From “Atamasco Lily” in The Native Flowers and Ferns of the United States (1879) by Thomas Meehan:
“In spite of its English common name, [this] beautiful plant… has nothing whatever to do with the Lily family, as this family is now arranged. The name has simply adhered to it because the old botanists erroneously classed it with Lilium, together with so many other plants which have now been removed to other genera. ‘Atamasco,’ we are told by [Robert] Morrison, an early writer, was the name given to our plant by the inhabitants of Carolina, from whence it was first sent to England. The word is in all probability of Indian origin, but we have no knowledge of its precise meaning….
“Various other names are mentioned besides by other writers. Thus [Stephen] Elliott tells us, in his ‘Botany of South Carolina,’ that the plant is called ‘Stagger-Grass,’ from a belief widely prevalent that a disease in calves, called the ‘staggers,’ is produced by the animals’ feeding on it…. It is the Swamp Lily of the Georgians, and is called ‘Toonau’ by the Creek Indians, who use its bulbous roots as an article of food in time of scarcity….
“The genus Amaryllis, with which our plant was classed when its connections with Lilium were severed, was founded by Linnaeus in the year 1737; but so far as the name is regarded, it is as difficult in this case as it is in so many other cases to say precisely why it was chosen. Amaryllis is a Greek female name, derived from words signifying ‘splendor.’ Theocritus, the celebrated Greek bucolic poet, who was born about 300 B.C., gives the name to one of his shepherdesses; and the Roman poet Virgil, who was born in the year 70 B.C., makes a similar use of it. He sings of his return from the city to his country home as of a return to his first love, and personifies the former as a lady named Galatea, who had hitherto bound him fast by her unsatisfactory charms, while the home of his youth is introduced as a beautiful country girl, a shepherdess, — ‘my Amaryllis.’ The shepherdess, however, was not so easily won back….
“The whole genus Amaryllis… seems to be of a poetical turn of mind; or, to speak more reasonably, seems to have excited the poetic fancy to an unusual degree. One of the species belonging to it has its flowers growing on a slender, curved stem, and therefore, whenever the wind blows, the mouth of the flower turns away from the breeze, as if the coy maiden desired to escape the kisses of Zephyr, the wild west wind….
“In our Atamasco Lily, however, there is no such bending of the flowers, no timid or coquettish turning away from Zephyr, and for this reason chiefly the plant was taken from Amaryllis and transferred to a new genus, Zephyranthes, by [William] Herbert, a modern botanist. But it will be seen that Herbert still adheres to the ancient fancy, for Zephyranthes means ‘Zephyr Flower,’ thus implying that, while Amaryllis flies from the advances of her lover, Zephyranthes willingly suffers his embraces, and accepts his kisses.”
Hello!
This is the second of two posts featuring Zephyr Lilies (or Atamasco, Rain, Fairy, Swamp, Wild Easter Lilies, or STAGGER GRASS) from Oakland Cemetery’s Gardens. The first post is Discovering Zephyr Lilies (1 of 2). I’m especially fond of the first few photos where there are branches and thorns from a fallen rosebush behind and below the Zephyrs, as well as those where the delicate flowers contrast with architectural stone in the background. Lately I’ve been trying to pay more attention to how the background affects a photo’s composition, and I’m currently working on several batches of aster and mum photos (coming soon!) where the garden’s architectural elements are featured with equal importance as the flowers.
I included the (rather long) quotation from Thomas Meehan’s 1879 book The Native Flowers and Ferns of the United States because I liked its language and style, and it provides a nice overview of how a plant’s naming conventions change through refined and shared observations. That chapter also picks up on some of the Zephyr’s botanical and historical characteristics, and I was glad to see mention of the plants in the U.S. southeast states of North or South Carolina and Georgia — along with an additional explanation of the common name Stagger Grass, which, we now know, goes back to at least the eighteenth century. Those poor cows been staggerin’ a long time!
Thanks for taking a look!
By any name these are charming and lovely little flowers.