Some lucky plants have names that entice you to buy them: Baby Bunny Bellies, Fairy Foxglove, Bells of Ireland, Cupid’s Dart. Other plants, through no fault of their own, have less appealing names: Bloody Dock, Lungwort, Bitter Root, Viper’s Bugloss, and this year’s best worst name, Ratstripper.
Bloody Dock (Rumex)
Any plant name that contains words like false, weed, wort, snake, goat, bleeding, or dead, tends to be off-putting enough that, when we are putting the catalog together, we do try to choose a more attractive name if the plant has several common names. Which would you rather have in your garden: Mountain Death Camas or Elegant Camas? Sneezeweed or Helen’s Flower? Liver Balm or Fairy Foxglove?
Of course, when a name like Spiderwort is the most widely known common name, we use it, even if there’s a prettier but obscure name like Blue Jacket. (Thankfully, we don’t have to use another of Spiderwort’s common names: Snotweed!)
But perhaps you are a gardener who is not turned off by medicinal, anatomical, frank, or lurid common names, but who rather relishes them. Perhaps you enjoy knowing that “wort” has nothing to do with warts: it simply means “herb” or healing plant. A Lungwort, despite the way it sounds, is not a nasty disease symptom, but rather a plant that in folklore was thought to cure lung problems because the speckled leaves resemble a lung. And just look at how cute the plant actually is! All of the plants mentioned here are wonderful plants, beloved of gardeners.
So, my question is, would we be as fond of a rose if it was called, say, Thorny Blackspotleaf or Bleeding Pierce-flesh?
And my second question is, does anyone know how Ratstripper, a handsome evergreen groundcover, got its verminous name?
In the catalog:
P 037 Baby Bunny Bellies (Tradescantia) p. 7
A 056 Bells of Ireland (Moluccella laevis) p. 40
P 094 Bitter Root (Lewisia) p. 8
P 273 Bloody Dock (Rumex sanguineus) p. 12
P 250 Cupid’s Dart (Catananche caerula) p. 11
N 022 Elegant Camas (Zigadenus elegans) p. 30
P 274 Fairy Foxglove (Erinus alpinus) p. 12
P 335 Helen’s Flower (Helenium ‘Mardi Gras’) p. 14
P 474 Lungwort (Pulmonaria ‘Gaelic Magic’) p. 17
P 607 Ratstripper (Paxistima canbyi) p. 19
P 646 Spiderwort (Tradescantia ‘Sweet Kate’) p. 20
P 719 Viper’s Bugloss (Echium) p. 21
Two others terrible names that come to mind from our experience with the sale:
Throatwort (Trachelium) — A really wonderful annual. After a few years under this name, we found that there was an alternate common name (Umbrella Flower) so we switched the name to that. Not sure if it has sold any better, though! I guess this falls into the general category of unfortunate “wort” names, but to me, the idea of throat “wort” is even worse than lung “wort.”
Fleabane Daisy (Erigeron) — Although we have not actually had this plant at the sale yet (it has been impossible to find seed), I think this name is terrible for such a cute little daisy!
–Pat