Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set ForthEarle, Alice Morse
History
Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth
Earle, Alice Morse
Gardens; Landscape gardening
Pappoose-root utilizes another Indian word. Very few Indian plant names
were adopted by the white men, fewer still have been adopted by the
scientists. The _Catalpa speciosa_ (Catalpa); the _Zea mays_ (Maize);
and _Yucca filamentosa_ (Yucca), are the only ones I know. Chinkapin,
Cohosh, Hackmatack, Kinnikinnik, Tamarack, Persimmon, Tupelo, Squash,
Puccoon, Pipsissewa, Musquash, Pecan, the Scuppernong and Catawba
grapes, are our only well-known Indian plant names that survive. Of
these Maize, the distinctive product of the United States, will ever
link us with the vanishing Indian. It will be noticed that only Puccoon,
Cohosh, Pipsissewa, Hackmatack, and Yucca are names of flowering plants;
of these Yucca is the only one generally known. I am glad our stately
native trees, Tupelo, Hickory, Catalpa, bear Indian names.
A curious example of persistence, when so much else has perished, is
found in the word "Kiskatomas," the shellbark nut. This Algonquin word
was heard everywhere in the state of New York sixty years ago, and is
not yet obsolete in families of Dutch descent who still care for the nut
itself.
We could very well have preserved many Indian names, among them
Hiawatha's
"Beauty of the springtime,
The Miskodeed in blossom,"
I think Miskodeed a better name than Claytonia or Spring Beauty. The
Onondaga Indians had a suggestive name for the Marsh Marigold,
"It-opens-the-swamps," which seems to show you the yellow stars "shining
in swamps and hollows gray." The name Cowslip has been transferred to it
in some localities in New England, which is not strange when we find
that the flower has fifty-six English folk-names; among them are
Drunkards, Crazy Bet, Meadow-bright, Publicans and Sinners, Soldiers'
Buttons, Gowans, Kingcups, and Buttercups. Our Italian street venders
call them Buttercups. In erudite Boston, in sight of Boston Common, the
beautiful Fringed Gentian is not only called, but labelled, French
Gentian. To hear a lovely bunch of the Arethusa called Swamp Pink is not
so strange. The Sabbatia grows in its greatest profusion in the vicinity
of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and is called locally, "The Rose of
Plymouth." It is sold during its season of bloom in the streets of that
town and is used to dress the churches. Its name was given to honor an
early botanist, Tiberatus Sabbatia, but in Plymouth there is an almost
universal belief that it was named because the Pilgrims of 1620 first
saw the flower on the Sabbath day. It thus is regarded as a religious
emblem, and strong objection is made to mingling other flowers with it
in church decoration. This legend was invented about thirty years ago by
a man whose name is still remembered as well as his work.
[Illustration: Fountain Garden at Sylvester Manor.]
CHAPTER XIII
TUSSY-MUSSIES
"There be some flowers make a delicious Tussie-Mussie or Nosegay
both for Sight and Smell."
--JOHN PARKINSON, _A Garden of all Sorts of Pleasant Flowers_, 1629.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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