The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare
Locusts were the tender shoots of the Carob tree, and that the wild
honey was the luscious juice of the Carob fruit. Having got so far it
was easy to go farther, and so the Carob soon got the names of St.
John's Bread and St. John's Beans, and the monks of the desert showed
the very trees by which St. John's life was supported. But though the
Carob tree did not produce the locusts on which St. John fed, there is
little or no doubt that "the husks which the swine did eat," and which
the Prodigal Son longed for, were the produce of the Carob tree.
FOOTNOTES:
[148:1] Pods of the Carob tree were found in a house at Pompeii. For an
account of the use of the Locust as an article of food, both in ancient
and modern times, see Hogg's "Classical Plants of Sicily," p. 114.
LONG PURPLES.
_Queen._
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of Crow-flowers, Nettles, Daisies, and Long Purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do Dead Men's Fingers call them.
_Hamlet_, act iv, sc. 7 (169).
In "Flowers from Stratford-on-Avon" (a pretty book published a few
years ago with plates of twelve of Shakespeare's flowers) it is said
that "there can be no doubt that the Wild Arum is the plant alluded to
by Shakespeare as forming part of the nosegay of the crazed Ophelia;"
but the authoress gives no authority for this statement, and I believe
that there can be no reasonable doubt that the Long Purples and Dead
Men's Fingers are the common purple Orchises of the woods and meadows
(Orchis morio, O. mascula, and O. maculata). The name of Dead Men's
Fingers was given to them from the pale palmate roots of some of the
species (O. latifolia, O. maculata, and Gymnadenia conopsea), and this
seems to have been its more common name.
"Then round the meddowes did she walke,
Catching each flower by the stalke,
Such as within the meddowes grew,
As Dead Man's Thumb and Harebell blew;
And as she pluckt them, still cried she,
Alas! there's none 'ere loved like me."
_Roxburghe Ballads._
As to the other names to which the Queen alludes, we need not inquire
too curiously; they are given in all their "liberality" and "grossness"
in the old Herbals, but as common names they are, fortunately, extinct.
The name of Dead Men's Fingers still lingers in a few places, but Long
Purples has been transferred to a very different plant. It is named by
Clare and Tennyson--
"Gay Long-purples with its tufty spike;
She'd wade o'er shoes to reach it in the dyke."
CLARE'S _Village Minstrel_, ii, 90.
"Round thee blow, self-pleached deep,
Bramble Roses, faint and pale,
And Long Purples of the dale."
_A Dirge_, TENNYSON.
But in both these passages the plant intended is the Lythrum salicaria,
or Purple Loosestrife.
The meadow Orchis, though so common, is thus without any common English
name; for though I have often asked country people for its name, I have
never obtained one; and so it is another of those curious instances
which are so hard to explain, where an old and common English word has
been replaced by a Greek or Latin word, which must be entirely without
meaning to nine-tenths of those who use it.[150:1] There are similar
instances in Crocus, Cyclamen, Hyacinth, Narcissus, Anemone, Beet,
Lichen, Polyanthus, Polypody, Asparagus, and others.
The Orchid family is certainly the most curious in the vegetable
kingdom, as it is almost the most extensive, except the Grasses. Growing
all over the world, in any climate, and in all kinds of situations, it
numbers 3000 species, of which we have thirty-seven native species in
England; and with their curious irregular flowers, often of very
beautiful colours, and of wonderful quaintness and variety of shape,
they are everywhere so distinct that the merest tyro in botany can
separate them from any other flower, and the deepest student can find
endless puzzles in them, and increasing interest.
Though the most beautiful are exotics, and are the chief ornaments of
our stoves and hothouses, yet our native species are full of interest
and beauty. Of their botanical interest we have a most convincing proof
in Darwin's "Fertilization of Orchids," a book that is almost entirely
confined to the British Orchids, and which, in its wonderfully clear
statements, and its laborious collection of many little facts all
leading up to his scientific conclusions, is certainly not the least to
be admired among his other learned and careful books. And as to their
horticultural interest, it is most surprising that so few gardeners make
the use of them that they might. They were not so despised in
Shakespeare's time, for Gerard grew a large number in his garden. It is
true that some of them are very impatient of garden cultivation,
especially those of the Ophrys section (such as the Bee, Fly, and Spider
Orchises), and the rare O. hircina, which will seldom remain in the
garden above two or three years, except under very careful and peculiar
cultivation. But, on the other hand, there are many that rejoice in
being transferred to a garden, especially O. maculata, O. mascula, O.
pyramidalis, and the Butterfly Orchis of both kinds (Habenaria bifolia
and chlorantha). These, if left undisturbed, increase in size and beauty
every year, their flowers become larger, and their leaves (in O.
maculata and O. mascula) become most beautifully spotted. They may be
placed anywhere, but their best place seems to be among low shrubs, or
on the rockwork. Nor must the hardy Orchid grower omit the beautiful
American species, especially the Cypripedia (C. spectabile, C.
pubescens, C. acaule, and others). They are among the most beautiful of
low hardy plants, and they succeed perfectly in any peat border that is
not too much exposed to the sun. The only caution required is to leave
them undisturbed; they resent removal and broken roots; and though I
hold it to be one of the first rules of good gardening to give away to
others as much as possible, yet I would caution any one against dividing
his good clumps of Cypripedia. The probability is that both giver and
receiver will lose the plants. If, however, a plant must be divided, the
whole plant should be carefully lifted, and most gently pulled to pieces
with the help of water.
FOOTNOTES:
[150:1] Though country people generally have no common name for the
Orchis morio, yet it is called in works on English Botany the Fool
Orchis; and it has the local names of "Crake-feet" in Yorkshire; of
"giddy-gander" in Dorset; and "Keatlegs and Neatlegs" in Kent. Dr. Prior
also gives the names "Goose and goslings" and "Gander-gooses" for Orchis
morio, and "Standerwort" for Orchis mascula. This last is the
Anglo-Saxon name for the flower, but it is now, I believe, quite
extinct.
LOVE-IN-IDLENESS, _see_ PANSY.
MACE.
_Clown._
I must have Saffron to colour the warden-pies--Mace--Dates?
none.
_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 3 (48).
The Mace is the pretty inner rind that surrounds the Nutmeg, when ripe.
It was no doubt imported with the Nutmeg in Shakespeare's time. (_See_
NUTMEG.)
MALLOWS.
_Antonio._
He'ld sow't with Nettle seed.
_Sebastian._
Or Docks, or Mallows.
_Tempest_, act ii, sc. 1 (145).
The Mallow is the common roadside weed (_Malva sylvestris_), which is
not altogether useless in medicine, though the Marsh Mallow far
surpasses it in this respect. Ben Jonson speaks of it as an article of
food--
"The thresher . . . feeds on Mallows and such bitter herbs."
_The Fox_, act i, sc. 1.
It is not easy to believe that our common Wild Mallow was so used, and
Jonson probably took the idea from Horace--
"Me pascant olivæ,
Me chichorea, levesque malvæ."
But the common Mallow is a dear favourite with children, who have ever
loved to collect, and string, and even eat its "cheeses:" and these
cheeses are a delight to others besides children. Dr. Lindley, certainly
one of the most scientific of botanists, can scarcely find words to
express his admiration of them. "Only compare a vegetable cheese," he
says, "with all that is exquisite in marking and beautiful in
arrangement in the works of man, and how poor and contemptible do the
latter appear. . . . Nor is it alone externally that this inimitable
beauty is to be discovered; cut the cheese across, and every slice
brings to view cells and partitions, and seeds and embryos, arranged
with an unvarying regularity, which would be past belief if we did not
know from experience, how far beyond all that the mind can conceive, is
the symmetry with which the works of Nature are constructed."
As a garden plant of course the Wild Mallow has no place, though the
fine-cut leaves and faint scent of the Musk Mallow (_M. moschata_) might
demand a place for it in those parts where it is not wild, and
especially the white variety, which is of the purest white, and very
ornamental. But our common Mallow is closely allied to some of the
handsomest plants known. The Hollyhock is one very near relation, the
beautiful Hibiscus is another, and the very handsome Fremontia
Californica is a third that has only been added to our gardens during
the last few years. Nor is it only allied to beauty, for it also claims
as a very near relation a plant which to many would be considered the
most commercially useful plant in the world, the Cotton-plant.
MANDRAGORA, OR MANDRAKES.
(1) _Cleopatra._
Give me to drink Mandragora.
_Charmian._
Why, madam?
_Cleopatra._
That I might sleep out this great gap of time,
My Antony is away.
_Antony and Cleopatra_, act i, sc. 5 (4).
(2) _Iago._
Not Poppy, nor Mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday.
_Othello_, act iii, sc. 3 (330).
(3) _Falstaff._
Thou Mandrake.
_2nd Henry IV_, act i, sc. 2 (16).
(4) _Ditto._
They called him Mandrake.
_Ibid._, act iii, sc. 2 (338).
(5) _Suffolk._
Would curses kill, as doth the Mandrake's groan.
_2nd Henry VI_, act iii, sc. 2 (310).
(6) _Juliet._
And shrieks like Mandrakes' torn out of the earth
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad.
_Romeo and Juliet_, act iv, sc. 3 (47).
There is, perhaps, no plant on which so many books and treatises
(containing for the most part much sad nonsense) have been written as
the Mandrake, and there is certainly no plant round which so much
superstition has gathered, all of which is more or less silly and
foolish, and a great deal that is worse than silly. This, no doubt,
arose from its first mention in connection with Leah and Rachel, and
then in the Canticles, which, perhaps, shows that even in those days
some strange qualities were attributed to the plant; but how from that
beginning such, and such wide-spread, superstitions could have arisen,
it is hard to say. I can scarcely tell these superstitious fables in
better words than Gerard described them: "There hath been many
ridiculous tales brought up of this plant, whether of old wives or some
runagate surgeons or physicke-mongers I know not. . . . They adde that