There with fantastic garlands did she make

Orchis mascula

In between re-practicing all my speeches and writing a novel (well, three novels... I've been at this every summer for three years now), I am currently engaged in reading A History of the Orchid by Merle A. Reinikka. This publication is something of a Godsend for me, as I have been searching for a legitimate, comprehensive, historical chronicle of human fascination with orchids for quite a while now and I am in heaven with this book.

Ever since I downloaded Darwin's The Various Contrivances by Which Orchids Are Fertilized by Insects onto my Kindle from the Open Library, I find myself compelled to seek out little-known researches and journals on the most engrossing of botanicals. The whole book is essentially very detailed orchid porn, and it has led me to scour the internet for--and in two cases, obtain--some of the orchids he studied. Thank you, Darwin, for everything.

Anyhow, six pages into the History, the author mentions Shakespeare and how he peppered references to all sorts of plants, weeds, and flowers throughout his plays. Entire gardens (I've been to two in NYC myself) have been dedicated to the plants that pop up in his works. Indeed, there are many, but only once did he throw an orchid into the lot.

Of course, it was in Hamlet, Act IV, Sc. VII, when Gertrude is setting the scene of Ophelia's death for Claudius and Laertes:

There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do “dead men’s fingers” call them.


The author of The Plant-Lore and Garden-Craft of Shakespeare agrees that the "long purples" and "dead men's fingers" are reference to the common purple Orchises (Orchis latifolia, O. morio, O. mascula, and O. maculata) found in English woods and meadows.

This green thumb with over 50 orchids to her name was ecstatic with these tidbits. That the only reference to orchids ever made was in Hamlet (my favorite!) just ices the cake for me.

Orchids, by the way, got their name from the Greek orchis, meaning testis, because most of the orchids the ancients knew about at the time had testiculate bulbs that resembled male genitalia. Based on the "Doctrine of Signatures," plants that approximated human anatomy in shape were believed to treat or cure ailments related to the corresponding body parts. So it follows that orchids were thought to assist with fertility. If a man consumed the plump, fresh orchid tuber, they would beget male children. If a woman ate the dried up roots, they would bear females.

Given all the talk of conception ("Conception is a blessing, but, as your daughter may conceive..." Act II, Sc. II) and "chaste treasure" earlier in the play, one could surmise that poor, scandalized Ophelia may have had certain adult activities on her mind while she was picking her flowers.

Just a bit of vegetation for thought. Next week, I think a new speech is in order. Stay tuned!

The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night

Friar Lawrence: priest, gardener, apothecary, trouble-maker.

I knew from the start that I didn't want to learn anything too obvious from Romeo & Juliet. Like Hamlet, this play has so much of it infused in the zeitgeist, but each has dark corners that are as remarkable as they are uncelebrated. As gorgeous as the lovers' exchanges are (their first lines spoken to one another forms a sonnet, for Jebus' sake), I wanted something more personal.

Enter the good friar and his garden of good intentions. The man has a lot of choice words for Romeo and his love life, but ultimately backs the hasty teenager to a degree that borders on unwise. In the Baz Luhrmann film, Friar Lawrence nurses this most infamous of star-cross'd relationships with the same zeal as he has for growing his questionable botanicals. He later employs one of his concoctions to help Juliet fake her death, but his secret letter to Romeo explaining the ruse doesn't quite make its way into the lover's hands.

In this speech, the hapless gardener waxes about the overlapping attributes of men and plants, and how each is often host to antithetical qualities. Life in fair Verona has made him quite the expert on such things, as everyone is so equally loyal and loving to their families and so resentful and hateful toward their neighbor.

Every Saturday, I go out on my patio and water and fertilize my collection of orchids. I spend a fair amount of time documenting their growth, taking pictures and making notes on what seems to make each one happy and healthy. Ever since I learned this speech, I recite it to my plants as go about my work. After a long week, these words serve as a reminder that not all things are as they appear, but we must keep tending our lives with diligence, for even the bad can be distilled and made useful.


Romeo & Juliet, Act II, Sc. III
Friar Lawrence: The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night,
Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels:
Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry,
I must up-fill this osier cage of ours
With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.
The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;
What is her burying grave that is her womb,
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find,
Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some and yet all different.
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometimes by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this small flower
Poison hath residence and medicine power:
For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposed kings encamp them still
In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;
And where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.