The nicknames of the wildflowers are abundant and varied. Many of these names as well as the proper names originated from physical characteristics of the plants.Others are based on the doctrine of signatures, a theory proposed by a Swiss physician in 1657. It suggested that some plants had “signatures” to help man know which herbs and wild plants were useful medicines. These signatures were parts of the plant that physically resembled parts of the human body –whatever the plant looked like was what it could cure. For example, since the leaf of Hepatica resembles the human liver, it was thought that Hepatica had been put on the earth to cure problems of the liver.
