Nepenthes trivia
Johnson, Robert (WogahnME@MASPO1.MAS.YALE.EDU)
Fri, 23 Sep 1994 16:05:00 -0400 (EDT)
Hi all, I thought this might be of some intrest, its an excerpt from the
book "The Plant Hunters" by Tyler Whittle
.......but even more fascinating, and given pride of place in
Victorian collections of curiosities, were the carnivorus pitcher plants
native to the eastern tropics. Linnaeus with his sense of the appropriate,
had named the plants nepenthes after the cocktail made of an Egyptian drug
and wine which Homer described as banishing grief and rage and inducing
forgetfulness..It became evident that Linnaeus' name was particularly
appropriate. Not only did those who hunted the pitchers experience the sort
of happy forgetfulness induced by Homers' nepenthes, but their cutivators,
too, were daily comforted as they syringed and stoked to maintain East Indian
conditions in the stove. And, in the end-of-winter excitement of rebasketing
their precious pitchers, they were as entirely oblivious of the pianful past
as any hero of the Odyssey.
True or what?
RJ