Subject: RE: Loti

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2001 16:58:34 EST

pier:
<Does anyone know more about this plant, 
or how it came to be called Lotus?>

This plant being some member of genus Lotus, I supppose.
as near as I can figure out, it is the first plant to be called "lootos" in 
Greek: "a kind of clover or trefoil, on which horses fed" (and some poisoned 
thereby, when a cyanogene got to strong). In short, the whole confusion bar 
one goes back to Greek: Ziziphus lotus, the Cyrenian jujube, is presumably 
what the Lotophagoi et -- almst as good as a date but a bit purgative. It 
may also (being related to blackthorns, as far as I can figure these things 
out) be the shrub from which flutes could be made, when the lotos=aulos bit 
in poetry. And then there is the Nile lotus, Nymphaea spp. No clue about 
what the Greeks saw in common here. The extension to Nelumbo nucifera from 
the last mentioned is a snap and is presumably what {latna} is all about. 
All of these except Nelumbo are in the phytiatrics for one reason or another 
(though Lotus is not a very reliable poison, or Ziziphus a purgative). One 
of the active ingredients of Nympaea juice is nuciferine, so the omission of 
Nelumbo seems an oversight on the compiler's part, though it is not clear 
what it is useful for.