Feb 8, 2024
A Happy Waitangi Day to all our Kiwi friends in New Zealand!
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A Happy Waitangi Day to all our Kiwi friends in New Zealand!
Pulmonaria (Lungwort var: ‘Blue Ensign’)
Lungwort
Most of my gardening books begin the section on Lungworts with an apology - an ugly name for a pretty little flower. Lungworts are native to Europe and Western Asia and this cultivar, Blue Ensign, is particularly popular as a spring flower.
The name of this plant is an example of sympathetic medicine applied to botany. It was believed that plants that resemble in some way, an afflicted body part, where placed on earth by a higher power as medicine to alleviate specific diseases.
‘Wort’ is an Olde English word added as a suffix to the common name of plants that were considered useful. Lungwort was thought useful for disorders of the lung because the leaves of one species’ Pulmonaria officinalis, are shaped like a human lung and have white spots on the surface like diseased lung tissue.
The genus name, Pulmonaria, is Latin for lung but the belief system which underlies sympathetic medicine is far older than that. Examples of sympathetic medicine are found in indigenous cultures all over the world. Some believe they go back far into prehistory, to a time when we still lived in caves.
Our fare was very communicative, and we found out that he was master's mate of the Immortalité, forty-gun frigate, lying off Gravesend, which was to drop down the next morning and wait for sailing orders at the Downs. We carried the tide with us, and in the afternoon were close to the frigate, whose blue ensign waved proudly over the taffrail.
— Frederick Marryat, Jacob Faithful
A Frigate Coming to Anchor in the Mersey, painting by Robert Salmon, 1802. She is flying the 1801-pattern blue ensign of the Royal Navy.
Ensigns of the (alternate) Kingdom of England
HMCS Sioux entering Esquimalt Harbour, circa 1950-1963 Canada. Department of National Defence Library and Archives Canada, CT113
A radiant Queen Elizabeth superimposed on the old flag of Jamaica
At the end of her life The Queen was ruler of 15 realms & territories
The rarely seen Commonwealth Blue Ensign - simple but eloquent
'Desire the Right' indeed