April 24—Walking through the rain this morning the words of the poet came to me that "Spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil"...though the soil has not much to laugh about these days. And of all the flowers around me I found the tall Buttercups to be the most attractive; so I took out my knife and cut a great armful which has since provided a most attractive table decoration. I was so stirred by the beauty of these wild flowers that I looked up various books of reference to see just how they got their name... and I am still left in a sea of doubt.
Mr. Porterfield tells me that the small Buttercup of our lawns is Ranunculus ternatus (and I have previously. remarked that the Rana part of it refers to the frog) while the tall one i: Ranunculus acres... or possibly R. Japonicus, according to the shape of leaves and petals. But it does seem quaint that among all the authorities I am unable to find how such a familiar flower was named. It is known as Crowfoot (from the shape of the leaves) Butterflower, Golden-cup, Goldilocks and Kingeup. In all these names the word "butter" is most difficult to explain because it has been known for generations that Ranunculus (an acrid herb) does nothing to increase the butter-content of the milk of kine which have fed on it. Shakespeare called the flower uckoobud" which merely goes to show that in his day anything which had a spice of romance about it was called after the Cuckoo—a nasty piece of work from the sociological point of view. And last of all, I found in an old encyclopcedia that the name of this flower has really nothing to do with Butter and less to do with Cups: it is derived (so says my authority) from "Button-cop"—meening "Button-head'—and referring to the round seed-head left when the petals fall off! I wonder? And I only wish that brother Shakespeare were still alive so that I could ask him what in the name of all that is wonderful he meant when he called this flower a "Cuckoobud."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.