Variations on “To Plant”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nan Sturman.

Nan Sturman.

Hi, Nan. How you doing?

I’m doing well. I have a plant question for you.

I bet you do.

I bet you do. Nan Sturman, you do a television show.

-huh. I do. It’s called A Growing Passion, and we explore the growing world of plants.

And it airs on public television.

Yeah, you’re in Southern California like we are, right?

Yes, I absolutely am. And, you know, I deal with plants all the time, and I write about plants.

And I design gardens and things like that.

There’s this thing that’s bugging me, and I wanted to ask you about it.

The term plant is a noun and also a verb.

So especially when I’m writing, I find myself writing, plant your plant.

Plant the plant.

The plant.

Plant the plant.

You know, it gets to the point where I feel like, aren’t there other words I can use?

Do you want another word for the verb or the noun?

Or both.

Yes.

Because, I mean, I can say install the plant, but that sounds kind of clinical and mechanical.

It does.

It sounds like using screwdrivers.

It sounds like you’re building an auto plant.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, or I can say plant the biota or the flora, and that sounds superfluous.

I mean, that just sounds like I’m being pretentious, right?

Yeah, I can do that.

So help me.

I want to make things more interesting for my readers and my listeners.

What other languages do you speak, Nan?

Not ones that will help this.

Oh, okay.

Oh, boy.

Oh, boy.

Well, you know, we talked a million years ago on this show, because we have been on for a million years.

That’s right.

We talked about rehoming plants.

I wonder if you can just, when you put them in a new pot, I wonder if you can just talk about homing plants.

Does that sound weird, or like you’re talking about pigeons, like they’re flying back from the coop with messages on their ankles?

I don’t know.

Oh, Grant, I think my editors would redline that in about one millisecond.

Oh, I see.

We have gatekeepers.

It’s not just your final word.

We have, like, picky people to get past.

Well, sometimes I, I mean, often I am, but sometimes I have editors to work with, too.

But even so, I mean, I’m thinking about who’s reading, you know, my audience.

Who’s reading this or who’s hearing this.

Home your plant.

What?

All right.

I have a couple suggestions.

I mean, obviously you can’t get away with using plants at least a little bit of the time, right?

Yeah.

But you can do things, I hesitate to say this, but you can do like George W. Bush did,

Which is everything’s got a nickname, right?

So you can say, put that beauty in the ground and watch, you know.

You could say, look at this bad boy.

Isn’t that the most amazing thing?

Stick that little bugger in the hummus.

This little gem is going to flower like crazy if you do the following things to it.

I have to say, I never thought of it that way, and that’s a really good idea.

Is it? Is it really?

Don’t sound surprised.

In some situations, I certainly could imagine doing that in some situations.

What I’m really looking to is vary the language I’m using.

So if I have some option to vary the language, that’s one way to think about it.

Yeah, well, of course, you have to figure out who your audience is.

Yeah.

I mean, obviously, that’s a more lighthearted tone, really kind of informal.

Another thing is, and I’ve heard, you know,

I spent a lot of time in beautiful Balboa Park here in San Diego,

And some of the plant experts there will just fall back on the Latin forms

Of the plant names that are easier to say.

And that’s kind of nice.

And I can’t think of any off the top of my head right now,

But that’s kind of nice.

So instead of using the common name,

They’ll just toss out a little bit of Latin,

Which also sounds a little elevated,

But sometimes it’s beautiful in its own way.

So I don’t know if you do that.

I always use the Latin.

You always do?

I always use the Latin.

Good for you.

I always have to.

Oh, yeah, because if you use the common names,

Well, there’s 50,000 different plants called daisy.

That’s true.

Right, right, right.

Right?

So to be precise, I always use the Latin names.

So, yeah, so I could say, you know, plant your salvia or install your leptospermum.

I don’t know.

That sounds a little potential.

Yeah, the salvia is nice to say.

The other one, not so sure about.

Well, yeah, there are other words.

The verb is harder.

Like we’ve kind of given you something for the noun that might be workable.

But the verb is difficult because you are seeding sometimes.

Sometimes you’re nestling.

Yeah, you’re inserting.

Starts to sound like softcore porn at some point, right?

Depends on the Latin name.

Right.

Yeah, there we go.

I never thought about that.

That would be a problem for garden writers, right?

When I was young, which is not that long ago,

My grandmother gave me a book of gardening stuff from the 1930s.

And the whole book was written in this interesting language

Where you didn’t plant anything.

Everything was introduced.

Oh.

You were introducing the plants, the soil.

In my child brain. I was like nine.

I was imagining like a formal meeting

With plants in top hats

Where they’re like shaking hands in front of

A committee.

You know what? I’m betting we’re going to get suggestions

From listeners as well.

We can crowdsource this thing.

Yeah, we can. What would you use

Instead of the noun plant or the verb plant?

Give us a call, 877—

929-9673

Or send your ideas and email to

Words@waywordradio.org or tell us about it

On Twitter @wayword.

Nan, we will share our results with you.

Surely something will come of it.

I just warn you, though, usually it’s puns.

Love it.

I love it.

That’s great.

Thank you guys so much.

Take care.

All right.

Good to talk to you, Nan.

Take care.

Good luck with the show.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.