See also Wolfsbane, a broader term applied to the genus Aconitum with similar, but unique, sentiments and symbolism.

☙ Monkshood

TOXIC - DEADLY. DO NOT CONSUME. DO NOT HANDLE WITHOUT PROTECTION.

Aconitum napellus L. (1753). WFO HP:FE SJH HNE

Period Breton (brezhoneg): louzaouen ar flemm [louzaouenn-ar-flemm] f. LB

Period English: monk's hood (monkshood, monk's-hood); helmet-flower (helmet flower); monk's hook; LH monkswood. JS

Period French: aconit napel m.; LB capuche f. ('hood'); LB capuche de moine f. ('monk's-hood'); LB capuchchon m. ('cap'); LB casques m. ('helmets'); LB coqueluchon m. ('whooping-cough cap/hood'); LB madriette f.; LB napel m.; BD pistolet m. ('pistol'); LB tue-loup m. ('wolfsbane') (see also Wolfsbane). LB

Period German: Sturmhut m. ('storm-hat'). JRV

Yiddish: אײַזנהוט n. (ayznhut, 'iron-hat'). MS

Anglo-Saxon: þung m. (thung, 'poisonous plant') (Ælfric's Vocabulary or Glossary, 10th C.; Anglo-Saxon Vocabulary, 11th C.; Durham Glossary of the names of Worts, 11th C., all via HNE). HNE

Tudor English: aconitum (Turner 1548, 1568). HNE

Elizabethian English: monkeshood (Gerard 1597, 1568). HNE

Sentiments:

🏶︎ Knight-errantry ▲︎◆︎ (1825-1884); HP:FE TTA TM FSO LH S&K HGA:OT HGA:LPF GAL JS KG

  Chivalry ▲︎◆︎ (1867-1884); GAL KG

🏶︎ Deceit ▲︎ (1829-1836); DLD SJH TTA

🏶︎ Poisonous words ▲︎ (1834); O&B

🏶︎ Deceitful charms ◆︎ (1858); HGA:LPF

🏶︎ A deadly foe is near ▲︎ (1867); GAL

🏶︎ Ein Blick und mein Herz war dein.One look and my heart was yours. ●︎ ︎(c.1880). JRV

Region:

Native: Western Europe (Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia, France, Portugal, Spain).WFO

Introduced: Northern Europe (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden); New York; Vermont.WFO HNE mentions it growing wild in places in England in the 1880s, but notes it is introduced.

Seasonality: Deciduous perennial flowering mid to late summer.

Period Colours: Flowers blue-colored and poisonous. SJH HNE mentions blue and white garden varieties.

Heraldry: TBC.

Religious: TBC.

Cited Verse:

❧ 'At rabidae tigres absunt et saeva leonum / [...] / squameus in spiram tractu se colligit anguis.', 'Liber II', Georgics, Virgil (c.29 BCE) lines 151-154; HNE

❧ 'Let me have / A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear / [...] / As violently as hasty powder fired', ◆︎ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597) 5.1.59 (indirectly by allusion to gunpowder and poison); HNE

❧ 'And with the flower mükshood makes a coole / and of a gray Dock got himſelf a gowne', ◆︎ Tailboys Dymoke (as 'Thomas Cutwode'), Caltha Poetarum: or The Bumble Bee, London: Thomas Creede (1599) stanza 117, Read Here; HNE

❧ 'The united vessel of their blood, / [...] / As Aconitum or rash gunpowder.', ◆︎ William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II (1600) 4.4.44; HNE

❧ 'I have heard that aconite / Being timely taken, hath a healing might / Against the scorpion's stroke;', ◆︎ Ben Jonson, Sejanus His Fall (1603) 3.3, Read Here; HNE

❧ 'Horrible, sur sa tête altière, / L'Aconit, au suc malfaisant, / Comme s'il s'armait pour la guerre, / Élève un casque menaçant;', 'Chant Troisième', ◼︎ Charles-Louis Mollevaut, Les Fleurs, Poëme en Quatre Chants, Paris: A. Bertrand (1818) p.60; HP:FE

❧ 'Let deceit the monk's-hood wear.', attributed to ◆︎ Wiffen, which brother not specified but likely Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen. I have not been able to find the original source, but it first appears to my searching in DLD's The Garland of Flora (1829); and both she and SJH in 1832, who quote it, give the same sentiment, suggesting one follows the other. DLD SJH

🜱 On sentiments: The sentiment of knight-errantry likely requires some explanation for contemporary readers - it means to wander around in search for a quest, living the mercenary life of a knight of olden times, and from this arises the sentiment of chivalry, which is implied by knight-errantry.

Knight-errantry, too, implies a sort of foolhardiness; a kind of wild idleness that seeks adventure, seeing the quixotic as romantic, the danger as valour, and overlooking the potential pointlessness of a quest for the perceived valour, or that this is one's calling, and indeed purpose, regardless of its folly.

The first entry I have assigning knight-errantry is Henry Phillips' Floral Emblems. Phillips' entry quotes poet ◼︎ Charles-Louis Mollevaut, and paraphrases his passage (q.v. 'Cited Verse' above):

Horrible, sur sa tête altière,
L'Aconit, au suc malfaisant,
Comme s'il s'armait pour la guerre,
Élève un casque menaçant;

Horrifying, on its haughty head,
The aconite, with its poison,
As if arming itself for war,
Raises a menacing helmet.

The monkshood, says Phillips, 'rears its threatening helmet as if to protect the gayer favourites of Flora', and thus is the emblem of a knight.

As mentioned in 'Cited Verse', the sentiment of deceit seems to be drawn from the quote attributed to 'Wiffen' by Dix, but I have been unable to locate the original source.


Abécédaire de Flore

◼︎ B. Delachénaye, 1811


NOMS DES FLEURS
substituées aux syllabes formées de plusieurs lettres.

NOM DES FLEURS. MOTS ANALOGUES.
40. napel. cruel, sensuel, spirituel.


(24)


40. Du napel.

Cette fleur figure non seulement la finale des mots terminés en el, comme dans ciel, mais encore celle des mots dans lesquels l’usage veut un l suivi de l'e muet, comme fidèle, rebèle, quand ces mots sont au masculin, car au féminin on se sert de l'échelle de Jacob, qui exprime positivement le genre.


(48)


DESCRIPTION DES PLANTES
DE L’ABÉCÉDAIRE DE FLORE.

QUATRIÉME PLANCHE.


 40. Napel. C’est le nom distinctif d’une espèce d’Aconit dont la racine vivace et grosse a la forme d’un petit navet, Napellus. Elle croît naturellement dans les lieux pierreux de nos montagnes. L’Aconitum Napellus, transporté dans nos jardins, s’y comporte très bien, et il en devient pendant l’été un des plus beaux ornemens, par le nombre de ses hautes tiges, toutes garnies dans leur partie supérieure d’une pyramide de fleurs nombreuses, assez grandes, faites comme des casques, et d’un bleu superbe. On le sème, ou bien on en divise les racines.


(94)


La Flore de la Manche

Léon Besnou, 1881 ◼︎

G. Aconitum. — L. Aconit.


De Ἀκόνιτον, nom grec de la plante, ou de ᾰ̓κόνῑτος, sans poussière, à cause de son feuillage luisant, ou de ᾰ̓κόνῑη, pierre, c'est à-dire plante des rochers.


A. NAPELLUS L. — A. NAPEL. — (A. salutiferum sive Anthora Barr. IC.? A. Neubergense DC.) (Antihora?) Capuche, Capuche de moine, Capuchon, Coqueluchon, Casques, Pistolet, Madriette, tue-loup.) Bret. Louzaouen ar flemm. Angl. Aconite, Common Wolfsbane, Monkshood. All. Elsenhutlein, Sturmhut, Monskappen. Ital. Aconito. — Viv. — Juill.-sept. Haies, ombragées, lieux humides, bords des bois. RRR. Martinvast, bords de la Divette; Sottevast, fossé couvert près la Douve, Carneville, route de Saint-Pierre, Villebaudon, bords de la route de Saint-Lo, Saultchevreuil-du-Tronchet, route d'Avranches, Saint-Jean-de-la-Haize, petite douve près le pont Mobec;

Plante très-vénéneuse, très-âcre, qui ne doit être prescrite et maniée qu'avec prudence et par les médecins.


(48-49)




ORIGINAL CONTENT SHARED UNDER

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0


Cite this page (MLA 9th): Never Never. “Monkshood.” Glossa Hortensia, 11 Dec. 2024, neverxnever.neocities.org/glossahortensia/aconitum_napellus. Accessed [DD Mon. YYYY].