A Weed By Any Other Name...

Would be Crocosmia. Or Montbretia. Or any number of other local names, such as Copper Tip or Falling Star. The following is a picture of said "weed"


Personally, I think it is all in the eye of the beholder.

Anyway, a while ago Elise asked me if I could identify this flower that she saw frequently in the northwest on her journey from Washington to Virginia (that's the state, not DC...long trip!), or if I knew a way to identify things from their pictures. And since I still don't have a job (what is the deal with "experience"? Does education count for nothing?! I mean, I can't get a job without experience and without a job I can't get experience. Something's gotta give here! Also, why the arbitrary amount of experience? Is 2 years absolutely necessary or can I get by with 20 months? Not that I have 20 months of experience because, oh yeah, nobody will hire me because I have no experience! Do you see the problem here?) and my only other project at this point in time is peeling wallpaper in my room (now officially the second biggest bane of my existence) I decided to see if I could figure it out.

I started with a google image search for red flowers but that quickly went nowhere. So then I figured that it was probably a wildflower so I searched for "red wildflowers of the northwest" which miraculously got me nowhere :) However, it did turn me onto Flickr. Flickr is kind of like a cross between Facebook and Photoshop where you can edit your pictures and share them with other people. There are photo sharing groups on Flickr for pretty much every subject that you could possibly be interested in, from llamas to babies falling asleep in their food. (Actually, I can't attest to those two groups in particular because I didn't really search for them, but I would still say there is a pretty good chance they exist.) In this case I found a group dedicated to shooting and sharing pictures of wildflowers. And while I still didn't find a picture of this particular wildflower I did notice a few conversations going on in the comments section in which people were asking the very question Elise had. Namely, how in the world do you identify something solely from its picture?

The answer: flowerguide.com. It is a site run by a floral company or something and they have common flowers listed in alphabetical order with a written description of color, size, shape, other names, etc, and a photo of each. Fortunately for me, Crocosmia is fairly high in the alphabet :)
At any rate, once I found the site it only took about 5 minutes to identify the flower and a quick trip to Wikipedia to learn the following facts about Crocosmia:

• It is a member of the Iris family (Probably my second favorite flower, after California Poppies. In case you were wondering.)
  
• It is actually native to South Africa
  
• They are usually Orange or Red in color
  
• The flowers are hermaphroditic (Mostly I just thought that was a cool word and didn't know it existed so I thought I would share it with you)
• The name Crocosmia comes from the Greek Krokos, meaning saffron, and Osme, meaning smell. Apparently they smell like saffron.
  
• They are actually an invasive species in the Pacific Northwest of the US. In other words, they are a WEED!!

I was kind of surprised by that because I think I would much rather have these growing in my front yard than the dandelions that like to make their home there. But weeds they are, since apparently they can choke out native flora and fauna. (Sidenote: Flora and Fauna mean plants and animals respectively and always make me think of Flotsam and Jetsam, which you might be surprised to learn are not just evil hench-eels [hench-eels. HA! I love it!] in Disney's The Little Mermaid, but maritime terms for wreckage left floating in the sea after a shipwreck (flotsam) and cargo thrown overboard by distressed ships and either sunk or washed ashore (jetsam). Also, they are a heavy metal band from Phoenix, Arizona, but that's not really my thing).

Anyway, I think they are quite beautiful and wouldn't mind if they decided to invade Utah. As it is, we get invasive species like cheat grass, which is not only plain and boring but also presents a fire danger in the summer. I think it would be much cooler to look out into a field that you thought was on fire and find that it was actually the bright reds and oranges of these "weeds."

In conclusion, weeds are just expatriate flowers out roaming the world, experience is overrated, and wallpaper will be the preferred decoration in hell and scraping it the preferred method of torture.
Also, I would like to suggest the name Montbretia for any friends or family of mine who plan on having children or are currently expecting. After all, a Montrbretia by any other name would smell like saffron :)