flowers and trees

[marycatelli]

Bedecking a river bank with bright, cheerful rainflowers and pondering the logic of names.


For some reason, I often name flowers with new, folk names, and keep the trees I know all about:  oak, maple, pine, etc.  It's not that I can't identify a lot of wildflowers.  Perhaps because flowers tend to get more folk names.  Wonder why.  You probably exported wood farther, to be sure.  The flowers might be dried for herb use, but even the medicinal ones would be exported rarely.  None of my imaginary lands grows spices.

Or perhaps I just want to give them magical uses, and invent my own to fit in.  (Hmm.  Wonder if they're feral escapees from the experiments of wizards.)  Then, I'm known to do it for local color. . . such are the whims of muses.

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting observation - you are right, wildflowers and plants do tend to have more local/folk names, I think.

I think I'm oversensitive to trees : I remember being completely thrown out of one book because the heroine, in a PINE woodland, fishes about under the 'fallen leaves' and pulls out a buried stick to whack the enemy with. Of course pines have needles, and a stick of pine that has been hanging about long enough to be buried under needles is going to disintegrate if you try to whack something with it, even if you can actually pick it up...

[marycatelli]

I might let them get away with the branches -- but leaves? No, no can suspend disbelief after that.

We all have our hypersensitivities to inaccuracy. It depends on what we have specialized knowledge of. Which is part of what makes the writing side so hard to research thoroughly -- everyone cares about something in it.