Chat & Photos                                    The Listing

French Flower Names Listing Begun

Aug 13, 2001, Michael Tisdall, U.K.

Has there yet been published a French list of the names of Mary
plants. I note that one was pending when I accessed the other
language lists?


Dec 26, 2001, John Stokes

Despite the passage of time I have not yet gotten beyond the
beginning of the important French research.  The basic source,
comparable to the German source in Marzell posted to the website,
is Rolland's 11 volume "Flore Populaire", which is out-of-print.
I found a copy years ago in the folklore stacks of Harvard's
Widener Library, but needed a personal copy constantly at hand for
reference in the time available intermittently over a period of
months, and never was able to find one from 2nd hand book dealers.
I'll give it another try now, and maybe will get lucky.

We receive daily visits to our website from France - some
accessing scores of texts; but none have developed into
supplementary e-mail inquiries, or reports of French Mary Gardens
started.


30 Dec 2001 Michael Tisdall

Thank you for coming back to me about the French Research. I had
not realised that it was up to you personally to search for and
then create these lists. That seems to be a labour beyond the call
of duty.

I have so much to read around the subject in English that I doubt
if I could tackle that in this lifetime. I find all sorts of
interesting possible links and meanings that seem to fit place A
(Usually Exeter) and then the same flowers appear elsewhere and
the connection suddenly seems much thinner.  But I refuse to be
deterred. I am sure there is a correlation in it all. It may take
a bit of very hard work to convince the Art History world.


Apr 17 2002, John Stokes

Since corresponding with you in December I was able to get a set
of Rolland's 11 vol "Flore Populaire" for the French listing,
although with all the gardening season correspondence, I've only
been able to research and translate vol 1 so far (posted on the
web site in process without home page index notice, as
ER-FP-FOL.html),

One teaser is:

     Dielytra spectabilis (de Grandolle)

          coer de Marie
          fleur de Marie
          Saint-Esperit
          Enfant-Jesus au berceau

and English names:

          lady's eardrps
          lady-in-a-boat





 I can't find a botanical listing for
 Dielytra in any plant encyclopedias
 at hand.  A Rolland note says it is
 probably in error, and that he
 substituted "e" for "c" in the original
 "Diclytra".  I judge that the "c"
 was correct, but the "ly" should be "en"
 - giving Dicentra, for Dicentra 
 spectabalis, or Bleeding Heart.





Perhaps the most "generic" symbolism for the Bleeding Heart, from
other research, is "Heart of Jesus", from the red and white,
blood-and-water, drop emerging from the bottom of the heart bloom.

This drop was apparently seen also as the Holy Spirit processing
to earth from the heart (love of the Father and the Son) of the
interior of the Trinity - hence the name "Saint-Esperit".  Or
perhaps, also, as processing through the universally mediating
Immaculate Heart of Mary

Interesting thought that Our Lady would have heart-shaped eardrops
(symbolizing that it was through her ears that she heard the
word of God, and then kept it, in love.)

I previously found the "coer de Marie" French name for Bleeding
Heart on a Swiss postcard, which also listed the English "Mary's
Heart" and German "Frauen hertz".

(I had the pleasure of giving one of these cards to Frances Crane
Lillie, founder of the first U.S. public Mary Garden at St.
Joseph's Church, in Woods Hole.)





 The basis for the French "Enfant-Jesus
 au berceau" and the similar English
 "lady-in-a-boat" would appear to be based
 on the abstract symbolism of turning the
 blooms upside down so the reversed heart
 is the cradle or boat, and the inverted
 blood-and-water-drop the "Enfant Jesus" or
 the "lady".






I have usually found that there is some way of looking at a flower
to see the basis for a documented name, although this may be
stretching it a bit in this case.

This is an example of the thought process I've had to go through
many times in researching these flower names.  I wrote of this in
the 1996 article, "The Discovery of Old Religious Plant Symbolism".

Regarding flower name research in general, in the Introduction to
his "Plant Names of Medieval England" (dealing with monastic Latin
medicinal herb names), Tony Hunt observes, "The intriguing
question of the continuity or discontinuity of medieval and
popular names is one that can scarcely be tackled in the present
state of plant-name research, but certainly will be an important
topic for future researchers working with more extensive
materials."  Let's hope a doctoral candidate picks this up.

Anyway, I came up with 52 religious namings for 21 plants from
Rolland Vol 1, which is promising, and I will add to the list as
time permits.