When I was a just a young sprout, every summer I would grow, from seed, in my father's crowded backyard garden, a small plot of snapdragons. Inasmuch as I had, or seemed to have in those years, endless time, I became a connoisseur of the plant's growth habit: its elongated long smooth leaves with their pastel undersides, its spikes of buds, opening from bottom to top, its varied colors, and especially its unusual flower. I'd watch the bees lift the "dragon's" jaw, squeeze inside, sometimes to temporarily trap themselves within. As much as loved the flower, I think I loved its name even more. "Snapdragon"-- a euphonious, crunchy, satisfying, evocative sound -- scary too, but how can a flower be scary?
I recently opened the first of this year's seed catalogs to find the favorite flower of my springtime listed as "antirrhinum." The scientific name is not inaccurate -- it's Latinized Greek for "snoutlike" -- but I have to say that antirrhinum is not a word that sings to me. It sounds less like a border annual than a cold remedy..
The modern plant breeders, intent on appearing to be learned and scientific, have gone too far. I want the old names back. Not lathyrus, but sweet pea; not achillea, but yarrow; not dianthus barbatus, but sweet William; not calendula, but marigold. Let us even do away with the almost naturalized name of delphinium; bring back the larkspur. Not veronica, but speedwell. I want a garden that's filled with stocks, lilies of the valley (not convallaria), loosestrife (the yellow variety, not the invasive purple), love lies bleeding, love-in-a-mist, marguerites, brushwood.
I make one exception: liverwort. Not that anyone would want to grow it, but just in case. In fact, I banish all flower names that contain the element "wort." In my garden, spiderwort grows under the name tradescantia. (Tradescantia, poor thing, has a second and equally unacceptable name: cow slobber.)
Am I alone in this preference? Not a bit. I'm in the best company. In the noblest poem in the English language, John Milton lists the flowers that "strew the laureate hearse" of the dead poet Lycidas. ("Rathe" means "early"-- it survives in "rather," which used to mean "earlier"; "freaked" is "streaked.")
Bring the rathe primrose, which forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine;
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head.
It's a great swelling litany. Savor again the music of that lovely last line: "With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head." Instead of cowslip, Milton might have written "primula veris, family primulaceae," but he was too smart to do so. Words like cowslip, lady's mantle, goldenrod, forget-me-not, and, yea, snapdragon live and breathe and are laden with metaphorical perfume. Cowslips hang their heads; primula, like antirrhinum, have no heads to hang. Moreover, if Milton had been looking about for alternatives for the cowslip, he would not have consulted the plant breeders but returned to popular lore and he would have chosen from such tasty words (alternatives all to cowslip) as herb peter, peggle, key of heaven, fairy cups, mayflower, lady's keys-- all of which are human, humane, and evocative. But John Milton, who exhorted "daffodillies to fill their cups with tears," had an ear, and I can therefore affirm with absolute, unimpeachable, and total confidence that he would have rejected with horror another synonym for the common cowslip: the palsywort.
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