Nine brother's blood

[Jiri Danihelka]

Dear Taxacomers,

I am an expert neither in German nor in Polish plant names. But anyway, in
my opinion, the genera Petasites and Tussilago should be considered as
candidates for two reasons.
(1) They are or were used as medical plants. They were both already included
in Matthioli.
(2) They vernacular names in Czech (devetsil), Polish (dziewiecsil), and
German (Neunkraft), all meaning "nine powers" contain the "magical" number
nine as "Nine brother's blood" does.

There exists a dictionary of Geman plants name. In the book I consulted is
cited as follows: Marzell H., W?rtebuch der deutschen Pflanzennamen I
(Abies-Colchicum). Berlin, from 1937. Unfortunately, I do not know whether
the dictionary was completed.

J. D.

****************
Jiri Danihelka
Department of Botany
Masaryk University
Kotlarska 2
611 37 Brno
Czech Republic
http://www.sci.muni.cz/botany
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lynn Bohs" <bohs at BIOLOGY.UTAH.EDU>
To: <TAXACOM at USOBI.ORG>
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 6:41 PM
Subject: [TAXACOM] Nine brother's blood


> Dear Taxacomers,
>         The following inquiry about a mystery plant was sent to me by a
> humanities professor at our university.  Can anyone help?  Please reply to
> the list or to him directly, not to me.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Lynn Bohs
>
>
> User-Agent: Microsoft-Outlook-Express-Macintosh-Edition/5.02.2106
> Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 12:11:40 -0600
> Subject: query
> From: harris lenowitz <kathar7 at comcast.net>
> To: <bohs at biology.utah.edu>
> Mime-version: 1.0
>
> Dear Prof Bohs,
> If you can would you please tell me where I can learn more about a plant
> known as "nine brothers' blood?" I've come across it in an eighteenth c
> Polish ms where its name appears in German (neun brueder blut) and managed
> to make my way to one botany cite where I found an article on its
> serbo-croat name but that's not really what I want. It seems to be a
> medicinal herb.
> Thanks for your help,
>
> --
> Prof. Harris Lenowitz
> 1319 LNCO
> Department of Languages and Literature
> 255 S Central Campus Drive
> University of Utah
> SLC, UT 84112
> 801.581.5291
>
> Lynn Bohs
> Department of Biology
> 257 South 1400 East
> University of Utah
> Salt Lake City, UT  84112
> (801) 585-0380