By Anne Marie Parent
Tree names are very different in English and in French. But there are some similarities. For example, the French word for tree, arbre, comes from the Latin root arbor, which we see used in the term for a tree farm, an arboretum. Think of the beautiful Morgan Arboretum on the West Island of Montreal.
At my parents’ place, I was fascinated by a poster showing the Quebec poet and singer Félix Leclerc surrounded by trees with this phrase, taken from his book Le calepin d’un flâneur (A Stroller’s Notebook): Il n’est jamais revenu de la forêt. De vivre avec les arbres, il en est devenu un. (He never came back from the forest. By living with the trees he became one.) Our national poet, who worked as a lumberjack in his youth, did well to leave the forest to give us the opportunity to discover his poetry and his music.
- Saule (willow)
From the Frankish word salha, which hails from the German salxaz, the word saule and the English willow come from the same ancient Indo-European root word wel, which means to roll and turn. That’s in reference to the flexibility of the branches, that are used to build fences and make baskets. It became salix in Latin, a word still used for the scientific name of this family of trees. In Canada we find 60 native species of the salix family.
In seeing this word so close to salicylic, as in salicylic acid, I wondered if there was a connection between aspirin and the willow. And bingo, I was right! Aspirin is made from salicin, which is produced in the white willow’s bark. It is a natural anti-inflammatory.
In 1829 a French pharmacist, Pierre-Joseph Leroux, boiled white willow bark powder in water and came up with crystals he called “salicyline”. In 1853, chemist Charles Frederic Gerhardt synthesized salicylic acid from salicyline. This new product was commercialized by the Bayer Company in Germany in 1899 and sold as Aspirin.
- Érable (maple)
Our national tree was named after the Latin word acerabulus, a combination of acer (pointy) because of its pointed leaves and abulus (apple tree). The use of the word érable arises in the 13th century.
There are about 150 species of maple, including the sugar maple, which produces maple syrup. In French, the process of producing maple syrup and its by-products is called acériculture. The adjective form is acéricole (des producteurs acéricoles).
Funnily enough, the Spanish use arce for the tree, whereas Mexicans use the English term “maple”, which originally comes from Old English and German. So there are Anglicisms in Mexican Spanish as well as in French!
- Bouleau (birch)
The word birch is of Germanic origin. But in French they use the word bouleau, from the Old French word boul, which comes from the Latin betula, which is in turn from the Gallic word betulla. There are 50 species of birch, 10 of which are indigenous to Canada.
We all know the white birch, also called the paper birch because of its thin bark which peels off like paper. Indigenous Canadians used it to produce baskets, kitchen utensils and even canoes. In Europe they produced shoes with birch wood.
- The French expression “Il ne faut pas mettre le doigt entre l’arbre et l’écorce.”
(You shouldn’t put your finger between the tree and the bark) According to the website expressions-francaises.fr, this expression is used by the character Sganarelle in Molière’s play Le Médecin malgré lui (The Doctor in Spite of Himself) in 1666. The idea was that you should never intervene in a couple’s arguments. A husband and wife are as close to each other as a tree and its bark.
Sticking your finger between the two means getting involved with others’ problems when they aren’t your business. By extension, it also means it’s better we not get involved in any delicate, difficult or dangerous situation that doesn’t concern us, in case it comes back to haunt us.
About the author
Born in Montreal, Anne Marie Parent’s university studies included tourism management, French literature, sociology, criminology and psychology in both Quebec and Bretagne.
Desk editor at journaldesvoisins.com, a community media outlet based in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville district of Montreal, she has been a proofreader and journalist for several magazines and newspapers since 1990.
She has collaborated in several tourist guides, including Testé et approuvé – Le Québec en plus de 100 nouvelles experiences extraordinaires (vol. 1, 2017 and 2023, and vol, 2, 2023) a group effort led by Marie-Julie Gagnon; and Les plages du Québec, a beach guide produced with Sylvie Rivard in 2022.
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