La Puce wrote:
Mike Lyle wrote:
I think the English is just an adaptation of late Latin _branca_,
"paw". "Brank[s]" for "scold's bridle" is a Scots word of
unestablished origin. In English English "Brank" was also used for
buckwheat, but I don't think there's a connection there.

You perhaps missed my post on this ...

From the folklore of plants .... "The bear is another common prefix.
Thus there is the bear's-foot, from its digital leaf, the bear-berry,
or bear's-bilberry, from its fruit being a favourite food of bears,
and the bear's-garlick. There is the bear's-breech, from its
roughness, a name transferred by some mistake from the Acanthus to
the cow-parsnip, and the bear's-wort, which it has been suggested "is
rather to be derived from its use in uterine complaints than from the
animal."

My book 'naming of plants' says the acanthus is called bear's breech
from the size and appearance of the leaf which is very big, broad and
hairy. Acanthus in greek means thorn.

No, I did see your post, thanks. As I said in my OP, yes, the Greek word
does mean "spiny"; but I still don't see why bears would wear thorny
pants. Looking at it as hairy rather than spiny could persuade one of a
resemblance between the plant and an ursine back end, I suppose.

I didn't know Bear-wort (_Meum athamanticum_), what we call Spignel,
varie Baldmoney and Bishopsweed, had a reputation for helping with
uterine conditions; but if it does, I'd be surprised if the "bear" in
the name had anything to do with that. One of the OED quotations refers
it to "the lower viscera", but I'd take that as guts rather than the
womb.

--
Mike.