Rhodsydea

My wife accuses me, with a twinkle in her eye, of making up plant names.  Sheesh!  See, back in the high school days I would memorize the Latin names of plants along with the common names.  It was something my horticulture teacher, Rex Bishop, insisted upon.  It helped me contribute to a winning State and National FFA horticulture team. So now, when my wife and I are on a stroll through the State Botanical Gardens in Athens and I suddenly stop at a plant and exclaim, “Oh my gosh, look! It’s a (fill in the blank)!” To which she usually rolls her eyes and says, “Aw…you’re making that up!”  Anticipating this comment, as I have heard this before, I quickly locate a sign or a tag for the plant in question that, more often than not, confirms my ID of that plant.

There are times, however, when I am traveling or on a Scout trip when someone eyes something along the side of the trail or  road and wants to know its name. I confess I am much better at naming the woody shrubs and trees of commercial horticulture than the ferns and forbs along the road side.  So my response to such questions may sound something like, “Uh…yeah…that’s…that’s a Rhodsydea.”

So I have created this page to post photos of those things that bloom or provide interest along the trails and road sides that we, collectively speaking, may not know what they are. I’ll post things that I see, with proper identification.  And I hope that you will send in your ‘Rhodsydea’ pictures as well to russ@southerngardencoach.com.