amazingly, it survived our absences over holidays. not that I expected it to become lonely or worried, but I semi-expected it to die because of temperature drop. we did leave the heating on, but on low setting and when we arrived from Lanzarote, the house felt freezing.
anyhow - it did survive, and now it's getting taller and taller and more and more top-heavy by day. it should be stripy when it opens. we'll wait and see.
PS - I think I know why it is misnamed so very frequently (practically always).
Misnomer "Amaryllis" seems to be a self-sufficient word which doesn't fall into two halves, doesn't ask for explanation and doesn't create a conflict in reader's or writer's mind. "Hippeastrum", on the other hand, falls into halves, wants to make sense and begs to be changed into "Hyperastrum". Granted, it's not clear what's so hyper about that astrum, but then - what could possibly be horsey (Hipper) about it? Wikipedia provides an explanation, but it only makes sense if you take into account the biography and occupation by the namer.
No comments:
Post a Comment