Stinking Rose

Explanation - if you need it.

UPDATE

As I went to bed last night, it occurred to me that there is a history lesson here. We find it puzzling that this plant should have acquired the name 'rose'. After all, it looks nothing like a rose, either in flower, leaf, stem or root, so the most casual inspection would lead one to think they are quite unrelated. Furthermore, that inspection would, perhaps, lead to spotting the similarities with alliums, even if it did not go so far as suggesting lilies.

But that line of thought is so modern and completely alien to the medieval mind. Firstly, of course, it assumes a pattern of relatedness between distinct species which is a much later idea. But secondly, and more importantly, it assumes the primacy of observed similarities and differences. Of course the medievals could tell a rose from a lily or an onion, in fact the typical medieval would have been much much better at that than the typical 21st century human. My point is that they would not have taken those visible and tangible similarities and differences to be the most obvious basis for classification, especially for folk classification. There is a similarity between lilies and roses which, to a medieval mind, is much deeper than their superficial, 'empirical' differences, and this is the common symbolic function.

Even Dan Brown knows that the most important things/people/ideas have multiple symbols for the medievals. This is not about secrecy or conspiracy but about seeing them as infusing a greater part of day to day and religious lives. Someone as important as the Virgin Mary needs to be symbolised by ordinary things which ordinary people regularly encounter and also by rarer things which need to be sought out with effort, so she can be present in both the quotidien and also the heroic or sacred. Hence her association with two flowers: the rose and the lily.

So a medieval who saw a similarity between wild garlic and lilies - which as good gardeners and herbalists they would have done - would associate wild garlic with the Virgin and thus with roses. But (and I hope my historical botany is right here) when considering names, the choice of 'lily' for a common, wild flower associated with the Virgin would seem much less appropriate than 'rose', for the latter was also a common, wild flower.

So we must watch out for anachronism, even when just asking questions about the past. It is not really odd or surprising to a medieval mind that this allium should be called a rose.