On the popular names of British plants, being an explanation of the origin and meaning of the names of our indigenous and most commonly cultivated species / by R. C. A. Prior.

  • Prior, R. C. Alexander (Richard Chandler Alexander), 1809-1902.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the popular names of British plants, being an explanation of the origin and meaning of the names of our indigenous and most commonly cultivated species / by R. C. A. Prior. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    belong. They have probably been nearly aU of them pre- served to us in ancient manuscripts; but it is difficult to ascertain what were the several plants that were meant by them. Indeed it is not likely that in earlier times any great nimiber of our indigenous species had been carefully distinguished. It is only when nations have arrived at a high state of cidture, that they are curious about objects of Natural History, as such, or have special names for any but a few of the more conspicuously useful, beautiful, or troublesome of them. Our fruit and timber trees, the cereal grains, and several potherbs and medicinal plants, have the same at the present day as they bore a thousand years ago ; but far the greater number of our other species have at present only such as have been given to them within the last three hundred years. These, for the most part, were introduced from abroad ; for in the accurate study of living plants the continental nations took the lead, and our own early herbalists did little more than ascertain which they meant, and apply their names to om- own. In the selection of these the father of English botany. Turner, set his successors a laudable example by keeping as closely as possible to the Flemish and Gferman, as languages more akin to our mother tongue, and iatelli- gible to the uneducated, than Greek and Latin. Lyte in his excellent translation of Dodoens did the same, and was worthily followed by Gerarde, and by Parkinson. The works of later herbalists are little else than transcripts of what was published by these four. Turner's Herbal came out in three parts between 1551 and 1568 ; Lyte's in