Volume I Part 4 (2/2)

terms equally applicable to at least one-half of all flower petals in the {93} world. The leaves are _said_ to be very deeply pinnately part.i.te; but _drawn_--as neither pinnate nor part.i.te!

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 12.]

And this is your modern cheap science, in ten volumes. Now I haven't a quiet moment to spare for drawing this morning; but I merely give the main relations of the petals, A, and blot in the wrinkles of one of the lower ones, B, Fig. 12; and yet in this rude sketch you will feel, I believe, there is something specific which could not belong to any other flower. But all proper description is {94} impossible without careful profiles of each petal laterally and across it. Which I may not find time to draw for any poppy whatever, because they none of them have well-becomingness enough to make it worth my while, being all more or less weedy, and ungracious, and mingled of good and evil. Whereupon rises before me, ghostly and untenable, the general question, 'What is a weed?' and, impatient for answer, the particular question, What is a poppy? I choose, for instance, to call this yellow flower a poppy, instead of a ”likeness to poppy,” which the botanists meant to call it, in their bad Greek. I choose also to call a poppy, what the botanists have called ”glaucous thing,” (glaucium). But where and when shall I stop calling things poppies? This is certainly a question to be settled at once, with others appertaining to it.

7. In the first place, then, I mean to call every flower either one thing or another, and not an 'aceous' thing, only half something or half another.

I mean to call this plant now in my hand, either a poppy or not a poppy; but not poppaceous. And this other, either a thistle or not a thistle; but not thistlaceous. And this other, either a nettle or not a nettle; but not nettlaceous. I know it will be very difficult to carry out this principle when tribes of plants are much extended and varied in type: I shall persist in it, however, as far as possible; and when plants change so much that one cannot with any conscience call them by their family name any more, I shall put them aside somewhere among families of poor relations, not {95} to be minded for the present, until we are well acquainted with the better bred circles; I don't know, for instance, whether I shall call the Burnet 'Gra.s.s-rose,' or put it out of court for having no petals; but it certainly shall not be called rosaceous; and my first point will be to make sure of my pupils having a clear idea of the central and unquestionable forms of thistle, gra.s.s, or rose, and a.s.signing to them pure Latin, and pretty English, names,--cla.s.sical, if possible; and at least intelligible and decorous.

8. I return to our present special question, then, What is a poppy? and return also to a book I gave away long ago, and have just begged back again, Dr. Lindley's 'Ladies' Botany.' For without at all looking upon ladies as inferior beings, I dimly hope that what Dr. Lindley considers likely to be intelligible to _them_, may be also clear to their very humble servant.

The poppies, I find, (page 19, vol. i.) differ from crowfeet in being of a stupifying instead of a burning nature, and in generally having two sepals and twice two petals; ”but as some poppies have three sepals, and twice three petals, the number of these parts is not sufficiently constant to form an essential mark.” Yes, I know that, for I found a superb six-petaled poppy, spotted like a cistus, the other day in a friend's garden. But then, what makes it a poppy still? That it is of a stupifying nature, and itself so stupid that it does not know how many petals it should have, is surely not enough distinction?

9. Returning to Lindley, and working the matter {96} farther out with his help, I think this definition might stand. ”A poppy is a flower which has either four or six petals, and two or more treasuries, united into one; containing a milky, stupifying fluid in its stalks and leaves, and always throwing away its calyx when it blossoms.”

And indeed, every flower which unites all these characters, we shall, in the Oxford schools, call 'poppy,' and 'Papaver;' but when I get fairly into work, I hope to fix my definitions into more strict terms. For I wish all my pupils to form the habit of asking, of every plant, these following four questions, in order, corresponding to the subject of these opening chapters, namely, ”What root has it? what leaf? what flower? and what stem?” And, in this definition of poppies, nothing whatever is said about the root; and not only I don't know myself what a poppy root is like, but in all Sowerby's poppy section, I find no word whatever about that matter.

10. Leaving, however, for the present, the root unthought of, and contenting myself with Dr. Lindley's characteristics, I shall place, at the head of the whole group, our common European wild poppy, Papaver Rhoeas, and, with this, arrange the nine following other flowers thus,--opposite.

I must be content at present with determining the Latin names for the Oxford schools; the English ones I shall give as they chance to occur to me, in Gerarde and the cla.s.sical poets who wrote before the English revolution. When no satisfactory name is to be found, I must try to invent one; as, for instance, just now, I don't like Gerarde's 'Corn-rose' for Papaver Rhoeas, and must coin another; but this can't be done by thinking; it will come into my head some day, by chance. I might try at it straightforwardly for a week together, and not do it.

{97}

NAME IN OXFORD CATALOGUE. DIOSCORIDES. In present Botany.

1. Papaver Rhoeas [Greek: mekon rhoias] Papaver Rhoeas 2. P. Hortense [Greek: m. kepeute][27] P. Hortense 3. P. Elatum [Greek: m. thulakitis][28] P. Lamottei 4. P. Argemone P. Argemone 5. P. Echinosum P. Hybridum 6. P. Violaceum Roemeria Hybrida 7. P. Cruciforme Meconopsis Cambrica 8. P. Corniculatum [Greek: m. kerat.i.tis] Glaucium Corniculatum 9. P. Littorale [Greek: m. paralios] Glaucium Luteum 10. P. Chelidonium Chelidonium Majus

{98} The Latin names must be fixed at once, somehow; and therefore I do the best I can, keeping as much respect for the old nomenclature as possible, though this involves the illogical practice of giving the epithet sometimes from the flower, (violaceum, cruciforme), and sometimes from the seed vessel, (elatum, echinosum, corniculatum). Guarding this distinction, however, we may perhaps be content to call the six last of the group, in English, Urchin Poppy, Violet Poppy, Crosslet Poppy, Horned Poppy, Beach Poppy, and Welcome Poppy. I don't think the last flower pretty enough to be connected more directly with the swallow, in its English name.

11. I shall be well content if my pupils know these ten poppies rightly; all of them at present wild in our own country, and, I believe, also European in range: the head and type of all being the common wild poppy of our cornfields for which the name 'Papaver Rhoeas,' given it by Dioscorides, Gerarde, and Linnaeus, is entirely authoritative, and we will therefore at once examine the meaning, and reason, of that name.

12. Dioscorides says the name belongs to it ”[Greek: dia to tacheos to anthos apoballein],” ”because it casts off its bloom {99} quickly,” from [Greek: rheo,] (rheo) in the sense of shedding.[29] And this indeed it does,--first calyx, then corolla;--you may translate it 'swiftly ruinous'

poppy, but notice, in connection with this idea, how it droops its head _before_ blooming; an action which, I doubt not, mingled in Homer's thought with the image of its depression when filled by rain, in the pa.s.sage of the Iliad, which, as I have relieved your memory of three unnecessary names of poppy families, you have memory to spare for learning.

”[Greek: mekon d' hos heterose kare balen, het' eni kepoi]

[Greek: karpoi brithomene, notieisi te eiarineisin]

[Greek: hos heteros' emuse kare peleki barunthen.]”

”And as a poppy lets its head fall aside, which in a garden is loaded with its fruit, and with the soft rains of spring, so the youth drooped his head on one side; burdened with the helmet.”

And now you shall compare the translations of this pa.s.sage, with its context, by Chapman and Pope--(or the school of Pope), the one being by a man of pure English temper, and able therefore to understand pure Greek temper; the other infected with all the faults of the falsely cla.s.sical school of the Renaissance.

First I take Chapman:--

”His shaft smit fair Gorgythion of Priam's princely race Who in aepina was brought forth, a famous town in Thrace, {100} By Castianeira, that for form was like celestial breed.

And as a crimson poppy-flower, surcharged with his seed, And vernal humours falling thick, declines his heavy brow, So, a-oneside, his helmet's weight his fainting head did bow.”

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