Evening star., 1934-10-09
ALPHABET GROVE
|SPLANNED HERE
Catholic University Would
Duplicate Irish Botanical
Spot.
BY THOMAS X. HENRY.

A grove Of ancient ireland, based on
the unio,le floral alphabet of the an
cient CeltS, soon may be planted at
Catholic University here.
The proposal is based on study
recently completed by Dr. Ivar Tide
strom, research professor OF botany,
in an effort to determine the plant
species for which the letters of the
curious alphabet were named He was
enabled to identify the species of all
but two of the plants which appear in
this alphabet of 18 letters.
The possibility of obtaining the
plants themselves now is being inveSti-
gated by Rev. DR.. Hugh O'Neill, head
of the Botany Department, who is in
charge of the paintings of rare species
which rapidly are transforming Sc
cluded hooks of the campus into a
botaniSts paradise. This Is due es-
pecially to the successful growing Of
some Southern plants for the first
time so far North without Winter pro-
lection.
Climate Here Suitable.
Nearly every tree of the Irish alpha
bet grove, DR.. O'Neill believes, can be
made to grow in the climate of Wash
ington. They are, as determined by
DR.. Tidestrom. the elm, birch, hazel,
oak, aspen, alder, ivy, hawthorn, yew,
rowan ash, spindle tree elder, willow
furZe and two which remain unknown.
1t will be necessary to obtain the Euro
pean species of such trees as the elm,
birch, ash and others which have in
digenous representatives in the United
States, as the differences sometimes
are quite marked. In other cases, such
as the rowan, there is so little differ
ence that the native plants can be
used. The European rowan is the
American mountain ash.
DR.. Tidestrom first undertook the
study which brought the botanical
alphabet to light in an effort to clear
up the meaning and origin of certain
old words in his native Swedish
tongue which. he believed. could be
traced back to Celtic origins.
THE Celtic alphabet" he says was
truly a revelation. The poetic Celt
had a floral alphabet all his own,
and his very life can be said to have
been wrapped up in a sort of primi
tive botany. The letters of other
languages, Hebrew or Scandinavian
for example, were originally symbols
of surrounding objects or names of
deities. The Celt alone confined his
alphabetical symbolism almost en-
tirely to the plant world"
Linguistic Monument.
The Celtic tongue, which, with the
advent of writing, was expressed in
this language, DR.. Tidestrom says,
forms bridge between the Romance
languages of Southern Europe and the
old Morse language and its derivative,
the English, since there is distinct
substratum of it under both the Ger
manic and the Latin. Thus the Ian
guage grove is proposed as sort of
linguistic monument.
Prof. Tidestrom is now on his way
back from France, where he has spent
the Summer collecting plants for the
university herbarium which, with re-
cent additions has become one of the
most important plant collections in
the country. DR.. Tidestrom himself
added more than 5000 specimens of
his own collection last Spring. Among
his projects this Summer was the pho
tographing of large number of species
named or collected by the great SWed-
ish botanist, Linaeus, known as the
father of modern botany, and other
pioneer botanists, the prototypes of
which now are In the Jardin deS
Plantes at Paris, the Kew Gardens of
London, and the British Museum.
DR.. O'Neill, who was director Of the
botanical survey conducted by the
Government in connection with the
fruit-f1y eradication campaign in Flor
ida in 1929, has added to the herba-
rum more than 10000 specimens of
Florida plants which, together with
the great Langlois collection of the
plants of Louisiana, gives one of the
widest representations in existence of
the botany Of the Southern United
States. This has been here since 1896.
when the 10000 specimens were pre-
sented to the university by Father
LangloiS, the French priest who COL
lected them. The Botany Department
also was bequeathed unique material
with the death in 1891 of DR.. Theodor
Holm, research professor of botany,
who had devoted years to systematic
drawings illustrating the fundamental
characters of various plant families.
Among the recent advances has been
the invention by DR.. ONeill of a spe-
cial heating cabinet by which botani-
cal material can be subjected to heat
sufficient to sterilize it so that it can
be kept uninjured indefinitely. This in
the past has been one of the most seri-
Gus problems faced by universities
throughout the world-various ftmi-
eating devices having proved only
partia1iv e1rooaecf,,1