"Oh, the rhododendrons are in bloom!"
Which they were, to a limited extent. There are a lot of rhododendrons and azaleas in this park, and when they're all in bloom together it's pretty darn amazing. Yesterday, the first blossoms were starting to emerge.
Behind us, a father began to lecture his teenaged son.
"Rhododendron, from the Greek, rhodo - meaning pink and dendron meaning tree. So it literally means pink tree."
I thought to myself - will I be like that? Will I "inform" my kid with a bunch of knowledge valuable mostly as a shibboleth of intellectualism?
Why - yes, I will. But I would have probably added other examples of the use of dendron - e.g. dendritic river systems.
I hadn't thought about it before, but I was always most impressed with the way some of my mom's neighbors drilled their daughters in plant ID. I'd always thought of it was simply teaching potentially useful nature lore - but it's also a great way of teaching Latin and Greek root words, too.
2 comments:
My knowledge of plant ID is non-existent. I've always liked flowers (like any normal person), but never really developed a passion for them until moving to London. Do you have any tips for brushing up on the fine art of flower identification? You seem to know a lot about plants! ;)
be interested, look at tags, get a book, look at the characteristics of the plant - the leaves, the way it grows, the form of the flower, etc.
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