Mother Isn't Always Right

Day 276: My mother was responsible for instilling a love of botanizing in me, although as a child, I didn't realize how inaccurate her identifications frequently were. I think "Turk's Caps" were one of the first erroneous IDs to come to my attention, and despite numerous attempts to correct her wayward nomenclature, when Columbia Lilies came into bloom, she invariably told me, "The Turk's Caps are out!"

Strangely enough, these "tiger lilies" were among her favourite flowers (second only to Skunk Cabbage). Their flowering season coincided with her birthday, which of course lent them a personalized significance. Her father (my grandpa) had come from the Midwest where a similar, red-flowered variety of Lilium was in fact commonly called Turk's Cap Lily. He transferred the term to Lilium columbianum, and thus it entered my mother's lexicon of inaccuracies. By the time I reached an age to know the difference, I had some serious unlearning to do! To this day, I still occasionally slip and call them "Turk's Caps." Hard fact to face, but it's possible for your mother to be wrong.

Remembering George

Day 274: We called her George. It started when I was about 10 years old, on the occasion of a brutal self-inflicted haircut which left her with a one-inch pigtail in the back. "Mama, you look just like George Washington," I said, and "George" stuck. She was George to my friends, George to her own. Not too many people have a mother named George.

George's favorite flower was Skunk Cabbage, but running a very close second were "Turk's Caps," miscalled because that was how her father referred to them because they looked like the Turk's Caps he knew from the midwest. I grew up calling them "Turk's Caps," and only in adulthood became aware of the error. Even now have to remind myself that they are really Columbia Lilies, the Pacific Northwestern cousin. What the heck, if your mother's name is George, surely a tiger lily by any other name is still a tiger lily.