Page:Wayside and Woodland Blossoms.djvu/192

91.

Quite a number of our common plants have been distinguished in popular nomenclature by the prefix "cow," and as a general rule it would appear to have been applied in depreciation, as in the parallel cases of "dog," "horse," and "hog," to signify coarseness or worthlessness. In the case of the Cow-wheat our forefathers had a notion that if its seeds were ground up with wheat the bread made from the flour would be black. One of the species (M. arvense) affects cornfields, and its seeds are like black grains of wheat, and from this fact the genus gets its scientific appellation from the Greek, melas, black, and puros, wheat. In addition the plants themselves turn black when dead and dry.