SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
43 
its popular names. The herb itself, so well known to 
the poisoners of the time, is the monk’s-hood or wolfs¬ 
bane ( Aconitum napellus, L.), a plant naturalized in 
England in shady places near streams, but truly wild 
through the greater part of Europe to the Himalaya 
region. Many other forms were known, and in 
Gerard’s garden, besides that we have mentioned, 
the great yellow Swiss species, A. lycoctonum , L., and 
A. pyramidale, grew (“ Herbal,” 820-823). It is but 
once mentioned, and that in 2 Henry IV., IV. iv. 47 : 
Though it do work as strong 
As aconitum or rash gunpowder. 
But the poison of the apothecary in Romeo and 
Juliet, V. i., may be that extracted from this terribly 
deadly plant. 
The flower we next consider is supposed to be 
referred to in the following lines : 
He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes 
verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May ; he will 
carry’t, he will carry’t, ’tis in his buttons; he will carry’t. 
—Merry Wives, II. ii. 67. 
In the Elizabethan age more than one double 
flower was alluded to under the name of bachelor’s- 
buttons, and supposed to have some mystic effect on 
lovers’ affairs. Chief among them stands the double 
buttercup ( Ranunculus acris, jl. pi.) and the double 
featherfew ( Matricaria parthenium, Jl . pi.), and even 
the daisy was included in this category. But by the 
Warwickshire peasantry of to-day the name is applied 
to the two caryophyllaceous plants whose flowers 
certainly resemble fairly well the linen buttons of 
the old-world rustics—the white and pink campion, 
Lychnis alba, Mill/* and L. dioica, L., so common in 
every shady hedge-bank. Of these, the pink form is 
* The old L. vespertma , Sibth. 
