Can you recommend a book that talks about the origins of the common names of plants, not just their botanical Latin equivalents?
The best book I have found is Geoffrey Grigson’s A Dictionary of English Plant Names, published by Allen Lane in 1974. It goes into a great deal of detail, and usually provides the approximate date when the name came into use. Another good resource is Flowers and Plants: An International Lexicon with Biographical Notes, by Robert Shosteck (Quadrangle, 1974).
Is the California foothill pine the same as a digger pine? Will it grow in the Pacific Northwest?
Foothill pine is a more acceptable common name for Pinus sabiniana. It is also referred to as gray pine, or ghost pine and, less commonly, see-through pine (because of its open, lacy structure). The name ‘digger pine’ originated during the California Gold Rush of the nineteenth century, when prospectors noticed Native Americans foraging (‘digging’) for pine nuts, roots, and bulbs. The gold-diggers referred to the native people as Digger Indians, a term that is now considered derogatory. James Hickman, editor of The Jepson Manual: Higher Plants of California (University of California Press), made a point of referring to the tree as foothill pine or gray pine, including a note asking people not to use the pejorative name: “I think this is better than not mentioning the issue at all.” In Sandra Strike’s Ethnobotany of the California Indians (Koeltz, 1994), the author says that Native Americans used a digging stick to forage bulbs and roots “without disturbing other plants. Natives were appalled when they saw the large holes and destruction caused by non-natives’ ‘modern’ digging tools. Many California Natives prefer that Pinus sabiniana be called ‘Gray Pine.'” The large cones of this pine were important as a food source, with seeds rich in oil and protein.
According to Arthur Lee Jacobson’s Trees of Seattle (2006), this three-needled pine with substantial cones, somewhat sparse, gray-tinted, and weeping foliage, is rare in Seattle. There are specimens in the Washington Park Arboretum, UW campus, the Chittenden Locks, and Rodgers Park. Because of its native range (which is mostly hot, dry, and rocky), the main thing you might want to consider is whether you can provide a site that has excellent drainage and warmth. In California, it is often found in growing near Ceanothus cuneatus and native oaks.
What are the origins of the expression, “the toolies?” I grew up using it to mean the boondocks, or the wild outskirts, or what some people call the sticks.
‘The sticks’ is an obvious reference to a forested area (trees are mere sticks to city slickers?!), and ‘the boondocks’ is from bundok, the Tagalog word for mountain, but ‘the toolies’ (also spelled tules) has roots in northern California, where it refers to two species of bulrush (both formerly in the genus Scirpus, now Schoenoplectus acutus var. occidentalis and Schoenoplectus californicus). Deeper down, it is borrowed from the Spanish tule, a colonial era borrowing of tollin or tullin, the Nahuatl word for various types of reeds and bulrushes.
An article by Joe Eaton in Bay Nature magazine (January-March 2004 issue) discusses the expression’s etymology as well as the plants, and their California associations (with marshlands, indigenous uses of the plant, and more). There is also a winter phenomenon called ‘tule fog.’
For more on the etymology of the expression, see Mark Liberman’s entertaining article on Language Log, “Ultima Toolies.”
Next time you go for a walk in the toolies/tules, keep in mind that the common tule, Schoenoplectus acutus, is a Washington native found in wetlands and riparian areas on both sides of the Cascades. There’s a good chance you could be out in the tules if you explore the Center for Urban Horticulture’s Union Bay Natural Area!
How did the dog rose get its name?
The name dog rose, or Rosa canina, can be traced as far back as ancient Greece. The Greek physician Hippocrates, and later the Roman naturalist Pliny, believed that a cure for the bite of a rabid dog could be made from the roots. There are alternate theories but their histories cannot reach back as far. Some say the name is from ‘dag’ rather than dog, and that it refers to the dagger-sharp thorns. But this seems implausible, given how many fiercely thorny rose species there are. Some also claim that is it a pejorative name, as in ‘a dog of a rose,’ an inferior flower. Again, there is no history backing this theory.
According to Elsevier’s Dictionary of Plant Lore (edited by D. C. Watt, Academic Press, 2007), the medicinal property of the the rose’s roots came from a mother’s dream about her soldier son who had been bitten by a mad dog. In the dream, a voice told her to make a decoction of a wild rose’s roots, “which they call Cynorrhodon,” and she followed this advice, healing her son of his ailment.
While reading a book on British woodlands, I came across a reference to a flower whose common name is ‘town hall clock.’ Can you tell me what plant it is, and why it has this name?
Townhall Clock’s scientific name is Adoxa moschatellina, in the Adoxaceae family. Other common names for this native British wildflower are Moschatel, Five-Faced Bishop, Muskroot, Tuberous Crowfoot, and Hollowroot. All of those names are descriptive of various aspects of the plant’s appearance, but the name Townhall Clock is evocative of the way this pale yellow-green early spring flower rises up on a slender stem. According to Sarah Raven (in her book Wild Flowers, Bloomsbury, 2012), four faces of the flower are “arranged as if on the surface of a cube, the fifth facing upwards.” The aroma of the flowers is musky, or like “elder blossom with a bit of almond.”
There are some detailed photos of it on this Finnish plant identification website. Despite the name Townhall Clock, it’s a subtle flower that might easily be overlooked. In fact, its genus name means “without glory,” due to its unshowy blooms.
You may never have wondered about the etymology of vernacular names for plants, but Geoffrey Grigson, author of A Dictionary of English Plant Names (Allen Lane, 1974), has. Why exactly is ‘henbane’ (Hyoscyamus niger) the bane of hens, aside from the fact that it is toxic? It might be because the plant thrives on disturbed or hen-scratched earth, where hens would be more likely to find and consume its poisonous seeds (which will either stun or kill them). [There is a more recent interpretation suggesting that the ancient root hen meant death, but the meaning was lost, and relating the name to domestic fowl filled in the knowledge gap. Source: An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology by Anatoly Liberman, University of Minnesota, 2008]
The folk history of traditional English plant names is colorful and captivating. ‘Brank-ursine’ is a 15th century name meaning bear’s claw, describing the shape of an Acanthus mollis flower. One common name for Sedum telephium is ‘Midsummer Men,’ originating in a loves-me-loves-me-not game of the 17th century in which cook-maids and dairy-maids placed pairs of stems in chinks in the wall and waited to see if they inclined toward or away from each other. Every time I consult this book I learn something new and fascinating.