Lady Emma Tennant who takes a deep interest in the history of the plants she paints asked me what appeared a simple request: to look into the etymology of one of her recent subjects, which she knew under the name Paeonia × smouthii.
However, confusion turned out to reign over almost every aspect of the name of a hybrid paeony first made in Belgium in or shortly before 1838 – the correct spelling of its epithet, for whom it was named, the author who first described it.
To cut a long story short the answer is that it was first described and named in 1838 in an anonymous article ‘Description d’une nouvelle pivoine hybride’ in the Belgian periodical L’Horticulture Belge. It was stated to be named after the Monsieur Smout, a ‘distinguished pharmacist and horticulturist’ of Malines (now Mechelen), who first made the hybrid between Paeonia albiflora ‘Vestale’ and P. tenuifolia.
Authorship of the name has been attributed to M.J.F. Scheidweiler, but for no apparent reason. Given that the protologue article is unsigned one might have taken its author to have been the journal’s editor. This may or may not have been Scheidweiler but is, in any case, irrelevant as in a footnote the editor explicitly attributes the article to a third party (‘l’auteur’), whom he regrettably fails to name. The correct citation of the name is therefore:
Paeonia × smoutii Anon., Hort. Belge 5: 172. 1838.
In 1843 the same hybrid was redescribed in the Parisian publication L’Horticulteur universel (vol 4, p 274) under the name Paeonia Smouthii. While the article is signed by [Louis Benoît] Van Houtte of Ghent, this name has also been misattributed, in this case to C.A. Lemaire. Van Houtte stated that he had acquired the plant from a ‘M. Smouth’, and the resulting misspelling ‘smouthii’ has unfortunately entered widespread usage.
From Google searches very little could be learned of Monsieur Smout, but Willy Van der Vijver of the State Archives of Mechelen has found a eulogy for Smout written by François de Cannart d’Hamale. It is therefore now possible to say that the peony is named for Corneille-Guillaume Smout, who was born in Leuven in 1791, and died in Mechelen in 1854 greatly respected as vice president of the Maline Royal Society of Horticulture and a member of the Medical Commission of Malines. His early life was an adventurous one as a pharmacist initially in the French army that saw him with Napoleon in Spain (at the battles of Vittoria among others). From June 1814 he was with the army of the Low Countries and served at Waterloo, before settling down to a life of civic responsibilities as a pharmacist and keen horticulturist.
I am grateful to Willy Van der Vijver and Régine Fabri for uncovering the biographical details and to Valéry Malécot for assistance with nomenclatural matters.
