Sweet Briar

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OK, so there doesn't seem to be much doubt that a sweet Briar is the same thing as an Eglantine which is the same thing as Rosa rubiginosa, but please will someone put me out of my misery and tell me where this peculiar name "Eglantine" came from and why does Milton (and Grigson in his "Englishmans Flora") apply it to Woodbine?

I can't find any reference to it as a rose prior to Turner 1551 though he does ascribe it to Pliny under the name "Kynorrhodos" however in the Loeb translation of Pliny this rose becomes the ordinary R canina.

 

At the end of the nineteenth century, Fernie wrote of R rubiginosa  that  "its poetic title Eglantine is a corruption of the Latin Aculeius, prickly" though my Lewis & Short denies the existence of "Aculeius" as a Latin word though admitting "aculeatus". I am still doubtful firstly because Fernie can be relied upon to grasp the wrong end of the stick and secondly the rose would have need to have  been  known and recorded prior to the sixteenth century for its name to become corrupted. It seems to be generally agreed that before Mattioli, Turner and Fuchs, no one looked at plants sufficiently closely to distinguish one from another; roses were just roses and, as such, have a long and detailed history...........though Colonna came up with a few regional variations for table decorations in Hypnerotomachia at the end of the fifteenth century, but whether he actually looked at the roses is doubtful

 

Gerard in fact mentions two "Eglantines" the second "having greater leaves and much sweeter, the floures likewise are greater, and somewhat doubled, exceeding sweet of smell, wherein it differeth from the former.....we have them all  except the Brier Bush  in our London gardens, which we think unworthy the place". Which seems somewhat inconsistent. The second is presumably the one referred to  as "Rofa fyv' mult Double fweet Brier rofes" in the Oxford Botanic Garden catalogue of 1648

 

Chaucer may have got the name of his prioress, Eglantine from the bride of Valentine in the old Romance "Valentine & Orson". Of her, Dr Brewer succinctly writes "she soon died" which takes care of her then.

 

As for the real rose, it survives even the wretched deer here on the nursery, so for pruning, hack it down to the ground with your slasher or mechanical weapon of horticultural mass destruction, it will soon bounce back to shred your hands again next year.

 

Happy Christmas

 

Anthony