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Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

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What I Learned from Agatha Christie, Part 5: Horticulture

March 14, 2023 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Saxifrage

I have already shared two posts on visual vocabulary learned from Agatha Christie… but that doesn’t begin to cover the horticultural entires. Seriously, why has no one ever written Agatha Christie, Botanist?!

Some plants (chiefly flowers in her works) are so common that even a non-gardener like me knows them: roses, lilies, chrysanthemums, yew trees. But I encountered quite a lot of unknown terms in my latest read-through of Miss Marple in particular (the spinster detective is a passionate gardener). Though, as I’ve looked them up, I realized that I know a number of them by sight, just hitherto not by name.

Enjoy this Christieish bouquet!

The improbably named Polygonum baldschuanica, even more improbably renamed Fallopia baldschuanicum, known in German as Schlingknöterich (I am not making this up), and in English variously as Russian-vine, Bukhara fleeceflower, and mile-a-minute. It plays a particularly dark role in one of Agatha’s novels.

Evidently this Meconopsis grandis or Blue Poppy is the best guess for Christie’s “mecosoapies,” which otherwise remains mysterious.

Salvia

Naturally, I knew this word from Lobelia Baggins, but I never knew to associate it with this flower.

Weigela

A macrocarpa is not, as it turns out, a big fish.

I know these flowers very well but never knew what they were called: primula.

Calceolaria, aka lady’s slipper or lady’s purse

I love this flower! They grow it in flower boxes all over Strasbourg (and I’ve seen it occasionally in Tokyo) so I only knew it by the French name, corbeille d’argent (“basket of silver”). It is very fragrant and smells like honey. The common English/Latin name for a wide genus of flowers like this is alyssum.

Cytisus, also known as broom, not to be confused with…

Furze, also known as gorse.

There’s a whole lot of these bell-shaped flowers. Agatha refers to them both as Canterbury bells and thimble campanula.

Last but not least, a couple poisonous flowers! This is henbane, also known as stinking nightshade. The family resemblance is why Europeans distrusted tomatoes and eggplants for so long.

Datura, which I knew by the name jimsonweed, another nightshade. It can make cattle sick!

Tags Agatha Christie, novels, detective fiction
← Walking Down Grand Avenue: A PoemWhat I Learned from Agatha Christie, Part 4: More Visual Vocabulary →

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