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welcome to
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the New Books Network
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A
hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Gregory Kenniser about his book titled Scottish Plant Names and A to z published in 2026 by Berlin, which introduces quite a number, almost 300 plant names in fact, focusing on plants in Scotland in three different languages. So we're talking about English, Scots and Gaelic and some varieties within that as well that really help us understand not just the history of these plants in Scotland, but their history within different cultures and languages as well. The book has beautiful illustrations too, from Hazel, France, so it's very pretty to look at, which is obviously not something we're going to focus on as much in this audio only medium, but I think we're going to have quite a lot of fun with words. So. So Greg, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast.
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B
Miranda, it's an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
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A
Could you start us off please by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?
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B
Yeah, so I'm a botanist at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh and part of my research, I work mostly in the Education department, but part of my research is looking at Scottish ethnobotany. So kind of the traditional uses of plants in Scotland. And many years ago, we had an amazing project here called Flora Celtica, which looked at just traditions of how people use plants, both in the past and in more modern times. So up to about 20 years ago or so, I've been here a long time. And as part of that, we also pulled together as many possible plant names as we could. We just culled them from any source we could, from talking to people, from quite a deep and broad literature that's out there as well. And ultimately we came up with quite a lot of them.
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A
Yeah, Way too many for us to talk about in this conversation. There's no way I'm going to ask you about every single one. But how did you decide which to include? Is the book simply kind of all the ones you found, or did any get left on the cutting room floor?
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B
Really, a lot got left on the cutting room floor because there's maybe about 1,100 different species of plants in Scotland, or we'd consider as native species, that we'd expect to have names across many of these languages, but a whole host of them are what we'd call little green jobbies, sort of things that are a small sedge or a grass, or the kind of things that it's very difficult for people to distinguish between. So, generally speaking, we condense their names down, they'll all have one name, at least in English, and in many cases they'll have an official name in Gaelic. But we got rid of, if you like, many of those, because they are quite obscure plants, and pulled out most of the ones that we felt that would be familiar to people. And of course, all those ones that had some really intriguing and weird and wonderful names as well.
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A
Yeah, no, we're definitely going to talk about some of the weird and intriguing names, but staying on the kind of big picture part, I suppose, for a moment, you mentioned that a lot of the plants have English names and obviously official Gaelic names, but there's also the Scots element of it and some variations. So how did you sort of research the range of names? Right. This is not just a list that says, this is the one name in English, this is the one name in Gaelic. Like, it's more intricate than that. But what did that sort of excavating and researching process look like?
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B
Well, there's actually quite a wealth of literature. We're quite lucky through Gaelic, of course. A Lot's been recorded through poetry and I guess as a language, there's often quite a lot of regional variants within Gaelic as well. So on the islands and different parts of the mainland as well, all have their own dialects. And the same is the case for Scots as well. So you find some very, very local, I mean, extremely local names as well. And those have popped up in the literature from the 1700s and even earlier as well, and been cascaded through and recorded by people subsequently. And it means that there'll have been through a few filters, there'll have been a few spelling mistakes maybe as people were recording things, and of course, things like Gaelic. And to an extent, Scots didn't have a standard way of spelling things until relatively recent times as well. So lots of these variants will have been picked up and where possible, we tried just to record all of these. So you'll find that many of the names sound and read very similar, but they might have a letter that changes here or there and in some cases that can interestingly change the meaning of the name as well.
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A
Yeah, it's definitely interesting to see on the page. Sometimes you're like, oh, that looks really similar. There's a little tweak. Hmm, I wonder how that sort of came about. And you've just mentioned, of course, the time is part of these evolutions as well. So do we have sort of a moment when lots of these names come up or do we have some examples in the book that are maybe especially ancient or especially modern?
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B
We certainly have some especially ancient ones. And that's what I love about many of the names for kind of often trees, familiar trees that were practical, useful and people could identify across almost even Indo European culture. So you find something like birch is bathed in Gaelic and Burke in Scots. They're all very similar sounding words and they don't have many other variant names either, because a birch tree is a birch tree. It's a useful thing. People can identify it all across Europe and there's not really that much point in giving it lots of extra names. It's pretty standard. So that kind of little suite of names there probably has a very, very ancient origin. And things like poppy, for example, there's words that are very close to poppy, again across many, many Indo European languages. So that useful, often religiously useful and certainly medicinally useful and very easily identifiable plant poppy doesn't really change its name, it picks up a few others through the course of time. But these standardized names are certainly very, very ancient for some of them. And then we've got Some things like I guess the one that's commonly called butterbur, a kind of biggish rhubarb like plant in the daisy family that grows at stream sides, which in some parts of Scotland in Scots is called. Well, it's kind of Scots, but Anglo sax is called flapper bags. And that's got to be a fairly recent thing because what happens when these big rhubarb like leaves die off towards the end of the season is that the big blades often collapse down and they go a bit brown and a bit scabby and they look like old plastic bags chucked by the riverside. So flapper bags probably comes from that. So quite a new. Certainly a name that's as new as plastic bags.
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A
That is quite a range indeed. Thank you for giving us a sense of the time that these names cover. But I think I'd like to pick up on the idea you mentioned for birch that kind of. There isn't a lot of variation, which is one of the indicators it might be so old. What are some of the other reasons that plants might have lots of different names? I mean, just to mention a few that I noticed in the book, there's loads of names for foxglove or juniper or orchids. Like why do some have so many names? And then there's ones like, as you said, birch or cherry that really don't.
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Yeah, it's interesting. Often the trees tend not to. They're really practical, pragmatic, useful ones that have. They might have a bit of folklore associated with them for sure, but they don't seem to pick up names as they go along. Whereas something like foxglove, it's. With its kind of toxicity, so it can be really quite poisonous indeed. I know I'm making a bit of a stretch here, but my feeling is that the atmosphere that it gives to a woodland when you're walking through foxglove as well gives it that kind of sinister or pretty or all the kind of the emotions that it evokes beyond just its practical uses and the association with being poisonous mean that it picks up lots and lots of different names, those kind of things where a parent might say to their kids, don't touch that, because that's a kind of witch's thimble plant or something like that kind of thing. And that'll keep. Keep kids from touching the poisonous plants. Things like dandelion are the same as well, that whole idea for. I guess its name in English, dandelion comes from dondelion, the tooth of a lion. So you dig up that big chunky white root and it looks like a lion's tooth. But at that small spelling variant that we see in one of its English names is dandelion, as in D A, N D Y L I O N starts to kind of refer to the, the yellow of the flowers looking a bit like the, the mane of a lion potentially. And it's also known, I guess. Do you know any names for dandelion at all?
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I mean those ones, I suppose. I'm not a linguist so I learnt things from the book. I certainly have nothing to contribute myself to it.
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B
Just quite a few folks have come across Pee the Bed as a name.
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A
Interesting.
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B
So with its diuretic kind of properties, seemingly, you know, kids were told not to touch it because it would make you wet the bed. And in French it's peace only as well. So it gets a whole host of really interesting different names. But to me, my real favorite is bum pipe, which sounds very, very dodgy. But it's not at all. It's from a very local area of Lanarkshire and almost nobody that you know would know that name. But my dad knows where the name comes from and actually it's nothing to do with bums at all. It's if you pluck the flowers, the yellow flowers off the top of a dandelion and take that kind of reddish stalk underneath it, you can break that off and then go through it like a kazoo, a kind of little flute and make a kind of humming noise. And in Scots bum is hum. And that's where we get the. You know, the word bumblebee isn't because it bumbles along in its flight, it's because it's making a humming noise as it goes. So bum pipe for dandelion is actually all to do with kids using it as a little instrument to play a kind of humming kind of tune. And that's one of the big places that many of these names come from, is from kids games. So there's a host of interesting kids game related names. I don't know. Have you ever come across a plant that many people might call Sticky Willy or Sticky Willy?
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A
I think so. It sounds like something my husband would have told me about him playing games with as a child.
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Yep, exactly. I think every kid that ever sort of is in almost even also in urban areas as well, finds that plant that hooks onto people so you can hoop your friend back. It's a classic one. It's also known as cleavers maybe as its kind of official English name. And in one of its kind of Scots English names. It's bleedy tongues because kids in the playground would take a leaf of it and the little hooks that let it hook onto your clothing. You get your friend, if they were your friend, to stick their tongue out and then you'd rasp the leaf down their tongue and they would get a bleedy tongue. Which I think just sounds like classic. Yeah, dodgy kids behaviour, I have to say. But again, it gives us another name for one of these plants.
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A
Well, and I think that is definitely one of the fun variations or reasons behind lots of different names in the book. As you said, sort of from kids sorts of games. Are there any examples maybe we can discuss where the meanings are different across the three languages. Where maybe, you know, there's some where it might be from a kid's game in all three languages, but are there any plants where it kind of means one thing in Scots and it means something very different in Gaelic and a third thing again in English?
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B
Yeah, there's a few. I mean quite a Lot of examples of those where things. And one I do quite like is one that's fat hen in English, just kind of eaten by chickens, eaten by hens and used to fatten them up for things. And then I'll see if I can track this down here. But fat hens, also known as kind of midden miles in Scotch, and a midden is a rubbish heap or a dump, because that's where they grow. So we've got our English relating to it being used as a food for chickens, the Scots as being the rubbish dumps on which it grows. And then a lot of the Gaelic names, things like prasachvasin, are like wild pot, herb or spinach or a thing that humans can eat as well. So there's bits of commonalities there, but they're all picking up on slightly different aspects of the plant. And it's something we see in quite a lot of these, where it's different elements that get picked up in many. Another one I quite like is the English bluebell. So that's the woodland one. Hyacinthoides non scripta is what we go for, for the Latin name there. And kind of it's what you might call wild hyacinth or jacentine, maybe in English as quite an archaic name. And in Gaelic it's lily gugge, which is false lily, So a fake lily. And then in Scots, I like, some of the names are kind of gook's hose, which are kind of a cuckoo, or an idiot. Or fool's trousers. Yeah. Or socks, which just. I'm never quite clear where they come from, some of these ones. But a lot of names will relate to cuckoos in particular, and they're quite an obscure thing. And sometimes it could refer to a cuckold, potentially, or it can refer to the bird, the cuckoo. And sometimes it can refer to a fool or someone who sort of plays a bit. A bit of an idiot as well. So even just when you see one word in Gaelic, sorry, in Scots as gout, for example, it has these three different potential meanings.
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A
Yeah. There's tons of meanings embedded in all of these sorts of words, but they do often seem to kind of relate to something of, like what the plant looks like or what the plant does, but not always. I mean, you have a number of examples in the book where the name doesn't seem to have kind of any relationship to those things at all, or might be very misleading. So could you give us some examples of those?
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B
Yeah, I guess there's kind of a few kind of Scattered about. So things like. For naval wort. Things like lovers links. I'm never quite clear why that's lovers links. It's got a leaf that looks like a belly button. And sometimes there's these quite strong connections where we're just not sure where they come from. It's something. Something else we see in wider tradition as well, where, for example, one of a few of the plants that are in here are pulled together and described as a thing to make a particular charm in a few bits of Gaelic texts and Gaelic poems. So things like royal fern, the butterbur that we were talking about earlier, foxglove and brown seaweed. If you took these things together and burned them on the shore on a flat rock with the bones of an old man, apparently the ash you can use for making into a love potion. And that just seems weird. Where would that come from? We've got no idea whatsoever. But it becomes associated with these plants as well. And it's the same happens with many names, too.
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A
Yeah, the names seem to be coming from all sorts of kind of different associations people might have with them. You even have some examples in the book where the name seems to come from something in politics at the time or something in religion. Can you give us some examples of those?
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B
Yeah, there's some. There are some classic bits of maybe almost touching on sectarianism for things, but I think that's been part and parcel of life in Scotland for some time. I think maybe less so nowadays. And a classic example is. I don't know, it's a pretty common plant, which is one of the plantains that you find often growing in playing fields as a bit of a weed. And it's the ripwort plantain, the kind of long leaved one, and it puts up these tall stalks with the flower spike on the top. So it's Plantago lanceolata is its Latin name, and it's known as Carl Doddes and there's a few others that are called that, and that's basically Charles and George. So it's this. This kind of a dichotomy between the Catholic and the Protestant kings, where the schism through the sort of 16, 1700s as well. And the Carl Doddes is part of a game that you use. So each person plucks one of these stalks with the. The big heavy spike of flowers on the top, and one person holds them out so that the flower spike's a bit exposed with a short bit of stock. The other person whips their stalk down really hard to see if they can decapitate the opposing king. So it's a little bit like conquerors, I guess, but, yeah, Carl, Doddies, Charles and George. So you definitely get these sort of interesting political names tied in there, too.
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A
And back to children's games as well, so.
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B
Yeah, good point.
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A
Yeah, both of those things coming back together. The other one I wanted to ask you about in this case was a specific plant or a specific name, I suppose, cheesies, for people who are not familiar. What are they?
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B
Yeah, that's quite a nice descriptive name for something. Just a lot of people will be out and about having a walk, and there'd be a little bit of informal foraging that they would do. And cheesies is really nicely descriptive of the texture of, you know, underneath, if you've got a thistle or a dandelion as well, to some extent. But people would tend not to eat dandelions for cheesies. But under thistles, you can take that big cluster of purple flowers out, spike yourself in the process, doubtless, but peel away the base of the kind of spiky cup that holds that sorts of protective spiny bracts that protect those flowers. So pull out the flowers and down at the bottom there's a funny pad that all the flowers were attached to. It's basically like a heart of an artichoke. It's exactly the same part, but in a different member of that sort of thistle, daisy and dandelion family. And people would dig that out and eat that as a kind of bit of a delicacy. But just when you're wandering along hedgerows and similar areas, and that was one of the things called cheesies, but almost certainly because of its texture, I'd have to say that's one slight thing that we need to be a bit cautious of, and I need to be a bit cautious of is with all these names, it's incredibly easy to make those leaps of imagination as to why things get their name, and I'm sure I am quite guilty of it. So we've tried to be pretty cautious about just recording what other writers have written or what we've heard from people as well, and not being too speculative. But it's so incredibly tempting, I have to say, about trying to put two and two together and get five.
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A
I mean, as long as we're aware that it is an educated guess, not definitive fact, that is obviously important to be clear about. But it's interesting to see kind of what can be put together from this information. Was there anything then in this process that you remember kind of being especially surprising or intriguing to you as you put all this together.
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B
I think amongst those 1100 different wild species that are out there, so different kinds of flowering plants, basically, and some ferns that you find out there in Scotland. The thing that really surprised me was we found over 9,000 different names across these three languages. And that just shows how incredibly rich these plant names and plant name cultures. I know, I was saying we've got to be cautious about making leaps about why a plant gets its name, but we can see that through time people have been giving plants names or all kinds of whims and different interest. The patterns behind all these 9,000 different names are just fascinating.
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A
Yeah, no, absolutely. Definitely. Lots for people to get into. And while they might be reading the book to explore some of those names, is there anything you're currently working on you want to give people a sneak preview of?
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B
Well, we've just completed an atlas of botany as well. So looking at things on a kind of a far more global scale, myself and some colleagues here and at the University of Edinburgh have pulled together a quite large book looking at just how plants have adapted to place in particular. So that'll be hitting the shelves fairly soon.
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A
Well, that certainly sounds intriguing. And of course, while people are waiting for that, they can read the book we've been discussing titled Scottish Plant Names and a to Z, published by Berlin in 2026. Greg, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
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Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
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A
Thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website newbooksnetwork.com Connect with us on Instagram and BlueSky with the handle ew booksnetwork, and subscribe to our weekly Substack newsletter at newbooksnetwork.substack.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing, to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into Sign up for your $1 per month trial@shopify.com specialoffer.