Re: mallees, marlocks, moorts and yates .....and now mallets.
Hi there Tim,
I should have known you wouldn't be able to resist those lovely alliterative
words.
They are all Aboriginal words/English approximations, and all different
types of trees. Unfortunately I don't know the translations of most, except
that mallee is a version of mali which refers to the Water Mallee, which
provided a source of drinking water.
Jane is spot on with her definition of marlock.....these are lovely little
single stemmed trees which are very windfirm. They frequently inhabit the
islands of our southern archipelagos, exposed to barren and windswept
conditions. E. macrandra and platypus are two examples. A marlock can be a
mallee for which see.........
Mallee: small multi-trunked trees. A species can be both a mallee and a
single trunked tree, dictated by growing conditions, fire etc. eg E. caesia,
megacarpa, macrocarpa, macrandra [again].
Yate: a single trunked tree with an umbrella-like crown, rather like the
Stone Pine. eg spathulata, cornuta
and.....
Mallet: [which I forgot] a multi-trunked Yate that is also a mallee.
All these terms tend to be more common amongst bushies such as I rather than
amongst the botanists of the East Coast. In fact, the Aboriginal words for
native plants and animals are much more frequently used in the West than in
the East. I have no idea [though I could guess] of the reason for this......
Mallee is a term common to both West and East, but I'm not sure about the
others. Maybe these trees only grow in WA? we are rather different after
all.
Cheers mate,
Margaret.
Margaret and Peter Moir
Olive Hill Farm
Margaret River, Western Australia.
www.wn.com.au/olivehill
----- Original Message -----
From: Tim Longville <tim@eddy.u-net.com>
To: <medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 2:43 AM
Subject: mallees, marlocks, moorts and yates
> Couldn't let that lovely run of words go without a query or two
> chasing after it.
>
> Margaret - are these beauties all words which are applied
> indiscriminately to all mallees?
>
> Or are all mallees mallees but only some mallees marlocks, some moorts
> and some yates?
>
> And if the latter, what's the difference between m, m, m and y?!
>
> Or, if they're all words for every single mallee, why the, ahum,
> redundant synonymity? Different words for/from different bits of the
> country?
>
> And, finally, what the heck do they - all and each - mean?!
>
> Now I bet you'd never mentioned'em....
>
> TIA for any info or even suggestions of where to find it -
>
> Tim-the-word-freak
> beside the Solway Firth, Cumbria UK,
> where it's spring by the sea, still winter on the snow-capped fells
> Tim Longville
>
