Two Centuries of American Common Tree-Names

Abstract

OM MON names are trees what nicknames are persons, with the exception that some common names furnish a partial picture of the tree described. Such words as Carolinian or Virginian bear no more descriptive value casual readers than do the personal names Joe or Mary, but there is a definite descriptive value in such denominations as chestnut-leaved oak or rock maple. The purpose of my investigation, recorded in this and following articles, is the study of the history and the development of the common names of the trees of the eastern United States from the time of the first permanent settlements until the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, with special emphasis on the last thirty-five years of the period. This period sees the settlement of the Atlantic States, and the exploration, purchase, and settlement by Englishspeaking people of the vast new Louisiana Territory. It sees the Wars of the Revolution and of 1812; the firm establishing of a new nation in a land full of the unspoiled riches of nature. It is a period of the formation of many new elements in the rapidly developing language of the people; a time that called for keen observation, clear understanding, and fertile imagination in the expansion of botanical nomenclature. The drama of Genesis was, as it were, re-enacted: God brought the frontiersman his creatures to see what he would call them. The pioneers had the problem of discovering which trees of the garden were good for food and which were be shunned. It is not in the least surprising that new fruits like the Papaw and Persimmon were discovered almost immediately. The field of such a study as this is so wide and the individual objects of investigation so numerous that unless some delimitation is made, the material will prove too vast handle. However, the limits both of date and geographical area fall quite naturally. Until some time in the seventeenth century, all works mentioning American treenames were written by adventuring foreigners whose records have little value for this study, so that our earliest limit establishes itself with the writings of such pioneer colonizers as Captain John Smith. 411