Collective Plant Names

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

A while back we talked about collective names for plants.

Remember that, Grant?

Yeah.

Why should animals have all the fun? A bevy of quail and a gaggle of geese.

Well, we asked you to send us some more examples, and boy, we just have a whole bouquet of collective plant names, and I wanted to share just a few of them.

How about a churn of buttercups?

Nice. I like that.

Dan Davis sent us a weep of willows, which I like. I really like this one from Bob Cunningham, an embarrassment of weeds.

Well, yes. I can relate to that.

Stuart Clipper and Kathleen Reichert, both of Minneapolis, sent several. Among them, a pride of dandelions.

Nice. Very good.

A universe of cosmos. I love this one.

A mouthful of salvia. It’s like saliva.

Yeah, yeah. It sort of works better on the page, I think.

And a sea of anemones, a chime of four o’clocks.

I used to have four o’clocks in the yard.

Oh, I didn’t know those. They open or close at four?

I think they close at four o’clock.

A pair of lady slippers.

And then over on our discussion forum at waywordradio.org, we got several great examples, one of which came from somebody there named Cheddar Melt.

I don’t think that’s the person’s real name. But Cheddar Melt suggested that for holly, you could have a buddy of holly.

For mint, a Denver of mint. For birches, I love this, a frost of birches.

Glenn Atkinson suggested a koi of wallflowers. I love that.

And finally, Ron Draney suggested an something of forget-me-nots. I love that.

So thanks to all of you for sending those in. We got a big kick out of those.

If you have more collective nouns for plants, send them along to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call 877-929-9673 or call or write with your questions about language.