By Amy Weiss

Aug 1 2019

Dogs have not always been the beloved companions and family members they are today, and this collection of specimens showcases plants with common names that have negative connotations towards dogs or wolves.

The use of "dog" in common names can refer to the animal itself, but it was often used to indicate that the plant is somehow false, worthless, or not what it seems. "Bane" in plant common names comes from Old English, and means "thing causing death, poison".¹ There was a practical need to identify plants that were dangerous or useless; and the word picked happened to be dog, an animal we hadn't yet learned to love.²