“The summer is nearly over when the tall conspicuous Joe-Pye-Weeds begin to tinge with ‘crushed raspberry’ the lowlands through which we pass.” — Mrs. William Starr Dana
Eupatorium purpurea, Joe Pye Weed, is one of our distinctive wildflowers. Stalks six-to-eight feet tall, with whorled vanilla-scented leaves, are topped with domes of clustered small pink flowers. Cultivars developed for the garden include ‘Gateway’ which has deep purple stems and blooms of a richer rose pink, which last longer than the native Joe Pye. A shorter variation, more suited to smaller gardens, is called ‘Baby Joe’ and stays below four feet. Both in the wild and in cultivation, these are impressive and beautiful plants, loved by bees and butterflies.
People’s names have been included in plant nomenclature since the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus created his plant classification system. The binomial names consisting of genus and species often incorporated the names of scientists or plant explorers. Our native mountain laurel is of the genus Kalmia. Linnaeus honored Peter Kalm, one of his students who introduced the plant to him. Fuchsias are named for the sixteenth-century botanist, Leonhart Fuchs, who discovered the plants in South America. At times the citation is in the species name. The flowering tobacco, Nicotiana langsdorffii, commemorates Georg Heinrich Von Langsdorff, Russian consul in Rio de Janeiro and explorer of the Brazilian interior. Often a name is tacked on after the Latin to differentiate a variation. Sedum ‘Vera Jameson’ was named after she discovereda particularly handsome stonecrop plant in her Gloucestershire garden in the 1970s. Having a plant bear your name seems like a fitting claim of a bit of immorality for a plant person.
The name ‘Joe Pye’ is not part of the Latin nomenclature. It is a folk name for a common plant and ‘Joe Pye Weed’ is a sweet, endearing appellation. But who was he?
In the mid-eighteenth century, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, lived a Mohican sachem, Joseph Schauquethqueat. He was an herbalist and a healer who helped the colonists by treating the fevers of typhus using the plant, Eupatorium purpurea. In his native language ‘zhopai’ or ‘jopi’ was the word for ‘fever.’ This was transliterated as ‘Joe Pye’ and became his Christian name and, consequently, the common name of his healing plant. By 1818, the term ‘Joe Pye weed’ was entered into the Merriam Webster Dictionary. In 1900, Neitje Blanchan wrote in her book Nature’s Garden: “Joe Pye, an Indian medicine man of New England, earned fame and fortune by curing typhus fever and other horrors, with decoctions made from this plant.” With the passage of time, this plant has kept Joe Pye’s name but the knowledge of who he was faded.
It is a plant I have always loved, and I am fond of both names, ‘Joe Pye’ and ‘Eupatorium.’ The first I like for the whimsical, personal feel of the man’s concise name. The second I appreciate for its musicality; the way the five syllables trip off your tongue. But then, while researching for this column, I discovered that there is a new genus name, Eutrochium, that supersedes the term Eupatorium. Sometimes the plant taxonomists are annoying with changes in classifications. I agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote, “[They] love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, and all their botany is Latin names!”
At this time of year, one of the tasks is to cut down the dead and dying plants in our gardens. The eight-foot stalks of Eupatorium purpurea,’ Joe Pye Weed will fall over like small trees. But next year, they will return in all their glory, the bees and butterflies will feed on their blooms, and I will be pleased to know the answer to one of my gardening life’s small mysteries: Who was Joe Pye?
November 2018
Comments