Sorting Out the Nomenclature
Perhaps a rose
is a rose by any other name, but generally sorting out plant names
can lead to a circular conversation that often ends where it began –
in total confusion. For example, two trees have orange in their
names but neither is a real orange, Citrus sinensis. Hardy Orange or
Trifoliate Orange is Poncirus trifoliate, a large shrub or small
tree, 10 to 15 feet tall and spreading with dark green trifoliate
leaves, fragrant white flowers in spring, and later, fruits the size
of a ping-pong ball ripening to orange. It has astonishing rigid
green shoots with sharp spines. It is pretty both in flower and in
fruit with its bright ‘oranges’ and a hedge of them might make a
splendid deer fence.
The other non-orange is Osage orange, Maclura pomifera,
a medium sized thorny tree. Another common name for Maclura is hedge
apple. Thorny enough for a fence it has puckery green fruits. One
species, M. tricuspidata, a shrub or small tree, does have edible
orange-red fruit. While Osage orange is native to south central US,
the edible one is Asian. Both of these ‘orange’ trees would have
kept animals either in or out before the invention of barbed wire
fencing.
Plant names have a way of falling into the wrong slots
when you tuck them into your memory making them hard to retrieve on
demand. Last week someone asked me the name of the trailing purple
leaved plant with the small pink flower and I said ‘Tradescantia”
and felt rather stupid because I had never heard it called anything
else. And when I looked it up I found it is T.pallida ‘Purpuria’ but
still no common name was given.
It is native to Mexico, a distant relative of our native
Tradescantia virginiana, the familiar spiderwort although how it
reflects spiders I don’t know. The Audubon wildflower guide says
that it is so named because the angular leaf arrangement suggests a
squatting spider. Maybe so, but not a comfortably sized spider as
the leaves are very long. However, when the flower opens in the
morning “each hair on the stamens …consists of a chain of
thin-walled cells; the hairs are a favorite subject for microscopic
examination in biology classes because the flowing cytoplasm and
nucleus can be seen easily.”
Our spiderwort was one of the plants gathered from the
Virginia colony and sent to England to John Tradescant (1570-1638)
English botanist and horticulturist. He was the earliest known
collector of plants and other natural history specimens in England.
The T. pallida ‘Purpurea’ being Mexican does not winter
over here so is treated as an annual although it is perennial in
frost-free areas. There are several species that have striped or
variegated leaves and make attractive houseplants.
A plant with several common names is Datura stramonium
or moonflower, jimson weed, devil’s trumpet and Jamestown weed.
‘Jimson’ is said to be a corruption of Jamestown? Among other
legends is the story of the British soldiers who were sent to
placate rebellious Jamestown settlers in 1677 and were treated to
Datura leaves in their food. They went “loco” for 11 days giving the
Jamestown colonists the upper hand. Not just the leaves are
dangerous; the highly toxic seeds contain tropane alkaloids that can
cause seizures and hallucinations.
ATTTENTION PESTO COOKS:
If you do not have a handy supply of basil, you can kill
two birds with one stone and concoct pesto from an invasive pest,
garlic mustard. This pest was introduced in 1868 from Europe by
good cooks unwilling to live without it and like so many things that
are innocently transplanted, became a horror, crowded out native
plants that serve a purpose in the ecology of an area without itself
having anything to contribute. You still find pictures of it in
wildflower manuals as it has a rounded cluster of white flowers that
resemble the flowers on watercress and the leaves are heart-shaped,
a charming small plant. The leaves smell like garlic when crushed so
it is easy to identify. It belongs to the mustard family, the
Brassicaceae, like cabbage and broccoli and their kin.
In many areas of the country teams have worked to remove
it and, to spur enthusiasm, last April the Richmond Land Trust in
Vermont passed out recipes! Not only in Vermont, but in Michigan,
the Kalamazoo Nature Center published “Garlic Mustard: from Pest to
Pesto”. What makes me uneasy is that some cook may like it too well
and instead of pulling it out, leave a bit to seed for another year.
Eating dandelions is good: they are delicious but some
people consider them weeds. They are not much of a threat to the
environment; they just bother people when they pop up on front
lawns, screaming yellow amid all that lovely green.