Beautiful and Curious Lobelias
Three-related plants that I seek out at this time of year, two for their sheer beauty and one for its historical curiosity. They are the brilliant scarlet red cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis), its spectacular blue cousin, great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica), and last but not least is their diminutive cousin, Lobelia inflata, named for its inflated seed pods. It doesn’t catch the eye because it has small whitish to light blue flowers and small stature. Common names speak more of its reputation—Indian tobacco and pukeweed. In 19th-century medical parlance, herbalists used it to induce vomiting to cleanse the system
The genus Lobelia and the lobelia family (Lobeliaceae) are name for Matthias de l’Obel (1538-1616) a Flemish physician and botanist who describes the plant in a work published in 1591. Spending several of his productive years in England, he was the first to grow this American introduction in Europe, which was known in English gardens by 1665. In the late 18th-century, two hundred years after its introduction to Europe, blue lobelia was widely grown in European gardens.
As you might have guess, Lobelia siphilitica attracted more attention than meets the eye. Peter Kalm, a Swedish naturalist, traveled in America for three years from 1747-1751. Kalm supplied the Swedish naturalist Carlos Linnaeus with most of the specimens of North American plants which he described and named in 1753 in Species Plantarum, regarded as the starting point for modern botanical taxonomy. Kalm was Linnaeus’s favorite student.
Upon his return to Sweden in 1751, Kalm’s 3-volume Travels in America was published (in Swedish), then finally in an English edition in 1770-71. During his travels in the northeast, Kalm met Sir William Johnson (1715-1774) who was elected a chief of the Mohawks in New York while also serving as overseer of the territory for the British Crown. Sir William famously purchased a Mohawk remedy touted as a sure cure for syphilis, which he sought for his own benefit. Sir William’s neighbors did not regard him to be of the highest moral character.
Johnson related the story to Peter Kalm, who in turn, published an account of the cure in a Swedish journal in 1751. In 1753, Linnaeus, borrowing from Kalm’s account, named the plant Lobelia siphilitica. Consequently, European medical journals were abuzz with news of this new cure for the dreaded incurable disease, which even men of high moral standing were likely to contract from their mistresses.
That’s why blue lobelia is called Lobelia siphilitica. And so, another herbal remedy becomes just another pretty wildflower.