Plant meanings are forgotten

I have forgotten the language. I can read the words but the place in my mind that gives meaning to the squiggles on the page is empty. Luckily the dictionary and the ever-present internet are close at hand to explain.

It wasn't English or that more familiar idiom, American, that I had lost. It was the language of flowers.

It all started the week before we went on vacation. I had parked at Cook's Nursery here in town because there was a garage sale next door. I know better than to even slow down at that intersection. Plants beckon like ancient sirens and I am helpless to resist their songs.

At first I was strong. I went to the garage sale and bought a frilly dress for granddaughter Emma for a quarter. Emma proclaimed it to be, "Just what I've always wanted!"

Feeling guilty at having used the parking lot to shop somewhere else I made the fatal mistake of talking to the owner. A blue plant caught my eye. I'm a sucker for blue flowers. Bill Cook extolled the virtues of the plant. It only gets about three feet tall and wide. It blooms near the end of the summer when other plants are beginning to get scraggly. It's only a few dollars. It will be perfect for that spot by the corner. My will power melted like an ice cream cone on an August afternoon.

I hoped that time would cure my compulsion. It was not to be. We returned from vacation and as soon as I collected my paycheck the money leapt from my hand into the cash register at the nursery. I carted my treasure home and buried it in the garden. I even went out the next day and cut it back by half as instructed. I cringed while doing this as I am uncertain as to whether or not flowers have feelings.

Then I looked up the plant on the internet. Caryopteris. Small blue-flowered shrub, stems gray-tomentose above, glabrescent below. Leaves, short petiolate, grey-tomentose above and below. Huh? I used to know those words. I even used to use those words. Definitions. I must have definitions.

Tomentose equals hairy and somewhat fuzzy in the plant world while glabrescent is smooth. Petioles are stems connecting the leaves to the rest of the plant. Why in the world don't they just say that? And where in my mind are those definitions hiding?

Botanists and others use big words because they are more precise than simpler ones. Use of the language implies an enthusiasm for and knowledge of a common body of interest. Since I have forgotten the words, I feel excluded from the playground of those whose business is plants.

Today I use the language of . . . well . . . I'm not sure. I know columns, grammar, and other newspaper related terms. I know words like Pack-N-Play, princesses and dinosaurs. I know studs, headers and drywall. I barely remember millimeters, flasks and cylinders from the lab where I used to work. All those words from classes I studied so hard to pass? Gone.

So where does that put me? Is my mind emptying itself? Is it the beginning of that dread disease, Alzheimer's?

I don't think so. It is simply lack of use that has caused those particular words to go. After all, I can still appreciate a fuzzy blue-flowered plant that begs to go home with me. When I forget why I like plants, then it will be time to worry about my memory. Until then, I will rely on the dictionary and the internet to interpret words I used to know.[[In-content Ad]]