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Re: dolphin flower

John -- thanks for your Latin lesson.

I hope you were not being mean or snotty. That's how the message came across...as insulting to my Midwestern "reality." If you don't know what I mean, substitute the word Californian for Midwestern.

jems


on 5/30/05 4:17 AM, Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp at hoosiergardener@earthlink.net
wrote:


 A customer came into the garden center where I work and asked if we
 had "dolphin flower." She described the plant as about 20 inches tall
 with a long, funnel-shaped blue flower and that she used it in a
 hanging basket. She said the plant had just been named recently,
 although she has seen it in garden centers the last several years.

 I have no clue. It's not 'Black & Blue' salvia, plumbago or anything
 else I could think of to ask her. I've searched online, too, but no
 luck.

 We are in the Midwest, so it's probably an annual or a tender
 perennial we use as an annual.

Jems,

Perhaps this explanation is a little too sophisticated for your Midwestern
reality, but "delphinium" is simply the Latinized form of the Greek
"delphinion" meaning "little dolphin" (the diminutive of "dolphis").  The
name was first applied because of the shape of the buds of annual larkspur
(now placed in the genus Consolida).

I have seen some of the dwarf annual delphiniums tucked into mixed hanging
baskets and flower bowls.

John C. MacGregor IV
Horticultural Consultant
Writer, Photographer, Lecturer
815 Park Avenue #4
South Pasadena, CA 91030-2788
(626) 799-1554
jonivy@earthlink.net


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