Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Continuing a look back at selected plates from Farm Weeds of Canada, from roughly a century ago. (See instalment I from a couple of days ago, with a few plates posted earlier than that.) Six more:

Plate 25. Tall Buttercup or Crowsfoot (Ranunculus acris):

(#1)

Plate 43. Spotted Cowbane or Water Hemlock (Cicuta maculata). A genus of highly poisonous plants, related to the genus Conium (Poison Hemlock).

(#2)

Plate 44. Field Bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis):

(#3)

Plate 47. Blue-Weed or Viper’s Bugloss (Echium vulgare). Handsome plant with a great name: bugloss is ‘oxtongue’ (bu- ‘ox, cow’ as in bucolic, Bucephalos, and boustrophedon, related to bovine and much more; gloss- ‘tongue’ as in glossary, diglossia, glossolalia, and more):

(#4)

Plate 49. Hedge Nettle or Woundwort (Stachys palustris). Not a (stinging) nettle, but a “dead nettle”:

(#5)

Plate 50. Toadflax or Butter and Eggs (Linaria vulgarus):

(#6)

(Note: the Latin names given here are those from the Farm Weeds book. Not all of them are current practice.)

This entry was posted on May 7, 2016 at 5:08 am and is filed under Language and plants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.