Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Botany Wall Of Shame

Well, I am starting a Wall of Shame for people who show that they have no clue about plants in general. I will be totally fair and I'm not going to expect that the general public will know what is a rostellum, however, I will expect a certain level of knowledge from people. My disclaimer being said, I will point to a certain article that I read in a newspaper yesterday.

OK have you read it?
Now, lets play the Sesame Street Game. What is not like the others?
Did you guess?

If you had said "what the ****? Squash isn't a root vegetable!" you win 10 points! Now, if you don't eat squash, you wouldn't know that, but if you scroll down to the very bottom, you see...
SHE IS A DIETITIAN! (Don't they have to know what the hell they are eating?!)
I mean, if you had perused the vegetable area of supermarkets and seen squash you would know that they are not root vegetables!
Oh Well... here is another letter to the editor coming up!

2 comments:

C'est Moi - Selina said...

I have to agree. They should be on the wall of shame. Ironically podictionary's word of the day is squash

"A squash that you might serve for dinner or cook into some soup is named as an abbreviation of a Narragansett Indian word asquutasquash.

In fact since most of us only eat one squash at a time the appropriate Narragansett word should be asquutasq since asquutasquash is plural.

Moreover, since we usually eat our squash cooked the appropriate Narragansett word really should be utasq since asquutasquash means plural uncooked squashes."

Source: http://podictionary.com/?p=3211

There's more there about the word, but it was interesting that the topic has come up twice in the same day.

The Phytophactor said...

>>This version of the word squash didn’t turn up in English until 1565 which is a little late for something that came from Old French<<

You really wouldn't expect a word for a New World fruit to show up in English much before 1600 just in general. Gerard's great Herball published in 1633 is the first mention of the potato (Solanum tuberosa), although Gerard did correctly attribute the name to Ipomea batatas, the sweet potato, both New World plants.