Heather Is Not in the Bible: An English Plant Name and the Flowers of the Field

Go up onto a moor in August and the whole hill has turned purple, and there is nothing else growing on it. That is heather. Thin soil, wind off the sea, four months of rain, and it blooms anyway — which is more than most things manage, and more than most of us manage. The name is not in the Bible. It is Old English, from hæddre, and it came to us as a girl’s name only in the last…