Goatleafed

I read the other day, in a Maupassant story, of goatleaf by moonlight, otherwise chèvrefeuille.

Littré was not very helpful, beyond telling me that it was a climbing, strongly scented plant from the Latin caprifolium. While Collins-Robert tells that it was honeysuckle and Larousse had a helpful little picture of same.

My 'Elementary Latin Dictionary' from the Lewis part of the better known Lewis & Short team, does not include caprifolium, the best it can do being caprificus, the wild fig tree, literally the goatfig. Lewis also mentions the smell of the male of the species.

I have failed so far to find what goats and leaves have to do with it. Nothing so simple as 'chevron', a straightforward derivative of chèvre, alluding to the 'V' formed by the horns when seen from the front, as in the snap above. The best that I can do may be that it has be to do with some of the leaves of the honeysuckle being perfoliate, for which see reference 1.

OED gives a column to various meanings of chevron. It also allows caprifoil as an old name for woodbine or honeysuckle. It gives a couple of columns to honey-suck, honeysucker, honeysuckle and honeysuckled. The first being an old form of the third. The second being something that feeds on honey or nectar. The third being the honeysuckle of present interest. Except that it is also a obsolete name for red or white clover - or any other flower yielding honey.

My 'Handbook of the British Flora' from Bentham & Hooker explains that the honeysuckles are called the Lonicera for a sixteenth century German botanist. The genus includes two climbers, L. Periclymenum, the common honeysuckle or woodbine, and L. Caprifolium, a European import to this country, the one with some perfoliate leaves.

While Wikipedia offers lots of them at reference 2.

I close with Bard:

Not a bad shot at all. I dare say it would pass muster in a secondary school, if not in a university.

PS: the Bentham & Hooker, from the Raynes Park platform library is getting more use than I had at first thought likely. Hopefully whoever left it there in hope of it finding a good home would be pleased.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_leaf_morphology#Leaf_and_leaflet_shapes.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeysuckle.