Sifting through the 2019 seed and plant catalogues (they make excellent bathroom reading) I found that in desperation to promote sales, hybridizers have been working overtime to come up with dreadful cutesy names.
Echinacea also has “Pixie Meadowbrite” which sounds like it should be someone’s stage name or maybe a Dungeons & Dragons character. Note to self: make halfling named Pixie Meadowbrite.
Flowering shrubs aren’t immune: Hydrangeas give us Invincibelle & Incrediball and under lilacs we have Bloomerang and Scent & Sensibility.
I’m doing a horticulture degree at the moment- as part of one of last year’s modules, we had to learn to identify, and correctly name, a selection of plants. One of the ones we were given to learn was this one.
Everyone remembered the name
Amorphophallus titanum is also pretty good. My Latin’s not great, but I’m pretty sure that’s ‘huge deformed dick’.
Those cutesy names at least don’t sound contagious. I had this friend whose father was a gardener and had a gardening show, and he had names of all kinds of plants. He used to tell his teachers he couldn’t go to school because he had scabiosas, which actually are kind of pretty plants but which sounds like a communicable disease.
I’m reminded that there’s a variety of fig whose name derives from the mediaeval custom of checking to make sure a newly-elected pope wasn’t a female imposter in disguise. It’s called Couilles du Pape, or in English Pope’s Bollocks.
‘“Coreopsis has set in,” said [Dr.] Renshaw nervously.’ (from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty).
As for plant hybrid names, I can do better. Awhile back there was a story about a Caribbean scandal in which a valet working for a wedding party at a fancy hotel was accused of groping the bride. In the ensuing lawsuit he was referred to using a florid term which I thought was the perfect name for my new African violet hybrid. I give you Saintpaulia “Salacious Violator”.