Who can forget this Shakespeare’s quote

“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

But  this rule cannot  be applied  to any and every situation.

Every flower, every plant, every tree and even the weeds have a name. To be effective in the context of collecting information about any of these one must know both their common and botanical names.  All information on them will be available only if one knows their correct names.

I was searching for some information on a fruit that grows in my garden. I called it gooseberry right from my childhood and everyone called it that.

I wanted to know about its health properties. I searched the net with the keyword ‘gooseberry’ but landed in remote places failing in my attempt to collect the kind of information I was searching for.

It is after days of search and cross examining the search so to say I stumbled into its right name – Star gooseberry (Phylanthus acidus). My joy knew no end. Atlast I was able to check what I wanted to know and there were thousands of pages with the information.

I have a huge list of such wrong names given to fruits, trees and flowers.

We have this flower which I have called it as tiger’s claw. There is no history about who christened it thus until I went on a rampage to get it’s correct name  and did get it finally – Gloriosa superba.

Then there is this flower that I always thought was sweet pea. We had learnt to make paper flowers similar to this flower and those were given this name. Here again it took me years to know its real name. I got it from a member in the gardening forum – Chinese hat – Homskoldia.

Don’t blame me if I called this bottle brush as it resembles a perfect bottle brush – It’s name is Callistemon