As for the herbs, there are:
(a) Artemisia
dracunculus L. (Tarragon or dragon's-wort);
(b) "Artemisia tridentata" (sage
brush);
(c) "Common Mugwort Artemisia Vulgaris, L.
Felon-herb, Sailor's Tobacco*."
Apparently, it is the Common Artemisia that is related to Ada's
sister, Lucette - by the reference to a common sailor and the
Tobakoff, contrary to an expected direct link with the "Artemisia
dracunculus/dragon's-wort" :
(a) " is it true that
a sailor in Tobakoff’s day was not taught to swim so he
wouldn’t die a nervous wreck if the ship went down?’
‘A common sailor, perhaps,’ said Van. ‘When
michman Tobakoff himself got shipwrecked off Gavaille, he swam
around...
(b) Lucette, jumping into the sea from the "Admiral Tobakoff"
ship "did not see her whole life flash before her as we
all were afraid she might have done...the myosotes of an unanalyzable
brook...she swam like a dilettante Tobakoff in a circle of
brief panic and merciful
torpor"**.
How does the "Artemisia dracunculus"
relate to the "heraldic dracunculi", or to the "tripartite" Artemisia?
Should we refrain to the zoological "dracunculus" and the
caduceus?
Aren't we being misled by Artemisia/Ada
to be drawn away from the much simpler link:
"dracunculus/draoncle/festering wound"?
.........................................................................
* - My schematic classification may be imprecise by the
lack of more precise data, information which might be obtainable from Ada's
book on herbs, ie: Ada E. Georgia in "A Manual Of
Weeds", with "descriptions of all of the most pernicious and troublesome
plants in the United States And Canada, their habits of growth and distribution,
with methods of control: With 385 Illustrations By F. Schuyler Mathews Author Of
"Field Book Of American Wild Flowers'." (The Macmillan
Company,1914) Ada E. Georgia was Assistant
In The Farm Course, New York State College Of Agriculture, Cornell
University.
**
-Tobakoff appears in connection to "Jean
Nicot...after whom the Tobago Islands, or the Tobakoff Islands, are
named..." ("Nicotin", not Nikulin, and also "Trinidad," come to my
mind).
According
to Demon (quoted by Van) Andrew Vinelander "worked together with young Tobak in
the same Phoenix bank...Backbay
Tobakovich!’..."
This thread is complicated by certain
musings, by Demon Veen, concerning the death of Lucette's father, Dan,
this time connected to
"rabbits":
Demon's "poor cousin Dan has
died an odd Boschean death. He thought a fantastic rodent sort of rode him out
of the house. They found him too late, he expired in Nikulin’s
clinic." Dr. Nikulin is the
grandson of "the great rodentiologist Kunikulinov - we can't
get rid of the lettuce". However rabbits aren't rodents (they
are "lagomorphs," - that's Wiki again!) as Van seems to think, as they
appear in his Uncle Dan's dream and are confirmed by Demon's
association of rodents to G.Bosch's "Garden of
Delights." (Cf. Vivian Darkbloom on a Latin ‘cuniculus’ in ‘Nikulin’ ,
p.341).
And, as Demon goes on, "how incestuously — c’est le mot — art and science meet in an
insect, in a thrush, in a thistle of that ducal bosquet. Ada ...and dear
Lucette, once drew my attention, by a creepy coincidence, to certain details of
that other triptych..., circa 1500, and, namely, to the butterflies in it ...two
admirable little girls...say that actually the wrong side of the bug is
shown...I don’t give a hoot for the esoteric meaning, for the myth behind the
moth, for the masterpiece-baiter who makes Bosch express some bosh of his time,
I’m allergic to allegory and am quite sure he was just enjoying himself by
crossbreeding casual fancies just for the fun of the contour and
color.." Here Demon's
words seem to point towards "another" triptych, unrelated to Bosch
while he derides the "myth behind the moth." Which triptych? The "admirable girls" seem to indicate "Pale
Fire's," a title that has already been mentioned for a "Tom Cox" painting
inside the cabin that belongs to Cordula Tobacco ( Madame Perwitsky) in the
"Admiral Tobakoff."