Digital Grainger

An Online Edition of The Sugar-Cane (1764)

36

  • Yet, if the cholic’s1 deathful pangs thou dread’st,
  • Taste not its luscious nut. The acassee,2 [510]
  • With which the sons of Jewry, stiff-neck’d race,3
  • Conjecture says, our God-Messiah crown’d;
  • Soon shoots a thick impenetrable fence,
  • Whose scent perfumes the night and morning sky,
  • Tho’ baneful be its root. The privet4 too, [515]
  • Whose white flowers rival the first drifts of snow
  • On Grampia’s piny hills;5 (O might the muse
  • Tread, flush’d with health, the Grampian hills again!)
  • Emblem of innocence shall grace my song.
  • Boast of the shrubby tribe, carnation fair,6 [520]
  • Nor thou repine, tho’ late the muse record

VER. 510. the acassee,] Acacia. This is a species of thorn; the juice of the root is supposed to be poisonous. Its seeds are contained in a pod or ligumen. It is of the class of the syngenesia. No astringent juice is extracted from it. Its trivial name is Cashaw. Tournefort7 describes it in his voyage to the Levant.8 Some call it the Holy Thorn, and others Sweet Brier. The half-ripe pod affords a strong cement; and the main stem, being wounded, produces a transparent gum, like the Arabic, to which tree this bears a strong resemblance.

VER. 515. the privet] Ligustrum. This shrub is sufficiently known. Its leaves and flowers make a good gargle in the aphthae,9 and ulcered throat.

VER. 520. carnation fair.] This is indeed a most beautiful flowering shrub. It is a native of the West-Indies, and called, from a French governor, named Depoinci,10 Poinciana. If permitted, it will grow twenty feet high; but, in order to make it a good fence, it should be kept low. It is always in blossom. Tho’ not purgative, it is of the senna kind.11 Its leaves and flowers are stomachic, carminative, and emmenagogue.12 Some authors name it Cauda pavonis,13 on account of its inimitable beauty; the flowers have a physicky smell. How it came to be called Doodle-doo I know not; the Barbadians more properly term it Flower Fence.14 This plant grows also in Guinea.

  1. Colic or painful stomach contractions. ↩︎

  2. Probably the sweet acacia (Acacia farnesiana), also known as the West Indian black-thorn. ↩︎

  3. The book of Exodus contains a passage referring to Israelites as a “stiff-necked people” (32:9). The passage refers to the refusal of those accompanying Moses out of Egypt to give up their worship of idols. Yet the passage also has been cited by those seeking to characterize the Jewish people as obstinate for refusing to accept Christianity. ↩︎

  4. Refers to any of a number of shrubs belonging to the genus Ligustrum. Native to Europe, North Africa, and Asia; commonly used for hedging. Some species are invasive. ↩︎

  5. Grampia’s piny hills. The Grampian Mountains in Scotland. ↩︎

  6. Caesalpinia pulcherrima, a shrub that produces showy orange and yellow flowers with red stamens. It was known in the colonial period as Poinciana pulcherrima, Barbados Pride, and peacock flower, among other names, most referring to the plant’s beauty (the Latin word pulcher means beauty). From the seventeenth century, Europeans reported that it was being used by Amerindian and African women in the Americas as an abortifacient: Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), a Dutch naturalist and artist who traveled to Surinam in the seventeenth century, also claimed that women used the plant to induce abortions because they did not want to give birth to children who would be enslaved (2.124-125). The origins of the plant are unclear: some botanists believe it to be native to Asia and an early introduction to the Caribbean, while others believe it to be native to the tropical Americas. ↩︎

  7. Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708), French physician and botanist, author of Éléments de botanique (1694). ↩︎

  8. Refers to the eastern part of the Mediterranean. ↩︎

  9. Ulcers, usually of the mouth. ↩︎

  10. General Philippe de Lonvilliers, chevalier de Poincy (1584-1660), governor of the French Antilles from 1647 to 1660. ↩︎

  11. The genus Senna contains various plants native to the Old and New World tropics that have laxative effects. ↩︎

  12. Grainger means that the plant is good for the stomach (stomachic), that it produces flatulence (carminative), and that it induces menstrual flow (emmenagogue). ↩︎

  13. Peacock’s tail. ↩︎

  14. Another common name for Caesalpinia pulcherrima because it was frequently used as a flowering barrier fence. ↩︎