Paired Sciences

Day 328: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Was it my love of exotic and semantically precise words which lured me into botany? Or was it the discovery of a floral gateway opening onto a full garden of exacting terminology and thus into a paradise of etymology? I believe the two sciences have walked hand in hand for so long that I cannot make that determination. In any event, this was a week for words of a botanical nature, initiated by an earlier inquiry from a reader as to the term for a plant whose flowers and leaves appear in different seasons. It was a word I did not know, so I turned to Arnie. His reply was straightforward: "There's a word for that?" My next appeal went out to David Giblin, Collections Manager and Research Botanist for the Burke Herbarium. As was the case with Arnie, he was stumped, at least temporarily. Meanwhile and unbeknownst to me, Arnie was digging, and as a matter of course, found several other interesting words which he forwarded to me with an admission that by the time he'd arrived at them, he'd forgotten what he was looking for in the first place. Rabbit hole!

Apparently I'd struck some nerves because David was also searching. I mean, there had to be a word, right? Botanists have a word for anything and everything to do with plants. Take "serrate" and "serrulate" for example. Both describe a type of leaf margin, a semantic distinction based on the size of dentition, and one I'm not sure I could apply confidently with a leaf of each type in either hand. Would I need a ruler? A magnifier? A microscope? Where does one end and the other begin? In the end, David's hunt was productive. He came up with "hysteranthous," and sent along a paper describing the phenomenon as it applies to autumn crocus (Colchicum). My three-volume dictionary does not include the word, although it acknowledges "synanthous," i.e., those plants whose flowers and leaves co-occur. The etymology of "hysteranthous" eluded me until I found "hysteresis," their roots originating in an entirely different Greek word than that which gives us "hysteria" despite the similarity. "Hysteresis" means "the lagging of a physical effect behind its cause."

Meanwhile, Arnie had dropped in my lap "hypogeal" (bearing seed leaves beneath the surface of the soil) and "epigeal" (bearing one or more seed leaves above the level of the soil) as well as "perennating" (which was obvious) and "phanerophyte" (a perennial plant which bears its perennating buds above the surface of the ground, as per Raunkiaer's system of organizing plant life by life-form category). I thanked him kindly for directing me to several new and unexplored rabbit holes, down which I am sure I will find many, many more fascinating verbal treasures. Of course I'm going exploring! Who do you think you're talking to, anyway?