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Colloquial Plant Names

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  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    Heartbreak grass
  • plant pauperplant pauper Posts: 6,904
    HaHa Kitty. Coulda been. 
    It's one of my earliest gardening memories (my granny died when I was 8). I was looking at these gorgeous yellow flowers with red splotches in her garden and she told me they were called monkey flowers because they looked like monkey's faces.
    Mind you my granda also told me he had the biggest worms in the world (he really did!!!) because he fed them on Balmoral Wafer biscuits!!! 

  • Love in a mist for Nigella.
    Lords and Ladies,Jack in a pulpit or Cuckoo Pint for types of Arums when you get the red berry spires.
  • wild edgeswild edges Posts: 10,497
    I just found out that one of my sedums has an old folk name of 'welcome-home-husband-though-never-so-drunk'.

    If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
  • herbaceousherbaceous Posts: 2,318
    Those Old Wives knew a thing or two  :D 
    "The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."  Sir Terry Pratchett
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    I'm assuming it looks like a cast iron  skillet @wild edges
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • wild edgeswild edges Posts: 10,497
    My wife's theory is that it looks like a pile of vomit :#  I haven't been able to track down the origin of the name though.
    If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    Well that's equally appropriate I suppose😒
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • wild edgeswild edges Posts: 10,497
    Apparently the plant was grown as a medicinal purgitive so she might not have been far wrong...
    If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
  • AthelasAthelas Posts: 946
    Horny goat weed (barrenwort or epimedium)
    Mother-in-law’s tongue
    Did someone already mention sneezewort?

    But my favourites from reading an American poem by Arthur Guiterman as a child are Indian pipe and moccasin flower (also called pink lady’s slipper):

    Indian pipe and moccasin flower
    Grow where the woodland waves,
    Grow in the moss and the bracken bower
    Trod by the light-foot braves
    Who played their part, who lived their hour
    And left, with a name that thrills,

    Indian pipe and moccasin flower 
    Scattered among our hills.



    Cambridgeshire, UK
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