Two Phlox, One Flock
By WILFRID BLUNT
HE librarkan of one of the Bavarian municipal libraries (I quote from a German newspaper), distressed at the trash that the public demanded, decided to make a simple experiment. Choosing a number of well-known classics, he provided them with bogus title-pages, re-bound them with alluring titles and the names of fictitious authors, and palmed them off on his unsuspecting clients. Goethe's Wahlver- wandschaften (" Elective Affinities "), which had never before left the shelves, had an immediate succes fou when relabelled Liebe im Schatten ("Love in the Shade "), and there was a big demand for other works by the talented unknown author.
Such is the power of a name ! Glancing through the pages of a horticultural dictionary, one wonders how some of the plants in it have managed to survive the crippling disability of their baptism. The ordinary gardener, who probably possesses a memory that is not particularly remarkable, a little Latin and perhaps a smattering of Greek, is faced at the very outset of his career with a problem that only grows in intensity as he advances further into the realths of horticulture—the problem of learning and remembering the names of his plants and of pronouncing them correctly. The whole system of nomenclature seems designed to perplex him. It is little con- solation to him to be told that the system has the great advantage of being international; he merely feels a further pang of pity for his fellow-sufferers the world over.
Now it may well seem an admirable idea to immortalise the great botanists of the past by naming a genus or a species in their honour; unfortunately; however, their names are not always very well designed for reposing in the memory or for slipping lightly off the tongue. That Michauxia Tchihatcheffi is not more frequently grown may in part be due to a certain difficulty in referring to it in public. Names like Townshendia Wilcoxeana are perhaps easier, but they are far from beautiful; and I do not know that much was gained (except, no doubt, from a scientific point of view) by changing Higginsia Ghies- breghtii to Hoffmannia Ghiesbreghtii. Cheirostemon is admittedly better than Macpalxochitlquahuitl; but what about Zantedeschia Lutwychei, Dizygotheca Kerchoveana, Gutier- rezia gymnospermoides, Warscewiczella Wailesiana and Echinofossulocactus Wippermanni i ? How do you like the Schombolaeliocattleya hybrids ?
Then there is that cosmopolitan genus the Odontoglossum, with such forbidding specific names as Imschootianu►n, Hrub- yanum, Uro-Skinneri, Boddaertianum, Godseffiatzum and Vuylstekeanum. (I feel as though I could pronounce the last of these, but, may be wrong.) Reginald Farrer, in The English Rock Garden, has a good sentence about Paeonia Mlokose- witschi: " This pleasant little assortment of syllables should be practised daily, but only before dinner (unless teetotal prin- ciples of the strictest are adopted), by all who wish to talk familiarly of a sovereign among paeonies—a rare plant, and rendered almost impregnable by its name." But it must not be forgotten that we can give as good as we take; I should very much like to conceal myself behind the Iron Curtain when the Russian botanists are talking about their coiquhounias.
Again, though it is clearly appropriate to name flowers after botanists when they are associated with their discovery or introduction—e.g. Gentiana Farreri—the practice is misleading when no such connection exists. The good old herbalist Fuchs had been dead for more than a century when Plumier dis- covered an American plant which he named fuchsia in his honour; and the memory of the Rev. Adam Buddle, a seven- teenth-century country rector with a taste for mosses, is ill kept green by the flaunting, exotic buddleia. (This, incidentally, is a good example of an unpromising name which has become quite euphonious.) Many common specific names are also misleading, even though they may be scientifically sound. Why should the snow- white Christmas rose be Helleborus 'tiger ? Because, we are told, the invisible root-stock is of "a darkish colour. The fine- leaved little harebell apparently bears the deceptive name of Campanula rotundifolia because before the flowering season it carries a few radicItl heart-shaped leaves.
Let us now consider the actual problem of pronunciation. Greek and Latin plant-names, and those derived from classical words, were presumably first pronounced by botanists with the correct stresses and vowel-lengths. In the course of time, how- ever, many have been corrupted by common usage—often for so long that it would be mere pedantry to try to restore the correct form. You will never now persuade people to pronounce veronica with the stress on the penultimate syllable, though veronica cannot even be defended if we abandon the probable derivation, from pepovfxl, in favour of the improbable one frOm the Arabic virro nikoo (beautiful remembrance). Other examples of common mispronunciations are : crocus (" o " should be short), lilium (first " i " long), anemone (" o " long and stressed), clematis (" e " long and stressed), azalea (second a " short), and rhododendron (first " o " short). These pronunci- ations only apply to scientific usage; anemone (sometimes even spelt anemony) and crocus are now as English as the English pronunciation of the word " Paris," Then there is the question of flowers named after persons. Fuchsia and camellia seem firmly to have adopted their erroneous pronunciations. The former is possibly difficult without some knowledge of German; but why the latter, named after Camellus—the Latin form (as was then the custom) of the name of Father Kamel, a seventeenth-century Moravian Jesuit —should ever have become " cameelia " remains a mystery. Fowler (Modern English Usage) predicts that the correct pro- nunciation will conquer when the spelling becomes familiar. I very much doubt it; nor do I think that he will prevail upon gardeners to call eschscholtzia " isholtsia." Nicholson, in his Dictionary of Gardening, has some shrewd remarks to make about modern names used botanically : " Why, for instance, should the modern Englishman, Dr. Stokes, be first transformed into the Roman St5-Ice-si-us, and then handed down to posterity in the Sto-Ice- si- a, when his memory would be much more fitly embalmed in the homely Stokes-I-a, with three syllables instead of four ? " And he proceeds to predict the horrors of attempting to pronounce colquhounia on the supposition that it has passed through a Latin stage.
I have not mentioned the battle between the old and new pronunciations of Latin and Greek; it would take far more space than I have at my disposal to say anything of value on this subject, and in any case t am wholly unqualified to hold an opinion. Nor have I touched upon more vulgar errors, such as the failure to recognise the Greek " chi " in chimonan- thus or anchusa (but colchicum, with " ch " as in " church," has come to stay); nor on a yet worse confusion of singulars and plurals: two phlox, one flock; gladiolas and gladiola; coleas and colea (Coleus); and, odder still, cosmea and cosmeas (Cosmos). (But who knows ? In fifty years' time it may be pedantic to use any other forms.) As if suffering from a reaction from the horrors of scientific nomenclature, the nurserymen and their friends are now passing to the other extreme in their names for garden varieties. Nothing will ever induce me to grow the iris named " Cheerio," lovely though it is; nor do I much care for " Blue Rhythm," " Lovely Melody " or "And Thou." The nauseating nadir is achieved by the miniature daffodils, " Little Witch, " Fairy Circle," " Xit," " Tweeny " and, most awful of all, " Wee Bee ' ; you can almost see them opening their teeny-weeny buds among a riot of little pottery gnomes and toadstools.
But I have kept my gravest charge to the last. I think that the most irritating trick of the botanists is that of changing the name of a plant just as soon as one has managed to commit it to memory. I am glad to see that a member of the Garden Club of America has launched a powerful attack on this pro- cedure, and that the Royal Horticultural Society has had the courage to reprint it in its journal. The author quotes the best-known and most flagrant example. When I was young there was a popular shrub called Pyrus japonica, known familiarly as japonica." As a child I can remember my mother saying : Come and look at the japonica." But I knew better : I had discovered it was really a pyrus. No sooner had I mastered the name than the botanists changed it to Cydonia lagenaria. Again I caught up, only to find it rechristened Cydonia japonica. And now, as you doubtless know, it has become Chaenomeles lagenaria ! No film-star, no Paris street, could be more inconstant in nomenclature.
My criticisms, I admit, are mainly destructive. The botanists have got us all into this fix, and it is for them to get us out of it. Of course specific names can be, and not infrequently are, sensible and informative—e.g. microphyllus, small-leaved), cristatus (crested)—and this method of naming might become the universal practice. But so long as the policy is maintained of restoring to a plant its oldest name, changes in nomenclature will occur each time a new record is brought to light; and so long as gentlemen with names such as Mlokosewitsch go plant hunting and desire immortality there will be little rest for our tongues.
Previous page
