I borrowed my grandmother's wildflower book for the Skyline to the Sea hike yesterday, and we managed to identify some pretty cool plants. We found Red Clintonia, Globe Lilies (see photo on right), Giant Wake Robin, and Hairy Star Tulips, among dozens of others. I think I may have been more excited about the names than the flowers. My favorite name was Rattlesnake Plantain, which the book explained was "named for it's discoverer, John Goodyear." What? Was his real name John Rattlesnake Plantain Goodyear? And what do desert reptiles and jungle fruits have to do with the redwood forest? I have yet to figure this one out.
It was fun to put names to flowers, but the futility of it was always in the back of my mind. Humans love to assign vocabulary words to things, to taxonimize, categorize, classify. But does a Fetid Adder's Tongue by any other name not smell as fetid? 