A Floret

Hydrangea macrophylla , floret bottom right - 12 October 2025

At one time I could tell you all the botanical names of the plants in our large Kerrisdale garden. I was taught by my Rosemary who was a stickler for this sort of thing. Now all those years later my memory fails and I have to look up the nomenclature for the plants in my smaller Kitsilano garden.

Thanks to Google I was able to find out why hydrangeas are called hortensias in Spanish.

 

The Spanish name "hortensia" for hydrangea comes from the Latin word "hortus," meaning "garden," and was given to honor the French astronomer Nicole-Reine Hortense Lepaute. While the botanical name Hydrangea was based on its Greek roots (meaning "water vessel"), the French botanist Philibert Commerson used the Latinized French name Hortense in 1771 to create the alternative name, Hortensia.

 Not so common now in this century is the fine female name of Hortensia. I knew a few in Mexico.

 As so many of my plants are waning in this fall some of my hydrangeas have yet to give up the ghost. Today I decided to scan a Hydrangea macrophylla so I can instruct anybody interested in that the individual little flowers within that mophead are called florets. Rosemary pointed that out to me years ago and I have not forgotten.

 I associate Rosemary’s insistence in calling plants by their correct name by the quote from Through a Looking Glass where Humpty Dumpty tells Alice:

 "When I use a word... it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less". Alice questions him, but Humpty Dumpty asserts his authority, declaring, "The question is, which is to be master—that's all".

I may have at the very least 3000 plants scans since I began in the summer of 2001. I fuss a bit more but I must add that I am always surprised at the beauty (not always expected) of my scans like this one.  I play around with my 22 year-year-old Photoshop 8 to balance how much shadow detail I want to include. I have not lost my enthusiasm and think that this scan is lovely. I avoid using that now hackneyed word “stunning”.