Anybody recognize this?

Discussion in 'Plants: Identification' started by Michael Charters, Oct 24, 2007.

  1. Michael Charters

    Michael Charters Active Member

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    Flower looks like maybe Ornithogalum or something like that. I'll post a 2nd photo that shows some of the foliage if you look closely.
     

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  2. Michael Charters

    Michael Charters Active Member

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    2nd photo
     

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  3. Lila Pereszke

    Lila Pereszke Well-Known Member 10 Years

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    My tip: Asparagus virgatus
     
  4. Ron B

    Ron B Paragon of Plants 10 Years

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    Would this then be called an offering of an asparagus tip?
     
  5. Michael Charters

    Michael Charters Active Member

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    Thank you thank you thank you. I'm very glad to get this identification. That's definitely it. Someone else suggested Asparagus to me but I had never seen any Asparagus species like this so I discounted that idea. But the foliage is pretty distinctive, and it goes by the appropriate name of broom fern.
     
  6. Michael F

    Michael F Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator 10 Years

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  7. Ron B

    Ron B Paragon of Plants 10 Years

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  8. Michael F

    Michael F Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator 10 Years

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    Try limiting your search to sites where the plant is native (i.e., add site:.za as it is a South African plant), so as to avoid unwelcome foreign renamings.
     
  9. Ron B

    Ron B Paragon of Plants 10 Years

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    One common name is not better than another. There are no correct common names, with taxonomic or botanical standing. The only thing they have is non-technical usage. A lay person could start calling a plant a new common name tomorrow and have it become one of the common names listed for it if enough other people start using it themselves. Otherwise, it may be worth pointing out that it is not usual to call the plant by that common name - prior to that time.
     
  10. Michael F

    Michael F Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator 10 Years

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    That's your opinion. Many others differ. It certainly doesn't help understanding at all. If anyone can call anything by any name and have it officially recognised as a valid name, then all meaning is lost, and all dictionaries might as well be thrown away.

    I'm certainly not the only person here to advise against the use of confusing or bad names, see e.g. this post: http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/showpost.php?p=49729&postcount=8
     
  11. Ron B

    Ron B Paragon of Plants 10 Years

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    The pot is calling the kettle black, as before. Your recurring posts claiming no knowledge of what "cedar" a casually interested person is asking about because it couldn't be a Cedrus and the like are what serve as sticks in the spokes of such discussions. Lay people don't care what "plant queens", to use a term that has been thrown at me on the internet think is the "propuh" common name for something they have in their yard that they want to prune. It is factual reality that common names arise and are used by "common" people, those with a serious interest can acknowledge and accept this phenomenon or they can make lists of official common names until they are blue in the face. Even then these will remain of no use or interest to most people working with plants and will never be adopted by them.

    Likewise, many Americans have no idea what you are talking about when you post dimensions only in metric. These participants aren't going to convert to metric just because you refuse to post in terms they are familiar with. All that is accomplished is that your message does not get across.
     
  12. Michael Charters

    Michael Charters Active Member

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    In general I agree with Michael F. While it is true that common names for plants have never been regularized and never will be, and what is called one thing on this side of the mountain is called something else on the other side, there is something to be said for the birding community which has applied a single common name for each species in addition to its single latin name. And in thinking about what I said (i.e. the appropriateness of the name broom fern), I take that back because it doesn't look particularly ferny nor like any broom I've ever seen. And I think that common names as they are applied in places where the plant is native should be given extra weight. However asparagus fern is probably the most common named used for A. asparagoides, and sometimes you just have to give up and accept the fact that a commonly used name may not be the best one available. Here in California we have numerous examples of common names not being good ones like Pseudotsuga macrocarpa or bigcone spruce which isn't a spruce, Cercocarpus or mountain mahogany which isn't a mahogany, Sisyrinchium or blue-eyed grass which isn't a grass, Atriplex polycarpa or cattle spinach which isn't spinach, and on and on. In the final analysis, it isn't worth getting into big controversies about things for which there is no definite right or wrong. That's why we have latin names to absolutely differentiate between species. After all if we're just going to give plants the names they have in native areas, most plant common names would not be in English.
     

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