The “eu” of Eucalyptus tells us something is true, real. The “calyptus” part (from Greek kalyptos) suggests there is a lid, or a cap, involved. And indeed there is. Each bud of a Eucalyptus flower is capped with a Hershey Kisses-looking topper that breaks away around its rim (a kind of opening we call “circumcisal …
Category Archives: Making Associations with Collections
Super Suber
Most trees make cork; it’s a dead tissue in the bark, a tissue called phellem in Greek and suber in Latin. Botanists still use the words phellem and suber to describe barks, but in English we just say cork, a term that likely derives from quercus, which is the Latin word for oak trees. Of …
Scandalous Connections….
Plants gain their names in curious ways. To gardeners, Grevillea is a wonderful group of shrubby Protea relatives (mostly from Australia). The brilliant botanist Robert Brown, having studied the Protea family, determined this particular cadre of species should be recognized as the separate genus Grevillea, one of several new names he proposed in 1809 during …
A Tree to Conquer Passion
A Tree to Conquer Passion Pliny is a notorious historian, Chaucer a fabled story-teller. The writings of both authors constitute some of the most precious books among more than 9 million special collections conserved and studied in the Huntington Library. Writings of both men tell us about real and mythical lifestyles, and each author makes …
A Great Name
California’s only native palm was long thought to be a Brahea, or even a Pritchardia. But in 1879 German Botanist Hermann von Wendland noted significant distinguishing characteristics and published a new name, Washingtonia filifera, creating a combination (the genus and specific epithet that make up a scientific name) to identify the plant. Many people …