Common Plant Names

A compendium of historical and culturally significant (and insignificant) nomenclature of common wildflowers that has been lost over the past 150 years.

Compiled by kbarton

Introduction

One of the earliest plant names I learned was Old Maid Pinks. My grandmother had Old Maid Pinks growing around the doorstone of her home when I was child. I never knew if they were called that because they were as homely as an old maid or because they were the only flowers an old maid was likely to ever receive. Either way, the name stayed with me through adolescence and into adulthood when I found they were "really" called Evening Lychnis. The same situation occurred with Scoke. In spring, my family would go out looking for the new shoots. My mother would warn us not to pick any that had started to turn red. After gathering them, we would return home where my mother would cook the spring greens and serve them over toast. So I grew up with Scoke and only later discovered the books referred to it as Poke or Pokeweed. The old Yankee names from childhood were gradually replaced by the names found in books. What happened to me on a personal level also happened on a cultural level.

Nomenclature of plants, both common and scientific, have evolved over the years. Where scientific names keep the nomenclature relevant to current thinking and scientific research, common names are more likely to reflect the interaction of people with a plant through its uses (Soapwort), indentifying characteristics (Bloodroot), or effects on either animal or human health (Lambkill or Madweed). Common names like Lady's Ear Drop or Old-Maid's-Nightcap capture the similarity of a flower to an everyday object and shed light on the culture and attitudes of the past. While the scientific community keeps a record of past botanical names, nobody really notices when a plant loses or changes its common name. It was often part of an oral tradition kept alive through use. If it was replaced with new terminology and/or wasn't passed to the next generation of speakers, it was lost. A common name does not affect the scientific status of a plant or the attitudes of the general public. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and, no matter what you call Poison Ivy, if you get a rash from it, you're going to regret it. This loss/neglect results in a gradual erosion of a plant's cultural history and identity.

Over the last 200 years, a number of botanical guides have been written about native plants. These field guides were/are produced to keep botanical names up to date, to reflect current scientific thinking and to make the identification easier for both the amateur and professional. For every generation of naturalists and every region of the country there is THE field guide that becomes the undeniable authority, standardizing the plant names and locking them into a specific time and place thereby stripping them of the diversity and richness that comes from their historic place in the culture.

The early colonists lived in the woods. It wasn't something that they visited on the weekends. It was part of their lives. They hunted in them. They got the materials to build their homes from them. They gathered plants for food, medicines, and household use. And they had names for the plants they gathered. These names reflected the needs and attitudes of the local community in a specific geographical area.

Since communication was so difficult in the 17th and 18th centuries, there was no homogenous development of terminology. The vocabulary of every day life evolved specifically for each region of the country. This is the same principle that results in the various languages of the world. And, if England and the U.S. are separated by a common language, so too were New Hampshire and North Carolina in colonial times. In 1817, Dr. James Bigelow, wrote in his American Medical Botany Vol. I concerning the development of common names and Poison Sumac; "In Massachusetts it is universally known by the name Dogwood. This appellation, being applied through out the country to Cornus florida serves to shew the fallacy of depending on vulgar or provincial names for the distinction of plants, A mistake of very injurious consequence might easily arise from the confusion of the English names of two trees so dissimilar in their qualities."

This web page contains a collection of common names as found in field guides, educational books and publications that were printed from 1817 to 1948. Some of these books are in my personal library and some are references that are available on the internet. I attempted to list a specific version of a name only once, but included some very similar variations. When a name was found in more than one book, it was listed under the book in which it was first found. Plants are listed alphabetically by a common name, usually the one found in Newcomb's Wildflower Guide. This is followed by the botanical name and the USDA common name for the plant. After this, the names found for the plant are listed under the source title with the page number. The exception to this is the Herb Hunter Guide, an online resource, where I have listed the name used at that site. There is a table of contents below listing the plants included in this article. You can also use your browser to search for instances of a specific name or to find out if a name was used for several species. In the pdf, I have included an index/cross-reference section and the bibliography.

This is not meant to be a complete or definitive collection of common names. The research was done to satisfy my personal curiosity about old plant names. Thinking that other wild plant people might find it of interest, I decided to share it.

Kathy Barton

Bibliography

To down load a pdf of this article, click here.

Index