To have just realised that mandrakes are real plants? (And not just made up by JK Rowling)?

[StormyDaniels]

I can't be the only one.... can I??

i really think most of the harry potter references are general knowledge, though. Admittedly i got most of my general knowledge from reading Terry Pratchett then realising the parodies were of real stuff. i think homages, references and parodies of 'high culture' history, etc, in books you love, are the best way to increase your store of cultural reference points.

“Vladimir: What do we do now?
Estragon: Wait.
Vladimir: Yes, but while waiting.
Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?
Vladimir: Hmm. It'd give us an erection.
Estragon: (highly excited). An erection!
Vladimir: With all that follows.
Where it falls mandrakes grow.
That's why they shriek when you pull them up.
Did you not know that?
Estragon: Let's hang ourselves immediately!”

― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

I had heard of mandrakes before HP, but I was delighted on a visit to the Louvre to see a statuette of a hippogryff and realised it was an actual mythical creature!

There is a real plant called Butterburr, which I am very dissapointed is not in HP! It feels like it should be.

I went to a very ordinary state school, then studied science, but I knew about mandrakes, hippogriffa, albus etc, but not Dumblesooe being a Devonian word for Bumblebee.

Anquin I didn't know about hippogriffs either, will look them up.

Worzel Gummidge was called that because his head was made of a Mangel Worzel root. Part of the Beetroot family.

They last ones I came across were as big as a baby.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangelwurzel