Lavatory humour? In plant names? Well, yes, but only with some imagination.
I was speaking to an audience about the remarkable foliage plant Persian shield with its metallic purple netted foliage and used its latin name Strobilanthes dyerianus when two people at the back (it had to be at the back) burst out laughing. In the best teacherly manner I asked them to share the joke with the rest of us but they declined. Afterwards they explained with radiant faces and sparkling eyes that they had heard it as Strobilanthes diarrhoeary anus.
The stunning deep navy blue flowers on the tropical annual Clitoria ternata have a consubstantial form and no more needs to be said. I prefer to grow the double form. In June I’ve enjoyed using my nose to hunt down the stinkhorn fungus. I smell it even driving along the road encased in a car – slightly better than rotting flesh. It has other common English names. John Parkinson in 1640 referred to it as “Hollander’s workingtoole” and John Gerrard in 1597 as “pricke mushroom”. Its latin name (conferred by Linnaeus) is Phallus impudicus – the impudicus part meaning immodest. Slightly more disgusting is the gelatinous witches’ egg from which it breaks forth. Do you know it’s eaten on the continent? Are they driven by hunger?
I used to grow the annual thistly foliage plant Silybum marianum or milk thistle. I’ve discovered there are better thistly foliage plants which have decent flowers too but despite the fact that I don’t sell it I’m still asked for it. I cannot get beyond the vision of someone sitting on the prickly mound with a bare bottom. The sea holly Eryngium alpinum ‘Superbum’ conjures a similar image.
Stephen Taffler swore he was in a garden centre when he overheard the following exchange between a customer, a young assistant and an interloper. (Customer) “I’m looking for the plant that has orange lanterns in the autumn. It runs ………… I think it’s called … syphilis.” (Interloper) “And while you are about it I’m looking for the double gonorrhoea.” Gunnera doesn’t come in a double form but it likes a wet environment. Imagine you are at a plant sale in Dublin (like we were).
(Small woman) “I’m looking for a gonorrhoea for my damp spot.”
