Flavian - Flavus - What's In A Name?
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
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| Geranium maculatum 'Beth Chatto' & fern Adiantum pedatum, Fuiji Instant Print |
In a parallel history in a parallel world
to ours, Roman emperor Flavius Circinalis pushed the Roman Empire beyond the
borders of emperor Trajan and went a8s far as the banks of China at what is now the Sea of Japan. He and his army built galleys
and crossed the waters to Japan.
There Flavius Circinalis defeated the army of Tokudama but had to eventually
withdraw, as Alexander did, when he found himself much too far from his supply
bases.
This train of thought comes to mind every
time I look upon a beautiful hosta called Hosta
tokudama ‘Flavo Circinalis’. If you have studied Latin in your past (and
for this to be a fact you must be at least 70) you would know that flavus means
yellow but that there were in fact Flavian emperors with yellow not being the
connection. Hosta tokudama 'Flavo Circinalis' is variegated with lots of yellow.
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| Geranium maculatum 'Beth Chatto' May 28, 2014 |
One of the pleasures of gardening and
walking in one’s garden is to reminisce on the names of plants. In some cases
the plants will have names associated with people I have met and been friends
with. My Hosta ‘Sea Dream’ has the face (in my imagination)
of Mildred Seaver from Needham
Heights, Massachusets.
She befriended my Rebecca many years ago when we traveled to Washington, D.C.
for a convention of the American Hosta Society.
My North Van friend Allen Cooke’s Rhododendron augustinii ‘Marion
McDonnell’ purple blue in early spring in my garden reminds me of Marion
McDonnell who used to be called the Blue Poppy Lady. I often visited her in her
Shaughnessy garden for coffee, cookies and a chat. Most of our city’s Meconopsis betonicifolia came from her
garden.
Rosa complicata sometimes listed as a
Gallica rose was originally brought to me in a little pot by Cooke who said to
me, “If you are going to have one rose in your garden is has to be this one.” Complicata
was indeed one of my first roses. Now I have around 85.
Ferns are beautiful beasts and their names
reflect that. The ostrich fern (whence fiddle heads come from) has the
unromantic name Matteuccia struthiopteris.
You have to ignore that name (in fact most easily forgotten) to love this plant
of which I have many in my garden from the one original plant sold to me by Nan
Fairchild Sherlock, aka “The Fern Lady”. I asked her at a VanDusen plant sale
if I should buy another. She smiled and gently nodded a negative.
And so I tend to gravitate to not only the
plants named for my friends such as Hosta ‘Alex Summers’ but to people I do not
know but I am still fascinated by.
Consider Geranium maculatum ‘Beth Chatto’. Chatto is an English plantswoman
(only the English could invent such a word!) born in 1923 and must still be
alive as I have not been able to locate an obituary. Her name is not in the
least romantic sounding. Consider Artemisia
ludoviciana 'Valerie Finnis'. Finnis, another English plantswoman who died
at age 81 in 2006 has a much nicer sounding name. And this particular artemesia
is one of my Rosemary’s favourites. It is interesting that one of the
Artemisias in ancient history was a female naval commander under the Persian
Xerxes.
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| Rosa 'Mme. Pierre Oger' |
Going back to that Geranium maculatum ‘Beth Chatto’ which I purchased in 1990,
Rosemary says that unlike many other geraniums this one has feminine foliage
and habits (it does not intrude and stays where it is put). But Chatto? For
anybody reading this a geranium is not your ordinary potted geranium,
particularly those red ones. Those (and my Rosemary would lift her nose a tad
up into the air) are called pelargoniums which indeed are part of the geranium
genus but are not hardy as they originally came from South Africa. The
Portuguese explorers who round South Africa
brought back these pelargoniums and from Portugal
they were taken to Spain and
the Spaniards took them to the New World. The
pelargonium is ubiquitous in Lima
where they tolerate poor soil, high heat and drought.
The geraniums, Rosemary’s geraniums are
extremely hardy and a few have flowers that are startlingly blue. Blue is one
of Rosemary’s favourite garden colours because it is rare.
Of all the plants in my garden the ones
that evoke more daydreaming and curiousity are my roses. I have written before
that my favourite scent is that of the Magnolia
grandiflora (the Southern Magnolia). There are splendid paintings of the
huge white flower at the National Gallery in Washington D.C.
But there is no romatic English plantswoman or French queen associated with
this magnolia. You can imagine a huge herbivore dinosaur being attracted to the
scent and then munching on the very large and thick leaves. But that’s it.
There is no romance.
But Valerie Finnis! Or Rosa ‘Mme Pierre Oger’ hybridized by Verdier in France in 1878! This latter Bourbon
Rose a sport (a mutation of Rosa ‘Reine Victoria’)
makes me wonder who Monsieur Pierre Oger was. Could he have been a friend of Louis-Eugène-Jules Verdier?. Or could he have
been his brother-in-law. One of the loveliest dark red roses in my garden is
English Rose Rosa ‘L.D. Braithwaite’
named after David Austin’s (the hybridizer) brother-in-law.
Now here is the description of Rosa ‘Mme. Pierre Oger’ as in my rose
bible, Peter Beales – Classic Roses
Very pale silvery-pink, translucent, cupped
flowers with the form of small water lilies, sweetly scented.
To me Mme. Pierre Oger would have been a
Grace Kelly look-alike, dainty, feminine, high strung and beautiful.
I am not sure if I am doing a good job of
explaining my intention. A plant that may be millions of years old without
change (the magnolias) have less of a visceral feeling in my heart than a rose,
hybridized or found as a sport in some garden in France in the 19th century.
Millions of years is much too old for comfort. A rose that could have been
admired by Queen Victoria
has more history and more connection for me.
Hosta ‘Alex Summers’ brings to mind the low voiced stutter of my friend Alex Summers who once told me:
A garden must have sun, shade and water. Of
the latter you must make sure you can hear it. It takes 7 years to have a
garden. The first year you plan it. The next two years you plant it. The next two
years it matures. On the seventh year you enjoy it. It then declines and you
start all over again.
