Floriography, More or Less

Because I can identify a blackberry bramble when I see it, berries or no berries, my husband asks me the name of the red berry that grows by the freeway onramp. Because I can differentiate the surprise lily from the tiger lily from the calla lily from the day lily from the stargazer lily, he wants me to name the lily that grows in our neighbors’ side yard. He wants to know what this tree is (some kind of evergreen), what this bird is (some kind of sparrow, I guess), and that bird (maybe a nuthatch?), and that (a red-shouldered hawk!)

I know my landscapes like I know my native language. I move through them with fluency, though my knowledge is incomplete. I know the crimson glory rose from the buttercup rose, the buttercup rose from the buttercup. I know the word “manzanita” was introduced by the Spanish. The bush was already here when the Spanish got to California, and the word has stuck around too. I know that, like the Spanish, the eucalyptus is an introduced and invasive species. The snail is too. I can tell you the source of the snail (a Frenchman wanted lunch), the purposes for which the eucalyptus was imported (to provide windbreaks between fields), but I can’t tell you the source of the blackberry bramble.

I have seen a friend mistake a vulture in flight for a hawk (it’s the angle of their wings and their tendency toward flocking that gives the vultures away). Since in some parts of the world the word “buzzard,” which Americans take to mean “vulture,” means “hawk,” I trust my friend’s confusion was not singular. We all inhabit language differently.

Could I identify the original language group of a root word when shown twenty of its English derivatives? Sometimes I could. Sometimes I could not. Which doesn’t mean I love this language any less. I know a verb from a noun, past tense from present, and the proper usage of these. But how quickly could I identify a transitive verb or tell you what a past participle does? If I misspoke, my father could easily point to these parts of speech as the root of my failures. It is likely my friend Emily, an actual rocket scientist, would not. We all inhabit language differently.

Because I want her to have a clear command of her native tongue and her native landscape, when I’m out walking with my daughter I like to point at a tree and say something more than “tree.” Sometimes I can. Sometimes I cannot. I want her to understand that a maple has those little seedpods that look like hovercraft propellers, that the sequoia in the park by our house are second and third growth coast redwoods, that the stump by the plaque in that same park is from one of the oldest oaks in a city named for such trees, that the trees lining our sidewalk are plums and will bear a hard bitter fruit in late spring. But I do not know the name of the three-story tree on the creek trail. I do not know the name of the twinned beauties on the bluff across the street. Though this does mean she will know less about the big trees than she might, it does not mean she will not know them at all.

False assumption: to love the world you live in you need always to be able to label it, you must be able to name everything you see and the source from which that thing has been derived. (Nature lover equals taxonomist: not true.) I love my husband, but I cannot tell you his great grandmother’s name. This does not mean I love him any less. Though it means I know less about him than I might, it does not mean I do not know him at all.

I can come to love a thing before I come to name it. I can come to love a thing and never come to name it. Mother says, Lenox, Wedgewood, Limoges, Noritake, Spode. I...