotics, and are the chief 
ornaments of our stoves and hothouses, yet our native species 
are full of interest and beauty. Of their botanical interest we 
have a most convincing proof in Darwin’s “ Fertilization of 
Orchids,” a book that is almost entirely confined to the British 
Orchids, and which, in its wonderfully clear statements, and its 
1 Though country people generally have no common name for the Orchis 
morio , yet it is called in works on English Botany the Fool Orchis ; and it 
has the local names of “Crake-feet” in Yorkshire; of “ giddy-gander” in 
Dorset; and “ Keatlegs and Neatlegs” in Kent. Dr. Prior also gives 
the name “ Goose and goslings ” and “Gander-gooses” for Orchis morio, 
and “ Standerwort ” for Orchis mascula. This last is the Anglo-Saxon 
name for the flower, but it is now, I believe, quite extinct. 
