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DICENTRA or BLEEDING HEART

Common names of related species: Blue Staggers, Dutchman’s Breeches, Fumewort (Old English), Ladies’ Lockets (Victorian English), Lyre Flower

Genus: Dicentra < Botanical Latin, with two spurs < dis Greek, twice + kentron Greek, spur. The generic name refers to the two spurs on each flower. At the end of this column is an etymological note on kentron, the Greek word that gives us our English term center or centre.

Family: Fumariaceae, the fumitory family, named after its typical but now obsolete genus, Fumaria, based on a medieval common name, fumitory, from fumus terrae Latin ‘smoke of the earth,’ a reference to the feathery, fern-like leaves, which in large stands might by a stretched metaphor be said to resemble smoke. By some botanists the plant is placed in the poppy family, Papaveraceae.

Species of Dicentra

Dicentra cucullaria (Dutchman's breeches)

The species name is Botanical Latin from cucullus Latin ‘little hood’ worn by a Roman child to fend off chilly weather, a reference to the shape of the flowers. Its common English name is Dutchman’s Britches or Breeches. The plant thrives in rich woodland soil that is moist in springtime. Look at a Dicentra cucullaria flower upside down to see the puffy pantaloon-like legs that give Dutchman's britches its name.

   

Another common name, this one of gruesome meaning, is Blue Staggers, reminding us that the plant is toxic and contains alkaloids known to have killed cattle after a slow poisoning in which the poor beasts stumble, tremble, and gasp horribly for breath.

Dicentra eximia (Latin ‘unusual, distinguished’) is the bleeding heart with finely divided leaves and little plumes of the curious flowers. Unlike Dutchman’s Britches, eximia blooms all summer.

Dicentra spectabilis (Latin ‘showy’) is Bleeding Heart, a Japanese species, the subject of some hybridizing to produce spectacular perennials with pure white flowers.

None of the dicentras work as cut flowers. The moment they are cut, they droop like moping crackheads deprived of a store to rob. Dicentra is a genus that tricks bumblebees. The stout little buzzers have short tongues that can reach the pollen, but the nectar is too far down the spurs, so bumblebees pollinate plants which deny the bees any sweet reward.

 

Derivatives & Word Lore of the Greek Word Kentron

The prime meaning of kentron is sharp point or peg; compare kenteein Greek ‘to stab, to prick, to goad.’ In Greek mathematics, the kentron was the stationary point of a pair of compasses, such as builders used to draw a circle on a papyrus planning sheet, hence the easy borrowing by the Romans to give the Latin word centrum, the centre of a circle. Thus the Greek and Latin roots are bases for dozens of words in modern English like center and centre, concentrate, eccentric, egocentric, epicentre, heliocentric, shopping centre.

 

New Testament Word

The word in its plural form kentra appears memorably in the New Testament. In the Book of Acts, the Pauline koine states that as Saul (later to be Saint Paul) was one day upon the road to Damascus, a divine voice out of heaven said to him: σκληρον σοι προς κεντρα λακτιζειν. In the King James translation “it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” By which the voice means to say, “Saul, it is dangerous and turns out badly for you to keep kicking against the goads, the prods of divine guidance, to keep offering resistance.” The implication is that the voice of God or your conscience will win you over to act righteously in the end. And if not — hoo-boy! Look out, Sauly!

 

Saint Paul Led Away to Damascus, 1509, engraving by Lucas van Leyden (Dutch 1489/94–1533) now at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. The Dutch engraver has chosen to show Paul after the Damascene conversion, blind, bent, leaning on helpers, as he makes his way to Damascus.

 

Greek Tragedy Word

πρὸς κέντρα μὴ λάκτιζε

from “The Agamemnon” by Greek dramatist Aeschylus (525-456 BCE)

pros kentra may laktidze (transliteration)

do not kick against the goads [the proddings of divine will] (translation)

In the passage quoted from Christian Holy Writ, the writer of The New Testament’s “Book of Acts” (presumably Saint Paul) repeats a phrase that was proverbial in Greek for perhaps a millennium. 500 years before it appears in the New Testament, the kick-against-the-goads phrase shows up in one of the great monument texts of Western culture, Aeschylus’ mighty trilogy The Oresteia, of which Agamemnon is one of the three plays.

 

This is the so-called Mask of Agamemnon, a funeral mask of thinly beated gold foil unearthed in 1876 by the great discoverer of Troy, Heinrich Schliemann, during archaeological work in the royal tombs at Mycenae in the Peloponnese. Schliemann thought he had discovered the tomb of Agamemnon, Homer's great king figure. However Schliemann was out by a mere four centuries. The tomb containing the golden mask dated 400 years earlier than the Trojan War. The mask today reposes in aureate splendour at The Athens Archaeological Museum.

 

A principal argument of “The Agamemnon” suggests that, when the gods prod you to an action, or prick you with a sharp pointed stick like that used as a cattle prod, do not always fight against such a divine stimulation. By the way, the pure Latin word for cattle prod is – stimulus. One of the themes of this Greek tragedy is that, sometimes, it is the better part of valour to submit and to proclaim your utter helplessness in the face of the crushing force of onward-rushing fate, of a destiny in which you, as a puny human, are at the mercy of powers far beyond your strength to alter, sometimes beyond even your ability to understand. So therefore do not kick against the pricks.

Look! Up in the Sky! It’s a Kentron!

The cattle prod or goad appears in the classic constellation called Boötes, Greek Βοώτης ‘the herdsman of cows’ from bous Greek ‘cow.’ For a moo-ving discussion of cow words both daily and scientific, see my "Cow Words."

Sometimes Boötes is referred to as the Bear Watcher, since it appears to be watching over the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. The constellation Boötes contains the third brightest star in the night sky, Arcturus. Note that the ö in the name is a diaeresis, not an umlaut. The dotted ‘o’ separates the two /o/ sounds, telling us that both are pronounced.

Several stars in Boötes make up his cattle prod. One of the stars is named with an Arabic phrase. It is marked μ on the drawing below, to the immediate left of the herdman’s head, and is labelled Al-kalurops, mangled Arabic for ‘the herdsman’s staff.’

Some ancient star charts and astronomical depictions show Boötes holding a club or a spear but most commentators knew it was a cattle prod.

Greek and Roman myths feature several fanciful stories about how the faithful herdsman received his place among the stars of heaven. I like the practical Roman story that Boötes invented the plough at the dawn of agriculture. Ceres, Roman goddess of wheat and barley fields, was so pleased by this invention that she tiptoed over to Jupiter and asked the king of the gods to grant the humble herdsman a fixed abode in the splendour of the night sky. Ceres’ name gives us our English word cereal.

 

© 2009 William Gordon Casselman

 

 

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