Wednesday, May 17, 2006

I really do know better

...than to rely on common names.

This is a picture of Hyacinthoides non-scripta. These beautiful blue and pink (bottom of pic) flowers in the arbor bed at the site have many common names: English Bluebells, wild hyacinths, wood hyacinth, nodding squill, and wood bells.

I identified the wildflower posted earlier as wild hyacinth but it is clearly a different plant from this wild hyacinth. In fact, the earlier picture isn't even a hyacinth, though its common name would indicate it. And I rambled on about how it differed from the cultivated hyacinth. The forced hyacinth bulb you can purchase at the grocery store in January was hybridized from a different species within the hyacinthoides genus.


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