Read Online 100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names by Diana Wells - Free Book Online

:
Solanaceae
.

    Daturas, most often seen in elegant New York vestibules, are expensive, showy plants with a sinister history. The botanical name comes from the plant’s Arabic name
“tator,”
or its Indian name,
“dhat.”
Indian thugs used it to poison their victims, and it was officially used to execute criminals. Linnaeus did not want to use the “barbaric” (Indian) name for the plant, so he modified it to the Latin root of
dare
(to give), because datura was given to those whose sexual powers were weakened.
    Datura was one of the powerful ingredients of witches’ ointments, rubbed onto their thighs and genitals to induce trances in which they soared above the world. Native Americans employed it more gently as an anesthetic and narcotic medicine. In South America, slaves and wives were given it before being buried alive with their lord and master. The herbalist John Parkinson called daturas “Thorne-Apples”and warned that “the East Indian lascivious women performe strange acts with the seed . . . giving it [to] their husbands to drinke” (he does not elaborate on the acts). Thomas Jefferson said he avoided datura and other poisonous plants because “I have so many grandchildren and . . . I think the risk overbalances the curiosity of trying it.” He goes on to say that during the Reign of Terror after the French Revolution “every man of firmness carried it constantly in his pocket to anticipate the guillotine. It brings on the sleep of death as quietly as fatigue does the ordinary sleep.”
    The datura of elegant atriums is closely related to jimsonweed or “Jamestown weed,” so called because soldiers sent to Jamestown to quell Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 ate datura leaves, thinking they were salad greens. They were intoxicated for eleven days, reportedly sitting stark naked like monkeys, blowing feathers in the air, tossing excrement, kissing and gibbering. Nathaniel Bacon, who believed in unlimited territorial expansion, had led an unauthorized expedition against the Native Americans and taken over much of Virginia. He and the rebellion died that year, so the soldiers’ intoxication did not turn out to be historically important, but the name of Jamestown stuck with the plant.
    Indian thugs used it to poison their victims, and it was officially used to execute criminals.
    Datura contains scopolamine, used these days as a remedy for motion sickness—useful in perilous seas or even when really flying. Otherwise it welcomes those who enter tall buildings, on business of their own.

DAYLILY
    COMMON NAMES : Daylily, tawny lily, lemon lily.
BOTANICAL NAME :
Hemerocallis
. FAMILY :
Liliaceae
.

    The botanical name comes from the Greek
hemera
(day) and
kallos
(beauty) because the flowers’ beauty lasts but a day, which is also why they are called “day lilies.” They were named by Linnaeus, and the names “
fulva
” for the tawny lily and “
flava
” for the lemon lily are rare instances where he named specific plants by the color of their flowers.
    Daylilies were used as food and medicine in China and Japan. They were dried or pickled in salt or cooked as vegetables. The flower buds of the
esculenta
variety were called
gum tsoy
(golden vegetable). The plants came to Europe early, possibly like rhubarb (also a medicinal plant), brought by traders along the silk routes from China. The Romans used them medicinally. The young leaves when eaten are said to be slightly intoxicating, and the Chinese had called the daylily
hsuan t’sao
, or the “plant of forgetfulness,” as it was supposed to help allay sorrow by causing forgetfulness. By thetime John Parkinson mentions them as “Asphodels with Lilly flowers . . . or Lillies with Asphodel rootes” which came from Germany, he says they “have no physicall use that I know, or have heard.”
    Daylilies were a