Re: botanical babble
Sean A. O'Hara wrote:
>
> Gay -
>
> I'm not sure we could find anyone on this list who has ever been
> the recipient of your wit and charm that could agree with the term
> 'nonsense' in qualifying your posts. You name is often used lovingly
> in conversations among the medit-plants members with which I converse
> 'off-line'.
Hi Sean,
Brilliantly put! Congratulations, we second your comments!
> Your post inspired me to retell a story about latin names:
>
> Many years ago, when my wife and I were first married and on our
> honeymoon in the Pacific Northwest, she suddenyly stopped me as we
> were hiking on the Olympic Pennisula, among the giant Douglas Fir
> and their associated flora.
We were delighted by your story! In our family, it is Moira who is the
botanically-educated one. Over the past 48 years I have gradually
acquired some limited and superficial knowledge of these matters "by
osmosis" from her.
However, the need for botanical names in anything other than a
purely-local discussion has been made abundantly clear to me. The
unfortunate fact about common names is that that are likely to be
"common" only within a restricted area, and outside that area the very
same name is quite likely to be used for some totally-unrelated plant.
Oxalis pes-caprae, BTW, is known as "soursops" in Australia, where it is
major pest of agricultural land. Flying by commercial jet over southern
Australia, over very large areas, one can see fields showing as bright
yellow (first time we saw it, we thought they were growing mustard)!
Other fields are bright blue with an Echium (sp?) known locally as
"Paterson's Curse".
Tony
--
Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
Wainuiomata, New Zealand
