What Is In A Name?

The etymology of Yellow toadflax begins with it older and more useful cousin. Although Yellow Toadflax has been in North America for the last 300 years old, compared to its namesake, flax, it is still a youngster. Flax was one of the first crops cultivated by civilized man. Therefore some suggest it was native to the Orient and then traveled south to India and north to Europe. The Swiss Stone Age People of the Mediterranean used the fiber and the seed. The Egyptians wrapped their mummies in linen woven from flax fibers.  

Now no one denies the connection between the true flax and its weedy cousin. Many of these weedy species of Linaria look very much like flax. However, this link makes tracing the “toad” in toadflax somewhat unclear.  Some say that toadflax got its name because the word “toad” was a spurious, or counterfeit, of the origin plant. Considering the plethora of common names gives to yellow toadflax, this seems plausible. Common names often take on the observer sees. Some see a cow’s nose, or Calves Snout, in the orange lobes. Others suggest that the plants structure (the two orange lobes) resemble a toad’s mouth.   A third theory is that toads were often found hiding among the leaves.  The butter & egg, or wild snapdragon, is one of 130 species of Linnaria, native to Eurasia.

 

Yellow Toadflax: Beauty or the Beast?

Yellow Toadflax, or butter and eggs, part of the figwort or snapdragon family, is a plant with delicate orange lobes similar to a pair of lips, sitting on top of a yellow spur. It is not surprising that this profile earned it a generic name that means dragon mouth because like other flowers that are squeezed open their "mouth." Children also enjoy playing with these lips. Squeezing the side of the flower makes the mouth open and then snap shut. When the bumblebees pollinates the snapdragon, its ungratefully close over the pollinator who is dispositing his pollen

Because of this resemblance to the showy snapdragon, in the mid 1800's a Welsh Quaker, traveling with William Penn to Delaware started cultivating it in his garden. Ranstead, an upholster by trade, who probably had an appreciation for design, brought this Ranstead Weed, or yellow toadflax, to America, was unconcerned about it escaping the garden.

Some may recognize it by one of its many alias; wild snapdragon, Ramstead Weed, Flaxweed, Jacob’s Ladder, Brideweed, , Buttered Hayhocks, Calves' Snout, Churnstaff, Devil's Head, Devil's Ribbon, Doggies, Dragon-Bushes, Eggs and Bacon, Eggs and Collops, Flaxweed, Fluelli, Gallwort, Larkspur Lion's Mouth, Linaria vulgaris, Monkey Flower, Pattens and Clogs, Pedlar's Basket, Pennywort, Rabbits, Toadpipe, Yellow Rod.

The yellow toadflax with round shaped leaves grows in sandy soil: Whereas the spiked leaf yellow toadflax likes to creep extensively and spread its roots in a gravelly base. It is this ability to root so easily that has allowed it to spread to every state. It was introduced in California in the 1800’s. North Dakota has an all-out bulletin on a website that personifies this gorgeous weed. “If you find this weed, report it to your local weed officer. 
HELP STOP THE SPREAD” Along with its decorative yellow cornucopia, or “butter”, holding the orange, “egg” which first attracts the gardener to its beauty. Colorado and Idaho are among the many states listing it as a noxious weed. “The weeds contain a poisonous glucoside that may be harmful to livestock.” British Columbia uses biological agents to control it.

Flower By Flower

Flower By Flower

Think about the names of wildflowers (even those we consider weeds) you have learned over the years.  How many would you guess you know? 10? 20?  Why are some so familiar, and others, visually recognizable, but name unknown.  The buttercup, for instance, has been put under millions of tiny chins to check for the victim’s love of butter. The daisy has had its petals pulled one by one only to break the heart of the person holding the lone petal that “loves me not.” For each of us, there is that memory that forever holds the name of the flower in our hearts. One puff on the dandelion –endears the child to its magic explosion.

But there are so many more that go nameless. One look at a botanical website listing the wildflowers for each state will make it painfully clear how many we are missing.

The best way to approach this for child or adult is to focus on one flower and learn all there is to know about it. Looking around, yellow dots the Connecticut roadsides this month. I plan on learning about each yellow wildflower, flower by flower. Won’t you join me?

Read More About It:

A Little Guide to Wild Flowers, by Charlotte Voake, April, 2007; Transworld Publishers.

 

Mabel Osgood Wright

The journey back to the joys of the natural world-whether its an garden on an urban rooftop, a footpath into a lush  forest, or a backyard vegetable patch-will define the beginning of this 21^st century. Much of the credit for this rebirth goes to Robert Louv’s Last Child In the Woods and the “Nature Deficit Disorder”  generation  growing up today.  Along with all the empirical and anecdotal evidence Louv cites, many studies underscore -on several levels- the need to balance our technological living with the natural world. The health of every person and the health of our world depend on it.  Our mental health-our well-being-our intellectual health-as well as our physical health demand activities that take us away from the screen or the text. Moreover,  placing importance on this life will ensure that those who value our environment will preserve it.

Interestingly, before the computer, the cell phone, and I Pod, earlier naturalists were defending the natural world.  Mabel Osgood Wright who founded the Connecticut Audubon Society is one of those naturalists. She grew up in New York City but  lived her married life in Fairfield, Connecticut. Her children books such as Four Footed Americans And Their Kin  written in 1899  shows how the “House Family” interacts with the animals. Critics praise Wright's attention to portraying the animals in their natural habitat.