Mispronounced plant names

[Yamadori]

I've come across a few doozies in my time, but I was in the garden centre this morning and as I went in I passed two ladies chatting. One of them said "I want to get a Thunderbill".

Er... a what? Ten minutes later I came across them both again, strolling around the shrubs section. She was clutching a Berberis thunbergii. 😁

Has anyone else heard any good ones?

That's where colloquial names come in handy. Babies Breath or Gyp.

It’s ironic reading complaints about mispronunciations when people seem unaware that their attempted phonetic spellings can be correctly pronounced in different ways 🙄

@Beelzebob , When people post pronunciations they tend to not show the stressed syllable.
An example might be something like 'Olympia is pronounced Ol-imp-ee-a'. I'd read that as Olimp-EE-a.

Sorry. Wallflower with 'll' as in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllanty-siliogogogoch 😁

Aubrieta, pronounced aubretia, and
Cordyline, pronounced palm tree 😊

The powers-that-be in the horticultural world changed it from montbretia to crocosmia. They have a habit of doing that, often due to new DNA testing and research uncovering more about plant families.

Their latest victim is rosemary - apparently it is now a salvia. Fat chance that's ever going to happen.

Parsley, sage, salvia and thyme 🎶

Still scans but not quite the same.

Meaning it scans as equally wrongly as the original? 😄

My favourite mispronunciation was 'Gonorrhoea' for a prized Gunnera

Someone I knew used to say Nickity -arna instead of nicotiana. She was a friend of a friend and not a particularly nice person who thought she was smarter than me so this always amused me.

Cordyline is not a true palm, it is a member of the asparagus (Asparagaceae) family, although some say it could belong in the agave (Agavoideae) family.

Sorry about that.😂😂😂

@Yamadoriyes that was my point.

How is clematis supposed to be pronounced?

That’s really interesting.

I still think of it as montbretia, which is what my mother used to call it, but my sister, who is 5 years younger than I am, calls it crocosmia.

I am 65 and it is only in the last few years that I realised I had always pronounced anemone wrong. It is so much easier to say it as anenome!

Is the “day” pronunciation of “dahlia” wrong? I have always pronounced it like that - as has everyone I know. Or is it optional like the “may” pronunciation of “clematis” (which I don’t use).

Clemmer-tiss

When I was a kid (many, many years ago) my dad used to win prizes for his gardening 'Best Front Garden in the Town', all that sort of thing. He knew a lot about gardening. We were watching Gardeners' World since the days of Percy Thrower, and would have picked up pronunciation from him, no doubt.

Then it was montbretia instead of crocosmia, and ClemAYtis, CottonEaster, KnickerTeeArna (nicotiana being the tobacco plant it made sense for it to sound like 'nicotine') so @MyTakeIsntYourTake it once was called that.

And yes, I think it is dahlia to rhyme with day instead of dahl. It sounds pretentious otherwise.

By the way @Beelzebob this is botany, not pedantry. 🙂

I know most people say day-lia, I just prefer the Dahl pronunciation. I'm fairly sure it's an English speaker v rest of the world thing. I'm happy to sound pretentious

Whatever is wrong with Aubretia?

Bougainvillea I still can’t remember how to say it any other way than ‘bogan-villayah’.

Shouldn't you be pronouncing it wall-vlo-wer (wall like in gwall, vlo as it's written and wer like in gwiwer)?

@jobsagooduninnit , boo-gun-vil-ya.

When I started out in Horticulture 40 years ago this book was my bible for pronunciation.
No Rubus cockburnianus or Coton eaters in this house.

In fact I have just found a copy on eBay for my sister for Christmas.

It’s Co-burn-e-arn-us for clarity.

I did wonder if some of the other letters should be pronounced cymraeg-like. Still pondering. My family won't let me say mallard in public. Don't get me started on the arguments we've had over pochard and scaup. Goldeneye though, we all agree it should be said the same way as the late, great Tina Turner did. We don't talk about gyr falcons.

@lcakethereforeIam , I put mallard into the online translator, English to Welsh.
It gave me dyfrgwn (otters). Flipped it so that it would translate dyfrgwn into English and it gave me hippopatamus.
Tried again and it gave me rain water.

Mallard is garanhwyad.

Gyrfalcon is hebog chwyldro.

My mother is Welsh and says some words strangely. Usually stressing the wrong syllable or adding letters. Starving is being cold. I was confused as a little kid when I read about the starving children in Africa.

** Starving to mean being cold is regional. A typical example might be mother chatting to someone and saiyng 'Sorry, I'm keeping you, you must be starving.' and the other person looking bewildered.

Picking up the earlier point about tools. My mother always called them “seccatears” so I wonder whether it’s a generational thing (is that what Percy Thrower called them?). After so many decades of hearing her, it still jumps out at me when dear Monty uses something approaching a French pronunciation.

Can't say I'm a fan of Monty, on the whole.