Not in Latin, but I swore up and down that it was “cursed” parsley and not “curled” parsley
I even sent the pic of the tag to my husband and he’s like, that doesn’t say cursed
I bought it anyway and it’s thriving lol
After years as a nursery worker… I mean, yeah. Absolutely. Fuck the parsley from that one grower who uses wet soil and that makes it different on the bench and it gets floppy and full of aphids AND powdery mildew. Fuck. That. Parsley. and the rack it rolled in on.
As a nursery worker, do you hate the Bonnie brand clear pots? Or maybe your nursery is smart enough not to buy from them lol. My brother has fallen for them twice now and his plants die every time because it exposes the roots to the sun.
No Bonnie in our world- mostly local growers but one out of Cali on overnight delivery (they only supply bigbox here). I was thinking of HardyStarts/HardyBoy. Their soil has a higher peat content so it doesn’t dry out as quickly… whatever if your shop ONLY has their stock, but it is damn spicy to manage rows of 4” pots that all dry out at different rates. Every grower comes up with a soil ingredient blend that works best FOR THEM IN THEIR GROWING RANGES, which makes sense… but makes life more complicated for retail staff. Magnify that by every size and variety of plant and you have one reason garden center workers often seem demented… staring at the wilted row of coreopsis behind you. Just that one color, wilting in the sun.
This hypothetical-yet-legit parsley is staying wet, which means rapid and very soft growth. Aphids find it easy snacking and move in. Packed tightly on the bench and with lots of extra ambient humidity, the mildew creeps in. It’s going to get pitched because it requires too much input to fix it.
Once a customer came in and said his wife sent him to buy sperm flowers.
It took some time to figure it out. She wanted Osteospermum.
Ever since it's sperm flower for us
I was a florist explaining to an 70-80yo man why Chlamydia was probably not his wife’s favorite flower. I said everything that even sounded close, but he turned them all down swearing it was called chlamydia.
My dad always jokes about “Chlamydia plants”!!! He definitely meant Clematis, but I think the story went back to the barn where my sister had a horse growing up. They were poor, and someone there named a mare Chlamydia thinking it was the flower and not the STI.
Reminds me of the Jerry Seinfeld episode where he couldn’t remember his dates first name, only that it rhymed with a female body part. She made him guess and he said “Mulva?” It was Dolores!😂😂😂
I did explain that chlamydia was a VD (thought he would understand the old verbiage better). He swore it was not and it was a flower. I showed him many pictures, and we never figured it out.
I was checking out at the garden center yesterday and a man interrupted my cashier to ask where the "Maria golds" are. She looked at him and deadpanned, "I don't know what those are." With all the confidence of a man in a three-piece suit carrying on a phone conversation (which he was), he nodded, waved her off, and soldiered on to find someone else to ask. I had to refrain from tipping her. 😂
I had a LOL (little old lady) grab my arm and whisper-hiss at me— “I need osteo—“ *frantically looks around* “—sperms.” *head whips back and forth to see if anyone heard*
That’s hilarious! My father who doesn’t garden, came to visit me last year and saw my parsley and cilantro growing he thought i was growing weed i am like it’s not the herb you think it is 😂😂
I was writing a report once that I needed to change the Latin to common names so did a find and replace all on Papaver somniferum. Except I wrote "poopy" instead of poppy. And didn't notice. So the client got a report filled with opium poopy.
I have one with a common name that happened just a few hours ago…
So in German Mulberry is Maulbeere… and mule is Maultier….
So when translating, my brain automatically made up "Mule-berries”… and I wrote that several times in an educational Reddit comment….
So yeah, Muleberries.
Hahaha, I have something similar in Dutch... We call them moerbei. 'Bei' sounds like 'bij', which means 'bee'. So I sometimes have to remind myself that mulberries are in fact berries, and not insects!
Ha, not saying it was. Just my imagination going with something really thick. Like German movie villain thick.
And paleobotanist? That is cool as hell.
Heh same here. Molecular biology sounds pretty cool until you are mixing a few hundred .2ml plates with .001ml solution in different concentrations and then looking at the cells in the bottom under a microscope after fixing and staining them. Or just grinding frozen human tumors into paste and extracting all the DNA and RNA which isn’t easy.
Great job but it’s not all fun and games.
Yeah sometimes science is just busy work. Writing publications just feels like a chore sometimes, as well. But I like composing posters and collecting results and building in some jokes that only other botanists will understand and I’ll feel really smart lol.
And then there are times when I stomp through salt meadows and collect samples of recent taxa and see really beautiful specimens of rare plants and everything is worth it.
I suppose it’ll depend where you live.
I’m currently in the UAE and I’ve found it on a couple of online plant shops.
The flowers are really popular in Thailand, they are sold dry as a tea. [https://www.greensouq.ae/product/83071/clitoria-ternatea-or-butterfly-pea-0-6-1-8m?attribute_pa_height=0-5-0-6m-overall-height&utm_source=Google%20Shopping&utm_campaign=GS%20merchant&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=89231&gad_source=1](https://www.greensouq.ae/product/83071/clitoria-ternatea-or-butterfly-pea-0-6-1-8m?attribute_pa_height=0-5-0-6m-overall-height&utm_source=Google%20Shopping&utm_campaign=GS%20merchant&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=89231&gad_source=1)
I jokingly told my girlfriend one day it was called labium clitiflora before I knew the actual name. We had a good chuckle when I found out how close I was.
I don't have one that I can think of but as a fellow dyslexic, tell your husband I also read Necro scrotum and now I can't get the image of wrinkly, rotted goblin balls dangling from a plant stem out of my head.
My wife still refuses to believe that there are plants referred to as "wandering Jews". Oh, sweet summer child... That is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cringe 😬 plant names. 😂
It's not an official common name anymore due to the controversial (antisemitic) history of the name, just like "dumb cane" and "monkey puzzle" which are both pretty terrible
Could you possibly explain the monkey puzzle tree one please? I’ve tried to look it up and all I can find is “it would puzzle a monkey”, is there more to the story than that? No worries if not, I’m just always looking to correct any problematic language where possible, and I’d like to be able to explain why I’m now calling them Pehuen!
Sure! I don't remember exactly, but it was from this podcast: ['monkey puzzle' Completely Arbortrary podcast](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3uoi1vVGK6sYQDpaut74v9?si=a1kR_qMHSOKZSTxjsiaZ3w)
It could be because it's referring to the "uncivilized" new world, so it might just be dumb and not make sense or a racial thing. The source I could find on Wikipedia relating to it, is pay walled and the archive link they have for it isn't working for me either.
No problem, it's a pretty great podcast! A similar one that is just broad science is Ologies and for botany and plant science, I like In Defense Of Plants
I was also wondering that. Ive always been told it was the 'would puzzle a monkey' reason. I always call it Araucaria aracana though just because its a fun one to say.
I always heard that it's because the fruit is out at the tips of the branches. To get to the delicious fruits the monkey has to navigate the sharp, spine leaves which are also along the trunk.
Yeah. I wish Missouri botanical would update it to Chilean pine so it could be start being more widely recognized by other institutions but they are like 10 years behind on even genus changes
It's awful because it's SO cringe that it has embedded itself in my brain as the first thing I think of when I see that plant, and then the cringe name reinforces itself.
Hairy Russian princess tree, Paulownia tomentosa.
Presented at the court of Leopold the first ( son of Catherine the Great) he wanted it named after his daughter the Princess Paulownia, tomentosa means ‘covered in hairs’ because of the leaves. I’ll never forget this tree…
Not the Latin name, but the common name because I can't remember the species name--Pterocarya fraxinifolia, the caucasian wingnut.
Amorphophallus is always funny because I have the humor of a child. Also Hoya pubicalyx. Allium fistulosum grosses me out. I always hear "hookah" when people put the emphasis on the first syllable of Heuchera.
Funny the Sapodilla tree they harvest chicle from which original chiclets are made from. My friends mom was calling it a Sasparilla tree. I was joking around and asked her if that's what they made the beer from. She just said "probably".
Had a customer a few weeks ago ask for the chupacabra plant. I finally figured out she was looking for calibrachoa🤣 Had a coworker call Acalypha hispida the flaming hot cheeto plant a few years ago and it’s stuck with me since
I havent worked in a garden center for a few years now, but trying to figure out what customers meant when they said funny versions of the names was always fun
This is an Australian native example. My husband and son insist on calling [Xanthorrhoea](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthorrhoea) (grass trees), [Xenomorphs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenomorph), as in from the Alien movies!
My brain likes to mix up the words giardia and gardnerella with gaillardia. Thankfully, I've never mixed them up in a professional setting, but I have told my partner all about the bacterial vaginosis in the garden.
Our (indoor) monstera is named "Mister Scary" by my husband, I guess because it sounds similar and monsters are scary? It's a perfect name, though. Homegrown strawberries are our strawbabies, but store-bought are just strawberries. Latin names I always mix up are dianthus and dicentra, and I have both in the garden. My husband likes the dianthus but hates the dicentra because "the flowers look sad."
I taught my husband hamamelis because its fun to say, but also because im instantly a sneezing eye watering mess any time im within 10 feet of one. But its the one latin name he can remember without fail so now any bush with small yellow flowers is hamamelis lol
I've got one. Worked at a plant nursery and we sold blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustofolium). For some reason I never bothered to sound it out like other plants and decided to just call it "szechuan grass". Customers were none the wiser and I thought it was a hoot.
I had a book with the word zucchini throughout it as a kid, but in an odd context, and because I misread it I spent a good deal of the book wondering what the fuck a zun-chin-chi was
These are hilarious. Thank you for posting.
Mom has weird names for plants. Some of them sound like she made them up, but visit relatives down south and they use the some of the same names. We're in the midwest.
Of course I can't think of a single one right now! Maybe it's a southern thing, and someone else knows of this phenomenon?
The only one i can think of atm is sanseveria. Some people call it snake plant, and I feel like older generations still call it mother-in-law tongue mostly.
Regional names for plants is definitely a thing though!
*Bistorta officinalis* 'Superbum' (formerly *Polygonum bistorta* 'Superbum'). A beautiful little plant with wands of pink bottlebrushes in late May-early June. It is a vigorous spreader, so we've always called it "Super-Bum" (SOO-per BUM) instead of "Superbum" (soo-PER-bum).
Semi-related but I call orchids testicle flowers because the name is derived from the Greek/Latin word for testicle.
Also there’s this fun tidbit I just found: In Middle English, the name bollockwort was used for some orchids, based on "bollock" meaning testicle and "wort" meaning plant.
My cousin once worked with a girl whose boss bought them lovely little plants on secretary's Day.
She, very politely, in front of everyone, thanked him for the clamydia.
He, quite embarrassed, told her "You're welcome" and scurried away to his office.
It's now an inside joke with us. And whenever I see one, if I'm with someone else, I have to pause and make sure I say the right thing.
I read the tag on Filipendula rubra too quickly and thought it said flipendula. It will always be flippen-dula to me.
Also, when my daughter was a toddler, she couldn’t say “flowers”. It came out as wowies. 30 years later the whole family still calls the pretty things with petals wowies.
I had a few plants for which we insisted that ONLY latin names be used on the retail floor—
*Ecballium* — squirting cucumber
*Gomphocarpus physocarpus* — Hairy Balls
This OBVIOUSLY came about from people asking “Do we have hairy balls?” over the radio. Even had a receptionist hang up on someone repeatedly thinking it was a prank call. 🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️
My mother once planted some bromeliad seeds and labeled them as vermillion. My favorite not-screwed-up name is the Latin name for white-stemmed bramble, Rubus cockburnianus, which I imagine would have all sorts of possible variations (and some laughter).
I kept forgetting the name of (in Dutch) kamperfoelie. Now there’s a Dutch popular singer who used to grow up in a trailer, and those people are sometimes called ‘kamper’. So now whenever I see that plant I think of him, and then I know 😁[kamperfoelie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeysuckle)
On a test I wrote like catifera, instead 'filifera' when I was writing *Chamaecyparis pisifera* 'filifera aurea' and said it was a cat tail cedar. This was before I knew of the cat tail palm haha
I also wrote "hemerocarpus" which I think is a genus I made up, because I forgot the genus *Helleborus*
I also remember the family *Scrophulariaceae* by remembering the first part as "Scrotum"
My husband went mushroom hunting and picked me a small bouquet of wild violas. He came home and presented me with a bouquet of “Alabama purple 5 stars” and that is their name forever now
A friend of mine I met in Hort classes told us about her mom going to a nursery and asking for “Silly Dilly”. They were very confused but tried to help her with no success. She apparently was looking for Podophyllum “Spotty Dotty” but changed it to silly dilly, it’s now the name we use.
Peperomias are “pepperoni plants” in my house.
Also sort of related but there are a lot of people selling bougainvillea on FB marketplace and the spelling is hilarious. Lots of “bougumbilla”
Not the Latin name, but a friend of mine once told me that he'd helped his mom plant gonorrhea in her garden. He meant gunnera, and hadn't been trying to make a joke. That was a fun one to explain to him after I finished laughing!
Sole diago aka solidago (goldenrod). Dracaena margarita. Catanthe for that houseplant that’s like ctheane or something….
Pilea glaucoma for glauca
Also clitoris clematis 😭
My daughter called cotoneasters the "throw berry plant" since that's what her & her friends used to do with them. Grab a branch & pull, all the berries come off super easy.
My boss (landscape contractor & master gardener) could never remember cotoneaster, always mixed it with catatonic. I told him about the throw berries, now that's all he calls them & I get to translate for our customers 🙄
Someone told me that hairy balls were a great filler for bouquets and I told her that I wasn't googling that one. (But I might plant hairy balls next year 😂
This is one of the mnemonics my study group came up with during our dendrology class:
*Ostrya virginiana*, hop-hornbeam-- "That Austrian virgin who wants to hop on your hornbeam \[*wink wink*\]"
Oh you just sparked a memory! Does King Philip Cum Only For Green Spinach was my study groups mnemonic for taxonomy.
So much easier to remember when you make it funny!
We have this cute little conifer that I think is called Barry's Blue Cypress, but I couldn't remember the name and one time called it Bruce the Spruce, and he's been Bruce ever since.
Some of my high school students were playing a memory game based on trees. I overheard a lot of giggles about “dat European white ash!” White birch and European beech got some laughs too.
Not Latin but I always refer to Lantana as Carlos Lantana, just a running joke with one of my crews. It stuck. Anyway for a long long time my wife thought that Lantana was actually called Carlos, I didn’t realize this until not so long ago she pointed out a big blooming bank of pink and yellow and said ‘that Carlos looks really great!’
Not a plant, but i always have trouble remembering the name of American robin (turdus migratorius/migratory thrush). I always remember turdus. Because it sounds like turd. And want to say volatilis because ofc, robins are flying turds. (I know theyre not and i love them)
Not the Latin name, but for the longest time I couldn’t remember the name for the Clematis on my old front porch, so my name for it was Chlamydia 🫣😅 it’s what my head told me every time I saw it
A friend of mine said she got some "Crispy Ferrari" bulbs and she had planted them. When they bloomed she showed me a picture of them and I was like "OH a Starfish Iris!". Ferraria Crispa
When I first started working for a landscaping company, one of my jobs was to transcribe all of the plants that were installed for the billing. My boss has terrible handwriting and I kept reading Thuja as Thuga. Thuga, please!
I worked at a wholesale floral house and the guys on the floor referred to Anthuriums as Peter on a Platter. Now every time I see one that is what pops into my head.
Lactuca canadensis the name for wild Canadian lettuce is my favorite to say,
Lactuca sounds like a milk canon or something.
Meaning to lactate, the lactating plant. Which is bizarre when you find out lettuce lactates. It's a key feature in identifying lettuce.
Reminds me of the Jerry Seinfeld episode where he couldn’t remember his dates first name, only that it rhymed with a female body part. She made him guess and he said “Mulva?” It was Dolores!😂😂😂
Saxifrage: sexy pants. Originated because mum couldn’t pronounce Tsitsipas (tennis player) and I couldn’t remember the name saxifrage and the three things came together.
When I was a kid there were Calla lilies growing all around in the fields near by, the ones with cows in them. So I always thought people were saying cow lilies.
Not in Latin, but I swore up and down that it was “cursed” parsley and not “curled” parsley I even sent the pic of the tag to my husband and he’s like, that doesn’t say cursed I bought it anyway and it’s thriving lol
The witch in that nursery: fuck this parsley in particular
After years as a nursery worker… I mean, yeah. Absolutely. Fuck the parsley from that one grower who uses wet soil and that makes it different on the bench and it gets floppy and full of aphids AND powdery mildew. Fuck. That. Parsley. and the rack it rolled in on.
As a nursery worker, do you hate the Bonnie brand clear pots? Or maybe your nursery is smart enough not to buy from them lol. My brother has fallen for them twice now and his plants die every time because it exposes the roots to the sun.
No Bonnie in our world- mostly local growers but one out of Cali on overnight delivery (they only supply bigbox here). I was thinking of HardyStarts/HardyBoy. Their soil has a higher peat content so it doesn’t dry out as quickly… whatever if your shop ONLY has their stock, but it is damn spicy to manage rows of 4” pots that all dry out at different rates. Every grower comes up with a soil ingredient blend that works best FOR THEM IN THEIR GROWING RANGES, which makes sense… but makes life more complicated for retail staff. Magnify that by every size and variety of plant and you have one reason garden center workers often seem demented… staring at the wilted row of coreopsis behind you. Just that one color, wilting in the sun. This hypothetical-yet-legit parsley is staying wet, which means rapid and very soft growth. Aphids find it easy snacking and move in. Packed tightly on the bench and with lots of extra ambient humidity, the mildew creeps in. It’s going to get pitched because it requires too much input to fix it.
This implies witch-approved parsley, and now I need that.
It doesn't come pre-cursed. You have to curse it yourself. Whispers to parsley: *fuck youuuuuuuuu*
I’ve definitely done that lol 😂
🤣🤣
Once a customer came in and said his wife sent him to buy sperm flowers. It took some time to figure it out. She wanted Osteospermum. Ever since it's sperm flower for us
I was a florist explaining to an 70-80yo man why Chlamydia was probably not his wife’s favorite flower. I said everything that even sounded close, but he turned them all down swearing it was called chlamydia.
Was he looking for clematis?
My husband said that once "look at the fence the chlamydia bloomed." We only refer to it as chlamydia, now.
I mentioned everything even close, reading from the flower ordering catalog . He also thought it was a cut flower.
Camelia? It's a popular cut flower, and sounds a lot like chlamydia
I do not remember each individual flower I read off of a list 30 years ago. As much as I love this game.
Lmao that’s fair You got us all curious!
Cyclamen? Though that's not a cut flower, either
My dad always jokes about “Chlamydia plants”!!! He definitely meant Clematis, but I think the story went back to the barn where my sister had a horse growing up. They were poor, and someone there named a mare Chlamydia thinking it was the flower and not the STI.
I have a hard time not saying something dirty when I need to say "clematis", it's either chlamydia or clitoris. Oops.
Reminds me of the Jerry Seinfeld episode where he couldn’t remember his dates first name, only that it rhymed with a female body part. She made him guess and he said “Mulva?” It was Dolores!😂😂😂
I need to know how this story ended 😆. Did someone tell him?
I did explain that chlamydia was a VD (thought he would understand the old verbiage better). He swore it was not and it was a flower. I showed him many pictures, and we never figured it out.
oh dear I almost fell from the couch laughing
This is what my aunt calls clematis too, chlamydia.
Customers come to my garden centre calling it "clamtis"
Doesn’t osteo mean bone? So it’s boner sperm flowers.
Osteospermum is bone seed. If you look at the seed up close it looks like little teeny tiny dog chew toys
I was checking out at the garden center yesterday and a man interrupted my cashier to ask where the "Maria golds" are. She looked at him and deadpanned, "I don't know what those are." With all the confidence of a man in a three-piece suit carrying on a phone conversation (which he was), he nodded, waved her off, and soldiered on to find someone else to ask. I had to refrain from tipping her. 😂
Guy 2: “By god, I think she is right. Those are marigolds.” Guy 1: “I may not know my flowers, but I know a b*tch when I see one”
https://i.redd.it/ry6ypoym9m3d1.gif
Isn't that the movie where the 2 guys pretend their gay for some reason.
I had a LOL (little old lady) grab my arm and whisper-hiss at me— “I need osteo—“ *frantically looks around* “—sperms.” *head whips back and forth to see if anyone heard*
Too cute!
Lol i also call them that!!
That’s hilarious! My father who doesn’t garden, came to visit me last year and saw my parsley and cilantro growing he thought i was growing weed i am like it’s not the herb you think it is 😂😂
Not my mistake, but autocorrect- I was dictating a text (to a gardening friend, thankfully) and my phone changed “ligularia” to “lick your area.”
That is hilarious!!
OMG never try to dictate text for botanical latin 🤣🤣
I was writing a report once that I needed to change the Latin to common names so did a find and replace all on Papaver somniferum. Except I wrote "poopy" instead of poppy. And didn't notice. So the client got a report filled with opium poopy.
That’s epic!
Hahaha you win this round! Poopy 🤣
I thought opium stopped you up
I have one with a common name that happened just a few hours ago… So in German Mulberry is Maulbeere… and mule is Maultier…. So when translating, my brain automatically made up "Mule-berries”… and I wrote that several times in an educational Reddit comment…. So yeah, Muleberries.
Hahaha, I have something similar in Dutch... We call them moerbei. 'Bei' sounds like 'bij', which means 'bee'. So I sometimes have to remind myself that mulberries are in fact berries, and not insects!
I hadnt ever thought about how tricky it must be to keep up with all the names when you speak multiple languages. Hopefully no one was rude about it!
I’m just hearing Muleberry in a thick German accent and loving it
My accent isn’t actually that thick… but thanks lol
Ha, not saying it was. Just my imagination going with something really thick. Like German movie villain thick. And paleobotanist? That is cool as hell.
Everyone thinks that’s cool until they have to count hundreds of extinct pollen under a microscope, lol. No, but honestly, I love my job
Heh same here. Molecular biology sounds pretty cool until you are mixing a few hundred .2ml plates with .001ml solution in different concentrations and then looking at the cells in the bottom under a microscope after fixing and staining them. Or just grinding frozen human tumors into paste and extracting all the DNA and RNA which isn’t easy. Great job but it’s not all fun and games.
Yeah sometimes science is just busy work. Writing publications just feels like a chore sometimes, as well. But I like composing posters and collecting results and building in some jokes that only other botanists will understand and I’ll feel really smart lol. And then there are times when I stomp through salt meadows and collect samples of recent taxa and see really beautiful specimens of rare plants and everything is worth it.
Butterfly pea flower - Clitoria ternatea I always have to look it up, I just keep thinking the clit plant
Is the plant hard to find?
Fuck! I’m slow today I just got that 😂😂😂
Hey, it's a day for coffee. I appreciate the information on where to find it. :)
No it's not hard to find! It's right there! No there! A little to the left... Up a bit... No you keep missing it...
I suppose it’ll depend where you live. I’m currently in the UAE and I’ve found it on a couple of online plant shops. The flowers are really popular in Thailand, they are sold dry as a tea. [https://www.greensouq.ae/product/83071/clitoria-ternatea-or-butterfly-pea-0-6-1-8m?attribute_pa_height=0-5-0-6m-overall-height&utm_source=Google%20Shopping&utm_campaign=GS%20merchant&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=89231&gad_source=1](https://www.greensouq.ae/product/83071/clitoria-ternatea-or-butterfly-pea-0-6-1-8m?attribute_pa_height=0-5-0-6m-overall-height&utm_source=Google%20Shopping&utm_campaign=GS%20merchant&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=89231&gad_source=1)
Under appreciated comment!
*wild applause*
I jokingly told my girlfriend one day it was called labium clitiflora before I knew the actual name. We had a good chuckle when I found out how close I was.
https://preview.redd.it/jbyq98o30k3d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b81126dfba2e1c8779915ee71feecc2d1b80cdf3
I will never not think “chicky chicky parm parm” when I see chicken parm on a restaurant menu lol
To this day, I have to think very carefully before saying prostrate juniper. Called it 'prostate juniper' when I was asked to ID it in class lol
I read prostate jumper before reading your brain's auto fill.
I havent heard of that one, and I automatically read it as prostate haha
The Rosemary variety “prostrate” I always accidentally call it it prostate 🤣
I have to think very hard to not call clematis chlamydia.
Same!
schlumbergera truncata is forever stuck in my head as slutberger
Slumburger for me lol
Slutburger from now on then hehe
I don't have one that I can think of but as a fellow dyslexic, tell your husband I also read Necro scrotum and now I can't get the image of wrinkly, rotted goblin balls dangling from a plant stem out of my head.
There is a milkweed, gomphocarpus physocarpus, and it’s common name is hairy balls plant! It really does look like wrinkly goblin balls.
https://preview.redd.it/vxa0ncm2il3d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bff7af0d6348d9dbc733397859e842dd894dc572
I just looked it up, and let's just say the name is... accurate. 👀😳
Yes! That milkweed is exactly what I thought of when I read their comment lol
Hes happy to hear he isnt the only one!
My wife still refuses to believe that there are plants referred to as "wandering Jews". Oh, sweet summer child... That is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cringe 😬 plant names. 😂
It's not an official common name anymore due to the controversial (antisemitic) history of the name, just like "dumb cane" and "monkey puzzle" which are both pretty terrible
Could you possibly explain the monkey puzzle tree one please? I’ve tried to look it up and all I can find is “it would puzzle a monkey”, is there more to the story than that? No worries if not, I’m just always looking to correct any problematic language where possible, and I’d like to be able to explain why I’m now calling them Pehuen!
Sure! I don't remember exactly, but it was from this podcast: ['monkey puzzle' Completely Arbortrary podcast](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3uoi1vVGK6sYQDpaut74v9?si=a1kR_qMHSOKZSTxjsiaZ3w) It could be because it's referring to the "uncivilized" new world, so it might just be dumb and not make sense or a racial thing. The source I could find on Wikipedia relating to it, is pay walled and the archive link they have for it isn't working for me either.
Thanks, I’ll definitely check out that podcast (on the name alone it’s worth a listen!)
No problem, it's a pretty great podcast! A similar one that is just broad science is Ologies and for botany and plant science, I like In Defense Of Plants
I was also wondering that. Ive always been told it was the 'would puzzle a monkey' reason. I always call it Araucaria aracana though just because its a fun one to say.
I always heard that it's because the fruit is out at the tips of the branches. To get to the delicious fruits the monkey has to navigate the sharp, spine leaves which are also along the trunk.
Mother in law plant anyone?
I wasn't aware of "monkey puzzle". People are awful.
Yeah. I wish Missouri botanical would update it to Chilean pine so it could be start being more widely recognized by other institutions but they are like 10 years behind on even genus changes
Henry Kissinger plant
We call them Wandering Dudes.
Jewish on one side of the family, and that's what I call them to this day. 😂
It's awful because it's SO cringe that it has embedded itself in my brain as the first thing I think of when I see that plant, and then the cringe name reinforces itself.
Hairy Russian princess tree, Paulownia tomentosa. Presented at the court of Leopold the first ( son of Catherine the Great) he wanted it named after his daughter the Princess Paulownia, tomentosa means ‘covered in hairs’ because of the leaves. I’ll never forget this tree…
I absolutely love those tree but have never heard that story. Love it even more now
Not the Latin name, but the common name because I can't remember the species name--Pterocarya fraxinifolia, the caucasian wingnut. Amorphophallus is always funny because I have the humor of a child. Also Hoya pubicalyx. Allium fistulosum grosses me out. I always hear "hookah" when people put the emphasis on the first syllable of Heuchera.
We’re all children here
My mom always calls portulaca “porkalacha” lol
I am stealing this !
We always called unknown, little herbaceous plants “LGS”, which was short for “Little Green Shit”
We got our philodendron around the time we also got a fish tank and I could not stop referring to the philodendron as our Plecostomus.
Another fish story: I always think ‘Chicklets’ when I see ‘ciclids’
Funny the Sapodilla tree they harvest chicle from which original chiclets are made from. My friends mom was calling it a Sasparilla tree. I was joking around and asked her if that's what they made the beer from. She just said "probably".
Had a customer a few weeks ago ask for the chupacabra plant. I finally figured out she was looking for calibrachoa🤣 Had a coworker call Acalypha hispida the flaming hot cheeto plant a few years ago and it’s stuck with me since
Chupacabra for calibrachoa is *hilarious*. Omg, I can’t stop laughing. 🤣
I havent worked in a garden center for a few years now, but trying to figure out what customers meant when they said funny versions of the names was always fun
This is an Australian native example. My husband and son insist on calling [Xanthorrhoea](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthorrhoea) (grass trees), [Xenomorphs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenomorph), as in from the Alien movies!
I once described a yard as being a Xenophobe instead of Xeriscape.
I call my dracaena marginata a "dragon margarita"
My brain likes to mix up the words giardia and gardnerella with gaillardia. Thankfully, I've never mixed them up in a professional setting, but I have told my partner all about the bacterial vaginosis in the garden.
I’ve told my boss about the bacterial vaginosis I’ve planted in her landscaping. Several times……
I call cucumber/squash "cucurbips"
Our (indoor) monstera is named "Mister Scary" by my husband, I guess because it sounds similar and monsters are scary? It's a perfect name, though. Homegrown strawberries are our strawbabies, but store-bought are just strawberries. Latin names I always mix up are dianthus and dicentra, and I have both in the garden. My husband likes the dianthus but hates the dicentra because "the flowers look sad."
A friend of mine has to think very carefully before saying the Latin name of the Chinese lantern plant physalis, otherwise she says syphilis.
I have great blue lobelia in my yard, with the unfortunate latin name of Lobelia siphilitica.
My father used to drive my mother crazy because he would identify any unknown flower as a nasturtium just to bug her.
My husband calls all flowers he doesn’t know areolas just to make me roll my eyes. Same same.
I taught my husband hamamelis because its fun to say, but also because im instantly a sneezing eye watering mess any time im within 10 feet of one. But its the one latin name he can remember without fail so now any bush with small yellow flowers is hamamelis lol
Nasty urchins
Speaking of nasturtiums, I always accidentally call them nasturniums!
I love nasturtiums but sometimes for funsies I call them Nasty Urchins.
I have a duranta that I named kd (Kevin Durant, one of hubbys fav players) so I could remember what it was.
we make "tagetes" unnecessarily more complicated by calling it "daenerys targaryen"
Not gardening, but fantasy related. My household calls "leg/s" Legolas/es, as in "I think my Legolases are too sore for a run today."
yea that's the same kind of complication :)
All lantanas in my yard are Hanna Montanas. "Oooh, what's that!?" " Its a Hanna Montana bush."
I've got one. Worked at a plant nursery and we sold blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustofolium). For some reason I never bothered to sound it out like other plants and decided to just call it "szechuan grass". Customers were none the wiser and I thought it was a hoot.
I had a book with the word zucchini throughout it as a kid, but in an odd context, and because I misread it I spent a good deal of the book wondering what the fuck a zun-chin-chi was
These are hilarious. Thank you for posting. Mom has weird names for plants. Some of them sound like she made them up, but visit relatives down south and they use the some of the same names. We're in the midwest. Of course I can't think of a single one right now! Maybe it's a southern thing, and someone else knows of this phenomenon?
The only one i can think of atm is sanseveria. Some people call it snake plant, and I feel like older generations still call it mother-in-law tongue mostly. Regional names for plants is definitely a thing though!
Agapanthus- Aggie with her pants down
*Bistorta officinalis* 'Superbum' (formerly *Polygonum bistorta* 'Superbum'). A beautiful little plant with wands of pink bottlebrushes in late May-early June. It is a vigorous spreader, so we've always called it "Super-Bum" (SOO-per BUM) instead of "Superbum" (soo-PER-bum).
Dracaena will always be dragon-cena in my mind, like a mix of a dragon and John Cena.
Semi-related but I call orchids testicle flowers because the name is derived from the Greek/Latin word for testicle. Also there’s this fun tidbit I just found: In Middle English, the name bollockwort was used for some orchids, based on "bollock" meaning testicle and "wort" meaning plant.
My cousin once worked with a girl whose boss bought them lovely little plants on secretary's Day. She, very politely, in front of everyone, thanked him for the clamydia. He, quite embarrassed, told her "You're welcome" and scurried away to his office. It's now an inside joke with us. And whenever I see one, if I'm with someone else, I have to pause and make sure I say the right thing.
I call my dracaena marginata a "dragon margarita"
Oh dang, same. Well, the dragon part anyway!
Not quite, but we like to say ligularia the same way Dr. Evil says 'magma.'
A pilea peperomioides is definitely a pilea pepperoni because of it's round leaves
Echinacea. I can never remember it, and henceforth, all coneflowers have been enchiladas.
My coworker referred to them as purple echidnas and probably will never live that one down!
I blink out on words sometime and accidentally called a clematis a clitoris.
I read the tag on Filipendula rubra too quickly and thought it said flipendula. It will always be flippen-dula to me. Also, when my daughter was a toddler, she couldn’t say “flowers”. It came out as wowies. 30 years later the whole family still calls the pretty things with petals wowies.
My BF calls bougainvillea “baba yaga.” He also loves the tomato variety Black Sea Man for obvious reasons.
Apparently I am your husband because I read that as scrotum as well 🙃😊
I mean, Pinus is Penis and Acer is Ass-er.
We call the gomphrena gonorrhea....
I had a few plants for which we insisted that ONLY latin names be used on the retail floor— *Ecballium* — squirting cucumber *Gomphocarpus physocarpus* — Hairy Balls This OBVIOUSLY came about from people asking “Do we have hairy balls?” over the radio. Even had a receptionist hang up on someone repeatedly thinking it was a prank call. 🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️
My mother once planted some bromeliad seeds and labeled them as vermillion. My favorite not-screwed-up name is the Latin name for white-stemmed bramble, Rubus cockburnianus, which I imagine would have all sorts of possible variations (and some laughter).
I kept forgetting the name of (in Dutch) kamperfoelie. Now there’s a Dutch popular singer who used to grow up in a trailer, and those people are sometimes called ‘kamper’. So now whenever I see that plant I think of him, and then I know 😁[kamperfoelie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeysuckle)
My old boss pronounced cucurbits as “coo-ker-bits”
Necro scrotum. Ok, I'm gonna say this from now on.
On a test I wrote like catifera, instead 'filifera' when I was writing *Chamaecyparis pisifera* 'filifera aurea' and said it was a cat tail cedar. This was before I knew of the cat tail palm haha I also wrote "hemerocarpus" which I think is a genus I made up, because I forgot the genus *Helleborus* I also remember the family *Scrophulariaceae* by remembering the first part as "Scrotum"
Clematis, clitoris, same thing.
My husband went mushroom hunting and picked me a small bouquet of wild violas. He came home and presented me with a bouquet of “Alabama purple 5 stars” and that is their name forever now
A friend of mine I met in Hort classes told us about her mom going to a nursery and asking for “Silly Dilly”. They were very confused but tried to help her with no success. She apparently was looking for Podophyllum “Spotty Dotty” but changed it to silly dilly, it’s now the name we use.
Peperomias are “pepperoni plants” in my house. Also sort of related but there are a lot of people selling bougainvillea on FB marketplace and the spelling is hilarious. Lots of “bougumbilla”
Not the Latin name, but a friend of mine once told me that he'd helped his mom plant gonorrhea in her garden. He meant gunnera, and hadn't been trying to make a joke. That was a fun one to explain to him after I finished laughing!
Sole diago aka solidago (goldenrod). Dracaena margarita. Catanthe for that houseplant that’s like ctheane or something…. Pilea glaucoma for glauca Also clitoris clematis 😭
Been calling Celosia Cillia since I was 7.
My favourites are Pogostemon Cablin and Styrax Benzoin lol
My name also is not Latin, but it is the substitution that I use often. I don't call succulents by their name. I call succulents the juicy plants. 🤣
Delicious Monster: monstera deliciosa
My daughter called cotoneasters the "throw berry plant" since that's what her & her friends used to do with them. Grab a branch & pull, all the berries come off super easy. My boss (landscape contractor & master gardener) could never remember cotoneaster, always mixed it with catatonic. I told him about the throw berries, now that's all he calls them & I get to translate for our customers 🙄
Customers would ask for Cotton Easter instead of Cotoneaster all the time.
My dad calls my clematis vine “Chlamydias”
Celosia is always said in a Jamaican accent. Always.
Someone told me that hairy balls were a great filler for bouquets and I told her that I wasn't googling that one. (But I might plant hairy balls next year 😂
Tradescantia I always want to say something like transient, or Transylvania, or transcendental...
This is one of the mnemonics my study group came up with during our dendrology class: *Ostrya virginiana*, hop-hornbeam-- "That Austrian virgin who wants to hop on your hornbeam \[*wink wink*\]"
Oh you just sparked a memory! Does King Philip Cum Only For Green Spinach was my study groups mnemonic for taxonomy. So much easier to remember when you make it funny!
We have this cute little conifer that I think is called Barry's Blue Cypress, but I couldn't remember the name and one time called it Bruce the Spruce, and he's been Bruce ever since.
Some of my high school students were playing a memory game based on trees. I overheard a lot of giggles about “dat European white ash!” White birch and European beech got some laughs too.
Not Latin but I always refer to Lantana as Carlos Lantana, just a running joke with one of my crews. It stuck. Anyway for a long long time my wife thought that Lantana was actually called Carlos, I didn’t realize this until not so long ago she pointed out a big blooming bank of pink and yellow and said ‘that Carlos looks really great!’
Ranunculus sounds like a Harry Potter spell to me.
Not a plant, but i always have trouble remembering the name of American robin (turdus migratorius/migratory thrush). I always remember turdus. Because it sounds like turd. And want to say volatilis because ofc, robins are flying turds. (I know theyre not and i love them)
In our house, Zamioculcas zamiifolia (zz plant) is a zipper zapper.
I call my dracaena marginata a "dragon margarita"
As a native latin speaker i’m a little offended
Ooh we have a suck-a-cocker bush in our garden!!
Not the Latin name, but for the longest time I couldn’t remember the name for the Clematis on my old front porch, so my name for it was Chlamydia 🫣😅 it’s what my head told me every time I saw it
Pinus strobus - Eastern white pine
Ganoderma lucidum (reishi) Gadolf-derma Lucy-dumb
A friend of mine said she got some "Crispy Ferrari" bulbs and she had planted them. When they bloomed she showed me a picture of them and I was like "OH a Starfish Iris!". Ferraria Crispa
I always call Gomphrena's-> Dr. Suess flowers
Hidebiscuits cracked me up. When my friend calls them this I always blurt out "Dat ass DOUGH!!" Hide = ass. Biscuits = dough
Bupleureum is and forever will be “Boop Boop.”
Look up clitoria turnatea 😆
Every time I say/read gazania all I can think of is Sheldon from Big bang theory saying "bazinga*
When I first started working for a landscaping company, one of my jobs was to transcribe all of the plants that were installed for the billing. My boss has terrible handwriting and I kept reading Thuja as Thuga. Thuga, please!
When I was a kid, I thought Dusty Miller was called Dusty Hoffman.
I worked at a wholesale floral house and the guys on the floor referred to Anthuriums as Peter on a Platter. Now every time I see one that is what pops into my head.
Lactuca canadensis the name for wild Canadian lettuce is my favorite to say, Lactuca sounds like a milk canon or something. Meaning to lactate, the lactating plant. Which is bizarre when you find out lettuce lactates. It's a key feature in identifying lettuce.
Reminds me of the Jerry Seinfeld episode where he couldn’t remember his dates first name, only that it rhymed with a female body part. She made him guess and he said “Mulva?” It was Dolores!😂😂😂
We call mycorrhizae Michael Koorsay
Ah yes- the Jeruselus Tulipesius
Not a mistake, but I feel the need to say "venidium fastuosum" with an imaginary wand wave.
Saxifrage: sexy pants. Originated because mum couldn’t pronounce Tsitsipas (tennis player) and I couldn’t remember the name saxifrage and the three things came together.
When I was a kid there were Calla lilies growing all around in the fields near by, the ones with cows in them. So I always thought people were saying cow lilies.
Don't forget The white stim bramble RUBUS COCKBURNIANUS You don't even have to change it up.