LONG PURPLES.

[148:1]Pods of the Carob tree were found in a house at Pompeii. For an account of the use of the Locust as an article of food, both in ancient and modern times, see Hogg's "Classical Plants of Sicily," p. 114.

In "Flowers from Stratford-on-Avon" (a pretty book published a few years ago with plates of twelve of Shakespeare's flowers) it is said that "there can be no doubt that the Wild Arum is the plant alluded to by Shakespeare as forming part of the nosegay of the crazed Ophelia;" but the authoress gives no authority for this statement, and I believe that there can be no reasonable doubt that the Long Purples and Dead Men's Fingers are the common purple Orchises of the woods and meadows (Orchis morio, O. mascula, and O. maculata). The name of Dead Men's Fingers was given to them from the pale palmate roots of some of the species (O. latifolia, O. maculata, and Gymnadenia conopsea), and this seems to have been its more common name.

"Then round the meddowes did she walke,Catching each flower by the stalke,Such as within the meddowes grew,As Dead Man's Thumb and Harebell blew;And as she pluckt them, still cried she,Alas! there's none 'ere loved like me."

Roxburghe Ballads.

As to the other names to which the Queen alludes, we need not inquire too curiously; they are given in all their "liberality" and "grossness" in the old Herbals, but as common names they are, fortunately, extinct. The name of Dead Men's Fingers still lingers in a few places, but Long Purples has been transferred to a very different plant. It is named by Clare and Tennyson—

"Gay Long-purples with its tufty spike;She'd wade o'er shoes to reach it in the dyke."

Clare'sVillage Minstrel, ii, 90.

"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 salicaria, 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so it is another of those curious instances which are so hard to explain, where an old and common English word has been replaced by a Greek or Latin word, which must be entirely without meaning to nine-tenths of those who use it.[150:1]There are similar instances in Crocus, Cyclamen,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 3000 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 laborious collection of many little facts all leading up to his scientific conclusions, is certainly not the least to be admired among his other learned and careful books. And as to their horticultural interest, it is most surprising that so few gardeners make the use of them that they might. They were not so despised in Shakespeare's time, for Gerard grew a large number in his garden. It is true that some of them are very impatient of garden cultivation, especially those of the Ophrys section (such as the Bee, Fly, and Spider Orchises), and the rare O. hircina, whichwill seldom remain in the garden above two or three years, except under very careful and peculiar cultivation. But, on the other hand, there are many that rejoice in being transferred to a garden, especially O. maculata, O. mascula, O. pyramidalis, and the Butterfly Orchis of both kinds (Habenaria bifolia and chlorantha). These, if left undisturbed, increase in size and beauty every year, their flowers become larger, and their leaves (in O. maculata and O. mascula) become most beautifully spotted. They may be placed anywhere, but their best place seems to be among low shrubs, or on the rockwork. Nor must the hardy Orchid grower omit the beautiful American species, especially the Cypripedia (C. spectabile, C. pubescens, C. acaule, and others). They are among the most beautiful of low hardy plants, and they succeed perfectly in any peat border that is not too much exposed to the sun. The only caution required is to leave them undisturbed; they resent removal and broken roots; and though I hold it to be one of the first rules of good gardening to give away to others as much as possible, yet I would caution any one against dividing his good clumps of Cypripedia. The probability is that both giver and receiver will lose the plants. If, however, a plant must be divided, the whole plant should be carefully lifted, and most gently pulled to pieces with the help of water.

[150:1]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 names "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.

The Mace is the pretty inner rind that surrounds the Nutmeg, when ripe. It was no doubt imported with the Nutmeg in Shakespeare's time. (SeeNutmeg.)

The Mallow is the common roadside weed (Malva sylvestris), which is not altogether useless in medicine, though the Marsh Mallow far surpasses it in this respect. Ben Jonson speaks of it as an article of food—

"The thresher . . . feeds on Mallows and such bitter herbs."

The Fox, act i, sc. 1.

It is not easy to believe that our common Wild Mallow was so used, and Jonson probably took the idea from Horace—

"Me pascant olivæ,Me chichorea, levesque malvæ."

But the common Mallow is a dear favourite with children, who have ever loved to collect, and string, and even eat its "cheeses:" and these cheeses are a delight to others besides children. Dr. Lindley, certainly one of the most scientific of botanists, can scarcely find words to express his admiration of them. "Only compare a vegetable cheese," he says, "with all that is exquisite in marking and beautiful in arrangement in the works of man, and how poor and contemptible do the latter appear. . . . Nor is it alone externally that this inimitable beauty is to be discovered; cut the cheese across, and every slice brings to view cells and partitions, and seeds and embryos, arranged with an unvarying regularity, which would be past belief if we did not know from experience, how far beyond all that the mind can conceive, is the symmetry with which the works of Nature are constructed."

As a garden plant of course the Wild Mallow has no place, though the fine-cut leaves and faint scent of the Musk Mallow (M. moschata) might demand a place for it in those parts where it is not wild, and especially the white variety, which is of the purest white, and very ornamental. But our common Mallow is closely allied to some of the handsomest plants known. The Hollyhock is one very nearrelation, the beautiful Hibiscus is another, and the very handsome Fremontia Californica is a third that has only been added to our gardens during the last few years. Nor is it only allied to beauty, for it also claims as a very near relation a plant which to many would be considered the most commercially useful plant in the world, the Cotton-plant.

There is, perhaps, no plant on which so many books and treatises (containing for the most part much sad nonsense) have been written as the Mandrake, and there is certainly no plant round which so much superstition has gathered, all of which is more or less silly and foolish, and a great deal that is worse than silly. This, no doubt, arose from its first mention in connection with Leah and Rachel, and then in the Canticles, which, perhaps, shows that even in those days some strange qualities were attributed to the plant; but how from that beginning such, and such wide-spread, superstitions could have arisen, it is hard to say. I can scarcely tell these superstitious fables in better words than Gerarddescribed them: "There hath been many ridiculous tales brought up of this plant, whether of old wives or some runagate surgeons or physicke-mongers I know not. . . . They adde that it is never or very seldome to be found growing naturally but under a gallowes, where the matter that has fallen from a dead body hath given it the shape of a man, and the matter of a woman the substance of a female plant, with many other such doltish dreams. They fable further and affirme that he who would take up a plant thereof must tie a dog thereunto to pull it up, which will give a great shreeke at the digging up, otherwise, if a man should do it, he should surely die in a short space after." This, with the addition that the plant is decidedly narcotic, will sufficiently explain all Shakespeare's references. Gerard, however, omits to notice one thing which, in justice to our forefathers, should not be omitted. These fables on the Mandrake are by no means English mediæval fables, but they were of foreign extraction, and of very ancient date. Josephus tells the same story as held by the Jews in his time and before his time. Columella even spoke of the plant as "semi-homo;" and Pythagoras called it "Anthropomorphus;" and Dr. Daubeny has published in his "Roman Husbandry" a most curious drawing from the Vienna MS. of Dioscorides in the fifth century, "representing the Goddess of Discovery presenting to Dioscorides the root of this Mandrake" (of thoroughly human shape) "which she had just pulled up, while the unfortunate dog which had been employed for that purpose is depicted in the agonies of death."[154:1]All these beliefs have long, I should hope, been extinct among us; yet even now artists who draw the plant are tempted to fancy a resemblance to the human figure, and in the "Flora Græca," where, for the most part, the figures of the plants are most beautifully accurate, the figure of the Mandrake is painfully human.[154:2]

As a garden plant, the Mandrake is often grown, but more for its curiosity than its beauty; the leaves appear early in the spring, followed very soon by its dull and almost inconspicuous flowers, and then by its Apple-like fruit. This is the Spring Mandrake (Mandragora vernalis), but the Autumn Mandrake (M. autumnalisormicrocarpa) may be grown as an ornamental plant. The leaves appear in the autumn, and are succeeded by a multitude of pale-blue flowers about the size of and very much resembling the Anemone pulsatilla (see Sweet's "Flower Garden," vol. vii. No. 325). These remain in flower a long time. In my own garden they have been in flower from the beginning of November till May. I need only add that the Mandrake is a native of the South of Europe and other countries bordering on the Mediterranean, but it was very early introduced into England. It is named in Archbishop Ælfric's "Vocabulary" in the tenth century with the very expressive name of "Earth-apple;" it is again named in an Anglo-Saxon Vocabulary of the eleventh century (in the British Museum), but without any English equivalent; and Gerard cultivated both sorts in his garden.

[154:1]In the "Bestiary of Philip de Thaun" (12 cent.), published in Wright's Popular Treatises on Science written during the Middle Ages, the male and female Mandrake are actually reckoned among living beasts (p. 101).

[154:2]For some curious early English notices of the Mandrake, see "Promptorium Parvulorum," p. 324, note. See also Brown's "Vulgar Errors," book ii. c. 6, and Dr. M. C. Cooke's "Freaks of Plant Life."

There are at least three plants which claim to be the old Marigold. 1. The Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris). This is a well-known golden flower—

"The wild Marsh Marigold shines like fire in swamps and hollows gray."

Tennyson.

And there is this in favour of its being the flower meant, that the name signifies the golden blossom of the marish or marsh; but, on the other hand, the Caltha does not fulfil the conditions of Shakespeare's Marigold—it does not open and close its flowers with the sun. 2. The Corn Marigold (Chrysanthemum segetum), a very handsome but mischievous weed in Corn-fields, not very common in England and said not to be a true native, but more common in Scotland, where it is called Goulands. I do not think this is the flower, because there is no proof, as far as I know, that it was called Marigold in Shakespeare's time. 3. The Garden Marigold or Ruddes (Calendula officinalis). I have little doubt this is the flower meant; it was always a great favourite in our forefathers' gardens, and it is hard to give any reason why it should not be so in ours. Yet it has been almost completely banished, and is now seldom found but in the gardens of cottages and old farmhouses, where it is still prized for its bright and almost everlasting flowers (looking very like a Gazania) and evergreen tuft of leaves, while the careful housewife still picks and carefully stores the petals of the flowers, and uses them in broths and soups, believing them to be of great efficacy, as Gerard said they were, "to strengthen and comfort the heart;" though scarcely perhaps rating them as high as Fuller: "we all know the many and sovereign vertues . . . in your leaves, the Herb Generall in all pottage" ("Antheologie," 1655, p. 52).

The two properties of the Marigold—that it was always in flower, and that it turned its flowers to the sun and followed his guidance in their opening and shutting—made it a very favourite flower with the poets and emblem writers. T. Forster, in the "Circle of the Seasons," 1828, says that "this plant received the name of Calendula, because it wasin flower on the calends of nearly every month. It has been called Marigold for a similar reason, being more or less in blow at the times of all the festivals of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the word gold having reference to its golden rays, likened to the rays of light around the head of the Blessed Virgin." This is ingenious, and, as he adds, "thus say the old writers," it is worth quoting, though he does not say what old writer gave this derivation, which I am very sure is not the true one. The old name is simplygoldes. Gower, describing the burning of Leucothoe, says—

"She sprong up out of the moldeInto a flour, was named Golde,Which stant governed of the Sonne."

Conf. Aman., lib. quint.

Chaucer spoke of the "yellow Goldes;"[157:1]in the "Promptorium Parvulorum" we have "Goolde, herbe, solsequium, quia sequitur solem, elitropium, calendula;" and Spenser says—

"And if I her like ought on earth might readI would her liken to a crowne of Lillies,Upon a virgin brydes adorned head,With Roses dight and Goolds and Daffodillies."

Colin Clout.

But it was its other quality of opening or shutting its flowers at the sun's bidding that made the Marigold such a favourite with the old writers, especially those who wrote on religious emblems. It was to them the emblem of constancy in affection,[157:2]and sympathy in joy and sorrow, though it was also the emblem of the fawning courtier, who can only shine when everything is bright. As the emblem of constancy, it was to the old writers what the Sunflower was to Moore—

"The Sunflower turns on her god when he setsThe same look which she did when he rose."

It was the Heliotrope or Solsequium or Turnesol of our forefathers, and is the flower often alluded to under that name.[158:1]"All yellow flowers," says St. Francis de Sales, "and, above all, those that the Greeks call Heliotrope, and we call Sunflower, not only rejoice at the sight of the sun, but follow with loving fidelity the attraction of its rays, gazing at the sun, and turning towards it from its rising to its setting" ("Divine Love," Mulholland's translation).

Of this higher and more religious use of the emblematic flower there are frequent examples. I will only give one from G. Withers, a contemporary of Shakespeare's later life—

"When with a serious musing I beholdThe grateful and obsequious Marigold,How duly every morning she displaysHer open breast when Phœbus spreads his rays;How she observes him in his daily walk,Still bending towards him her small slender stalk;How when he down declines she droops and mourns,Bedewed, as 'twere, with tears till he returns;And how she veils her flowers when he is gone.When this I meditate, methinks the flowersHave spirits far more generous than ours,And give us fair examples to despiseThe servile fawnings and idolatriesWherewith we court these earthly things below,Which merit not the service we bestow."

From the time of Withers the poets treated the Marigold very much as the gardeners did—they passed it by altogether as beneath their notice.

[157:1]"That werud of yolo Guldes a garland."The Knightes Tale.

[157:1]

"That werud of yolo Guldes a garland."

The Knightes Tale.

[157:2]"You the Sun to her must play,She to you the Marigold,To none but you her leaves unfold."Middleton and Rowley,The Spanish Gipsy.See also Thynne's "Emblems," No. 18; and Cutwode's "Caltha Poetarum," 1599, st. 18, 19.

[157:2]

"You the Sun to her must play,She to you the Marigold,To none but you her leaves unfold."

Middleton and Rowley,The Spanish Gipsy.

See also Thynne's "Emblems," No. 18; and Cutwode's "Caltha Poetarum," 1599, st. 18, 19.

[158:1]"Solsequium vel heliotropium; Solsece vel sigel-hwerfe" (i.e., sun-seeker or sun-turner).—Ælfric'sVocabulary."Marigolde; solsequium, sponsa solis."—Catholicon Anglicum.In a note Mr. Herttage says, "the oldest name for the plant wasymbglidegold, that which moves round with the sun."

[158:1]"Solsequium vel heliotropium; Solsece vel sigel-hwerfe" (i.e., sun-seeker or sun-turner).—Ælfric'sVocabulary.

"Marigolde; solsequium, sponsa solis."—Catholicon Anglicum.

In a note Mr. Herttage says, "the oldest name for the plant wasymbglidegold, that which moves round with the sun."

In Shakespeare's time several species of Marjoram were grown, especially the Common Marjoram (Origanum vulgare), a British plant, the Sweet Marjoram (O. Marjorana), a plant of the South of Europe, from which the English name comes,[159:1]and the Winter Marjoram (O. Horacleoticum). They were all favourite pot herbs, so that Lyte calls the common one "a delicate and tender herb," "a noble and odoriferous plant;" but, like so many of the old herbs, they have now fallen into disrepute. The comparison of a man's hair to the buds of Marjoram is not very intelligible, but probably it was a way of saying that the hair was golden.

[159:1]See "Catholicon Anglicum," s.v. Marioron and note.

We still call the fruit of beech, beech-masts, but do not apply the name to the acorn. It originally meant food used for fatting, especially for fatting swine. See note in "Promptorium Parvulorum," p. 329, giving several instances of this use, and Strattmann, s.v. Mæst.

The Medlar is an European tree, but not a native of England; it has, however, been so long introduced as to be now completely naturalized, and is admitted into the English flora. It is mentioned in the early vocabularies, and Chaucer gives it a very prominent place in his description of a beautiful garden—

"I was aware of the fairest Medler treeThat ever yet in alle my life I sie,As ful of blossomes as it might be;Therein a goldfinch leaping pretileFro' bough to bough, and as him list, he eetHere and there of buddes and floweres sweet."

The Flower and the Leaf(240).

And certainly a fine Medlar tree "ful of blossomes" is a handsome ornament on any lawn. There are few deciduous trees that make better lawn trees. There is nothing stiff about the growth even from its early youth; it forms a low,irregular, picturesque tree, excellent for shade, with very handsome white flowers, followed by the curious fruit; it will not, however, do well in the North of England or Scotland.

It does not seem to have been a favourite fruit with our forefathers. Bullein says "the fruite called the Medler is used for a medicine and not for meate;" and Shakespeare only used the common language of his time when he described the Medlar as only fit to be eaten when rotten. Chaucer said just the same—

"That ilke fruyt is ever lenger the wersTill it be rote in mullok or in stree—We olde men, I drede, so fare we,Till we be roten, can we not be rype."

The Reeves Tale.

And many others writers to the same effect. But, in fact, the Medlar when fit to be eaten is no more rotten than a ripe Peach, Pear, or Strawberry, or any other fruit which we do not eat till it has reached a certain stage of softness. There is a vast difference between a ripe and a rotten Medlar, though it would puzzle many of us to say when a fruit (not a Medlar only) is ripe, that is, fit to be eaten. These things are matters of taste and fashion, and it is rather surprising to find that we are accused, and by good judges, of eating Peaches when rotten rather than ripe. "The Japanese always eat their Peaches in an unripe state. In the 'Gartenflora' Dr. Regel says, in some remarks on Japanese fruit trees, that the Japanese regard a ripe Peach as rotten."

There are a few varieties of the Medlar, differing in the size and flavour of the fruits, which were also cultivated in Shakespeare's time.

[160:1]So Chester speaks of it as "the Young Man's Medlar" ("Love's Martyr," p. 96, New Sh. Soc.).

The Mints are a large family of highly-perfumed, strong-flavoured plants, of which there are many British species, but too well known to call for any further description.

The Mistletoe was a sore puzzle to our ancestors, almost as great a mystery as the Fern. While they admired its fresh, evergreen branches, and pretty transparent fruit, and used it largely in the decoration of their houses at Christmas, they looked on the plant with a certain awe. Something of this, no doubt, arose from its traditional connection with the Druids, which invested the plant with a semi-sacred character, as a plant that could drive away evil spirits; yet it was also looked upon with some suspicion, perhaps also arising from its use by our heathen ancestors, so that, though admitted into houses, it was not (or very seldom) admitted into churches. And this character so far still attaches to the Mistletoe, that it is never allowed with the Holly and Ivy and Box to decorate the churches, and Gay's lines were certainly written in error—

"Now with bright Holly all the temples strow,With Laurel green and sacred Mistletoe."

The mystery attaching to the Mistletoe arose from the ignorance as to its production. It was supposed not to grow from its seeds, and how it was produced was a fit subject for speculation and fable. Virgil tells the story thus—

"Quale solet sylvis brumali frigore viscumFronde virere novâ, quod non sua seminat arbos,Et croceo fœtu teretes circumdare truncos."

Æneid, vi, 205.

In this way Virgil elegantly veils his ignorance, but his commentator in the eighteenth century (Delphic Classics)tells the tale without any doubts as to its truth. "Non nascitur e semine proprio arboris, at neque ex insidentum volucrum fimo, ut putavere veteres, sed ex ipso arborum vitali excremento." This was the opinion of the great Lord Bacon; he ridiculed the idea that the Mistletoe was propagated by the operation of a bird as an idle tradition, saying that the sap which produces the plant is such as "the tree doth excerne and cannot assimilate," and Browne ("Vulgar Errors") was of the same opinion. But the opposite opinion was perpetuated in the very name ("Mistel: fimus, muck," Cockayne),[163:1]and was held without any doubt by most of the writers in Shakespeare's time—

"Upon the oak, the plumb-tree and the holme,The stock-dove and the blackbird should not come,Whose mooting on the trees does make to growRots-curing hyphear, and the Mistletoe."

Browne,Brit. Past.i, 1.

So that we need not blame Gerard when he boldly said that "this excrescence hath not any roote, neither doth encrease himselfe of his seed, as some have supposed, but it rather commethe of a certaine moisture gathered together upon the boughes and joints of the trees, through the barke whereof this vaporous moisture proceeding bringeth forth the Misseltoe." We now know that it is produced exclusively from the seeds probably lodged by the birds, and that it is easily grown and cultivated. It will grow and has been found on almost any deciduous tree, preferring those with soft bark, and growing very seldom on the Oak.[163:2]Those who wish for full information upon theproportionate distribution of the Mistletoe on different British trees will find a good summary in "Notes and Queries," vol. iii. p. 226.

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