DIAN'S BUD (Artemesia). This plant is nothing more nor less than absinthe, or wormwood. It is mentioned under its poetic name by Shakespeare in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" when Oberon bids Puck find him the "little purple flower called Love in Idleness," the juice of which placed on sleeping eyelids would make man, or woman, madly dote on the first object beheld on awakening, and with which he intended to anoint the eyelids of the sleeping Titania. He also told the mischievous sprite that the charm could be removed with another herb—Dian's bud, the flower sacred to the goddess Diana. Later in the play, touching the eyes of the spellbound fairy with this second herb, Oberon pronounces the following incantation:

From the earliest times absinthe was associated with sorcery and was used for incantations. Pliny says the traveler who carried it about him would never grow weary and that it would drive away any lurking devils and counteract the evil eye. Ovid calls it absinthium and speaks of its bitterness.

The Greeks also called it artemesia after the goddess Artemis, or Diana, and made it a moon-plant. Very poetically, therefore, Shakespeare alludes to it as "Dian's Bud,"—and most appropriately does it appear in the moon-lit forest. Gerard, however, quaintly says that is was named for Queen Artemesia, wife of Mausolus, King of Caria, who built the Mausoleum, which was one of the "Seven Wonders of the World." The ancients liked its flavor in their wine as many people still like vermouth, one of its infusions.

In Shakespeare's time people hung up sprays of wormwood to drive away moths and fleas; and there was a homely verse:

Wormwood was also kept in drawers and closets. To dream of the plant was of good augury: happiness and domestic enjoyment were supposed to result. Mugwort is another old name for the plant.

MONK'S-HOOD (Aconitum Napellus). This plant has three names: monk's-hood, wolf's-bane, and aconite. Aconite is the "dram of poison" that Romeo calls for,[83] and Shakespeare alludes to aconitum in "King Henry IV," where the king, addressing Thomas of Clarence, compares its strength and that of gunpowder. "Though it do work as strong as aconitum or rash gunpowder."[84] Aconite was supposed in Elizabethan days to be an antidote against the most deadly poison. Ben Jonson in "Sejanus" makes one of his characters remark:

Lord Bacon in "Sylva" calls Napellus "the most powerful poison of all vegetables."

Yet despite its poisonous qualities, an English garden lover writes, "the plant has always held, and deservedly, a place among the ornamental plants of our gardens; its stately habit and its handsome leaves and flowers make it a favorite."

The ancients, who were unacquainted with mineral poisons, regarded aconite as the most deadly of all poisons and believed that Hecate had caused the plant to spring from the venomous foam frothing from the mouth of the three-headed dog, Cerberus, when Hercules took him from Pluto's dark realm on one of his Twelve Labors. Ovid describes the aconite as

In Greece it was also known as Wolf's-bane (Lycoctonum), and it was thought that arrow-heads rubbed with it would kill wolves. Turner quaintly writes in his "Herbal" (1568):

"This of all poisons is the most hastie poison, howbeit Pliny saith this herb will kill a man if he take it, except it find in a man something to kill. Let our Londoners which have of late received this blue Wolf's-bane, otherwise called Monk's Cane, take heed that the poison of the root of this herb do not more harm than the freshness of the flower hath done pleasure. Let them not say but they are warned."

Parkinson's name for it is Napellus verus flore coeruleo (Blue Helmet-Flower, or Monk's-hood).

"The Helmet Flower," he writes, "hath divers leaves of a fresh green color on the upper side and grayish underneath, much spread abroad and cut into many slits and notches. The stalk riseth up two or three foot high, beset to the top with the like leaves, but smaller. The top is sometimes divided into two or three branches, but more usually without, whereon stand many large flowers one above another, in form very like a hood, or open helmet, being composed of five leaves, the uppermost of which and the greatest is hollow, like unto a helmet, or headpiece: two other small leaves are at the sides of the helmet, closing it like cheeks, and come somewhat under, and two other which are the smallest hang down like labels, or as if a close helmet were opened and some pieces hung by, of a perfect, or fair, blue color (but grow darker having stood long) which causeth it to be so nourished up in Gardens that their flowers, as was usual in former times (and yet is in many country places) may be laid among green herbs in windows and rooms for the Summertime; but although their beauty may be entertained for the uses aforesaid, yet beware they come not near your tongue or lips, lest they tell you to your cost, they are not so good as they seem to be. In the middest of the flower, when it is open and gapeth wide, are seen certain small threads like beards, standing about a middle head, which, when the flower is past, groweth into three or four, or more, small blackish pods, containing in them black seeds. The roots are brownish on the outside and white within, somewhat big and round about and small downwards, somewhat like unto a small, short carrot root, sometimes two being joined at the head together. It is the true Napellus of the ancient writers, which they so termed from the form of a turnip called Napus in Latin."

Generally speaking the leaf and flower of the monk's-hood resemble the larkspur; and, like the larkspur and the columbine, the plant has wandered away from its original family, the buttercup tribe. The upper sepal has developed from a spur into a hood.

Winter