The Secret Lives of Flowers (minicast)

Welcome to the summer podcast edition of A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette. My co-host

Grant Barrett is off reading about the secret life of fricatives. If you don’t know what

a fricative is, you might want to look it up. In the meantime, I’m sitting here thinking

about the secret life of flowers. But first, let’s talk about the secrets tucked inside

their names. Take the flower called a gladiolus. Do you think its name comes from the fact that

you’re glad when it blooms? Well, no. The name gladiolus comes from the Latin gladius, which

means sword. And as you might have guessed, gladius is a linguistic relative of the word

gladiator. And the name gladiolus refers to the long pointed leaves of the plant.

Some flowers are named for botanists. If you’ve ever sniffed a begonia or pruned camellias or

picked the dahlia, then you’ve run into a flower that commemorates one of these experts.

Which brings us to one of the greatest botanists of all time, Carolus Linnaeus. He was born 300

years ago this summer in Sweden. Now, you may remember that Linnaeus was the guy who developed

the system of binomial nomenclature. That’s the method of classifying plants and animals using

Greek and Latin names. He was also fascinated by a notion that was just beginning to take hold in

the scientific world in those days. And that was the idea that plants reproduce sexually.

There’s a certain orchid looks exactly like a certain insect. So the insect is drawn to this

flower. It’s double, it’s soulmate and wants nothing more than to make love to it.

After the insect flies off, spots another soulmate flower and makes love to it, thus

pollinating it. And neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of

their lovemaking. At the time, all that talk about stamens and pistils was downright revolutionary.

And Linnaeus was so enthusiastic about this idea that his prose sometimes got a little,

well, flowery. He wrote,

The flower’s leaves serve as bridal beds, which the Creator has so gloriously arranged,

adorned with such noble bed curtains and perfumed with so many soft scents

that the bridegroom with his bride might there celebrate their nuptials

with so much the greater solemnity.

Wow!

Yes, he went on to say, love comes even to the plants.

Well, the way that Linnaeus went on and on about pollination absolutely scandalized some of his more prudish colleagues.

One of those critics was Johann Sigisbeck.

He denounced those descriptions as loathsome harlotry.

And he went on to say,

Who would have thought that bluebells, lilies, and onions could be up to such immorality?

Well, as it turns out, Linnaeus had the last laugh.

There’s now a stinky, trashy weed in Europe.

It grows in the mud, and it bears the scientific name Sigusbeckia orientalis.

And for what it’s worth, I’ve read that some herbalists say that Sigusbeckia is good for erasing stretch marks.

Well, if you’re interested in the origins of flower names or digging up any other word by its roots,

email us. The address is words at kpbs.org.

Or you can leave us a phone message anytime.

The number’s 1-877-929-9673.

Thanks for joining us. I’m Martha Barnette.

Thank you.