HOW do plants get their common names? While their Latin names are the result of a (supposedly) rational and organised system, the everyday names of plants come via a somewhat looser 鈥� if not downright mysterious 鈥� process.
A few months ago in this column we described how the common names of some animals come from the names used in the local language of the area in which western explorers 鈥渄iscovered鈥� them (New 杏吧原创, 22 April, p 52). Well, this also happened with some plants, among them banana, peyote, rambutan and achiote.
With many others, it is easy to see how their names relate to the function they must once have had. Feverfew, a pretty little wild chrysanthemum common in British hedgerows, really can bring down fevers, while the fleabanes release natural insecticides when burnt. Apparently some dogs really do not like the smell of wolfsbane.
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But what about those plants that sound as if they mean something but don鈥檛 appear to? Liverwort is one example. It鈥檚 that green stuff that grows in small plate-like lumps on moist walls, and at first glance looks nothing at all like the stuff you might get served fried with onions and bacon in a roadside cafe. Similarly, why would a quite undistinguished thin-stemmed skinny-leaved daisy with tiny yellow flowers be called nipplewort? And what is it about a pink and blue flowered plant that likes damp hedgerows that merits the name lungwort? To modern eyes, none of these names 鈥� and there are many like them 鈥� make sense.
That may be because we鈥檙e not looking hard enough. These plants got their names through a medieval diagnostic system known as the Doctrine of Signatures (or Signs), which said that God鈥檚 way of showing people which plants should be used for which remedy was to design the plant to resemble the body part it had the power to treat.
鈥淭hey thought God designed the plant to resemble the body part it could treat鈥�
In a world full of portents and allegory, and where plants were the sole reliable source of remedies, this schema made good sense. The only problem was that you had to look quite imaginatively to see a body part in a plant. But, as the priests always said, God moves in mysterious ways. And in some cases, the doctrine was spot on: some species of liverwort do contain chemicals that can help hepatic function, for example.
As the idea moved beyond the herbalists, apothecaries and monastery gardens into common knowledge, people started interpreting in this way many plants whose names were already established, often with slightly wacky results. For example, the pomegranate, whose name means 鈥渟eeded apple鈥�, was considered good for toothache because when the fruit鈥檚 peel was pulled away the seeds and pith resembled rows of teeth between lips.
