Free 100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names by Diana Wells Page A

they were shipwrecked in Australia, Banks noted that the “almost certainty of being eat” on shore added to the unpleasantness. But he returned home and was director of the Royal Botanic Gardens for forty-two years. He was the instigator and patron of a great era of botanical exploration and sent Francis Masson, Archibald Menzies, Joseph Hooker, Clarke Abel, and David Nelson on their trips.
    The everlasting flower was popular with the Victorians to make fireplace screens and otherwise decorate their hot, stuffy parlors where houseplants often couldn’t survive. It is used nowadays in winter bouquets of dried flowers, which rival silk flowers in popularity. By the middle of winter both get rather dusty, and it is doubtful if even Solomon could get a bee to choose between them.

FORGET-ME-NOT
    BOTANICAL NAME :
Myosotis
. FAMILY :
Boraginaceae
.

    Its botanical name comes from the Greek
mus
(mouse) and
otis
, from
ous
(ear). This is from the rather touching perception that the leaves are shaped like a mouse’s ears. John Gerard called it “scorpion grass” and believed that it cured scorpion bites, though there are no scorpions in England—but maybe it was best to be prepared.
    The name “forget-me-not” comes from the Old French
ne m’oubliez mye
, which in turn was a translation of the German
vergiss mein nicht
. The best known legend about the flower is of a German knight picking a posy of forget-me-nots for his beloved as they strolled together on a riverbank. He slipped and fell in, but before drowning he threw her the flowers, crying, “
Vergiss mein nicht
.” This excruciating story could really only have merit were it to be sung onstage with a suitably distraught and bosomy soprano and some excellent trap-door mechanisms. Botanically it doesn’t hold much water.
    Blue is a celestial color and it almost always clothes the VirginMary in medieval paintings. Flies reputedly will avoid blue rooms, which is why dairies were often painted blue. Gardeners treasure blue flowers, which are rarer than any other color in our borders. Blue and yellow are also the colors that most attract insect pollinators, which is what interested Christian Sprengel in forget-me-nots. Sprengel, rector of Spandau in Germany, was investigating the role that colors of flowers play in the process of insect pollination. He so neglected his pastoral duties to pursue botany that he was dismissed from his post. In 1793 he published
The Newly Revealed Mystery of Nature in the Structure and Fertilization of Flowers
, which demonstrated his belief that all nature had a connected purpose. It was, however, unenthusiastically received by his contemporaries, leaving him too depressed to publish anything more. It was not until 1841 that Charles Darwin read the book and recognized the truths in it, which he incorporated into his own research.
    â€œForget-me-not” is one of the few flower names that almost everyone knows and remembers.
    â€œForget-me-not” is one of the few flower names that almost everyone knows and remembers, and the flowers commonly decorate Valentine cards and the like. They grow in damp places and are, indeed, bluer than the Virgin’s robe. The most memorable place they grew, however, was in Lady Chatterley’s pubic hair, where her gamekeeper lover planted them, saying, “There’s forget-me-nots in the right place.” When she looked down at the “odd little flowers among the brown maiden-hair,” she said, “Doesn’t it look pretty!” The gamekeeper’s reply is unforgettable: “Pretty as life,” he said.

FORSYTHIA
    COMMON NAMES : Forsythia, golden-bell.
BOTANICAL NAME :
Forsythia
. FAMILY :
Oleaceae
.

    The Scottish gardener William Forsyth was a showy character, like the shrub that bears his name. After Robert Fortune (see “Bleeding Heart”) had brought forsythia back from China and it had become popular, its ease of