The anatomy of words fascinates me. Often, words have obvious meanings, like house and cat, but other words are rich with underlying secrets that require a bit of digging to uncover. And since I’m doing lots of digging during gardening season, I thought I’d unearth the meaning behind the word wort (no, not wart).
Wort comes from the old English wyrt and is used as a suffix with the names of plants, herbs, and roots that are believed to be beneficial to our health and well-being.
I actually have three worts in my gardens: spiderwort (pictured above), lungwort, and starwort (aka, aster).
The opposite of wort is weed, and I have a knack for cultivating them too—ragweed, milkweed, knotweed. (My neighbor says that every time I pull weeds, I’m just creating more weeds.)
Early botanists claimed that dozens of wort plants could actually heal organs and other things bothering us. Here’s a partial list:
- Bloodwort
- Bladderwort (need some of that at my age)
- Lustwort
- Sleepwort (a kind of lettuce, and I sure could use some on my midnight sandwich)
- Madderwort
- Woundwort
- Sinusheadachewort (naw, but don’t we wish!)
I don’t have any proof that plantologists (my word, not Webster’s) were right about wort flowers, but here’s what I do know: Like plants, humans are not always exactly as they appear at first glance. Dig a bit deeper and you’ll find pain, patience, disappointment, kindness, wisdom, and even the ability to help others heal.
We’re like a garden full of worts. We just have to keep the weeds away.
“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.”—Claude Monet