Stu and I have been making a habit of going on one long walk a day together, and as spring pushes its way out of bare branches and earth I find myself photographing every flower I don’t recognize, trusting that I can share them with my bloom-savvy friends and learn a thing or two. But this week, as I shared photos of what I learned were Japanese Andromeda, Iceland Poppy, and a variety of common daisies called, among other things, “Pomponette,” two dear friends told me about this great app called PICTURE THIS, which very accurately identifies plants and flowers from the photos you take of them.
This has been a gamechanger for me, and as I wander around on walks now the inflection of my gaze is a little different. A step’s been eliminated, an intimacy bred: I see a flower and take its photo and learn a bouquet of names suggestive of different regions and histories, and when I see those flowers on subsequent walks, I can’t help but point them out to Stu, say, look, this is squill, windflower, forsythia, aren’t they beautiful. To name them is to greet them, and my heart swells towards them as it would towards a friend.
I felt this way about birds and animals before flowers; I want to feel this way next about trees, about native plants, about mushrooms, match names to all the growing things around me. And I find myself wanting to sit with this and think about it more quietly, more deeply: what is it about names, about naming, that makes me feel this kinship? Because it is kinship — it isn’t, as a more cynical part of me worries, about ownership, except inasmuch as we belong to each other in Mary Oliver’s family of things.
I think it may in fact be, instead, a quality of attention: to name something, to learn something’s name, is to pay attention to it as we perhaps didn’t before. To grant it some portion of ourselves in giving it a story, or in observing a narrative emerge from the patterns of its reality. Squill is also called “Glory of the snow”, windflowers are also Pasque flowers — names for the seasonal circumstances in which they’re encountered. In a world where attention is a currency and a whole economy, to turn away from advertising and engagement and performance and give my attention to something that isn’t asking anything at all of me feels like a perpetually reciprocated gift.
I’d love for you to tell me of a time you learned the name for something that became precious or important in the wake of that knowledge — or a time it fell to you to name something, and you felt you got it deeply, immensely right.
PS: One of the friends who told me about the app is the brilliant champagne-in-human-form author CSE Cooney; as it happens, I always think of her when I see forsythia, ever since she give a prince’s hair its yellow around the time I learned the word. Today saw the cover reveal for her debut novel, and I’m ludicrously excited about it, and I hope you’ll take a look and think about pre-ordering it because she is absolutely one of my favourite living writers in addition to being one of my dearest, deepest heart-friends. Just look at this glory!
There's something about these pandemic times that has made us all notice nature more. Where I live, in South Florida, there are strangler figs of all sizes (Ficus Aurea). I've found more than 100 in our neighborhood! Now we're waiting for the redstarts to show up. Maybe we missed them...
Well in a happy case of harmony, I was just over in Gailey’s Stone Soup Friday open thread and learned from someone’s post that there are two kinds of black-eyed Susan’s, one the flower that I’m familiar with and a completely different plant that’s a vine that I’d never heard of, and they shared the scientific name, thunbergia alata, which I think is just lovely
I used a similar app to identify bishop's weed, which was absolutely covering a yard that I lived in. It felt good to know the plant that I walked on and by every day.
Eeeeeeee! Flowers! I've been stuck in my own yard too long (waiting on vax b4 trying parks again), so have been glomming on to everyone's nature walk pics. :)
On trees, if you haven't read Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees, it's really good - a scientist's spirituality in a sense, drawn from long observation and patience, voicing the forest for the trees.
On names... In the last 72 hours, I have found words that at least allude to, point the way, suggest... experiences of myself which are truly wordless, without boundaries with the world around me - except those necessary to communicate, to attempt contact that is as innate as what long familiarity may bring two people. That's rare in relationships; easier, for me, in the woods or by the sea; but had been almost impossible (in the last forty-odd years) to express prior to yesterday. Anyway; too much to write in a comment, other than this:
Ghosts are always unfinished.
"I have no words" is too true.
"Loss", "love", "joy", "grief", "sorrow", "surrender", "ecstasy", "terrible and terrific"... are but touchstones, signs of what hands and lips and tongues may know as memory floods us through slot and spoor, following...
Foamflower. In Southeast Alaska I did a lot of gathering, and learned the plants that way, and it was a very hands-on, what-does-this-do kind of knowing, which is. And most of the plants I learned from people who knew them already, but foamflower - a small and delicate variety, growing in ones and twos in shadowed margins - was both useless and a thing I had to pull out the book for.
Also, the time I found a promising-looking fungus and brought it home and looked it up and: destroying angel. DESTROYING ANGEL. In case there was any ambiguity about whether you should eat this one: the most extra name posterity could come up with.
Love this app! Thank you :) Now I'm going to be obsessively using it on hikes. (OK, I promise, I'll put it away and actually look at stuff with my own eyes, too!) I don't know if this counts, but I recently learned the group names for weasels (I like "boogle" or "confusion"!) (I was reading Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami and they make an appearance there.) Alas, I haven't seen any weasels in Brooklyn (yet). So this was a rather intellectual exercise. (Meanwhile, a quarrel of sparrows are arguing [ha!] a radiance of cardinals just outside my window as I write this!)
New Zealand Aotearoa has incredible bio diversity, especially where birds are concerned. Learning to recognize and name several of the unique bird species native to those islands helped me feel closer to my adopted home. Now back in Canada, my interest in being able to recognize Canadian birds and trees is renewed. There is a certain birdcall I recognize from my childhood in Newfoundland that I also hear in Ontario...and I have yet to learn what bird makes that sound.
Naming has a magic. I've done a lot of naming projects, troupes and shows, always felt the weight of responsibility knowing that the words will either draw people to it or create a wall. There's a visceral satisfaction to saying a name and feel it snuggle into its object, shimmering and calling to people. Equally when a name doesn't fit, it clogs up the mouth and brain. I am pleased with naming my circus projects - Vaudeville, JAMP, Full Cirqle, Propped Up, Albanauts, Cabaret of Elsewhere. Each one is a place where fun is grown.
What a wonderful post, and sorry to be commenting so late! I have many times felt the joy of learning names in my relationships. Many of those have happened through writing, so seeing the names on a page has given them extra power -- and extra care to be preserved.
I was just wishing for an app like this yesterday! I was caught by a blooming tree on the walk to my car and felt sad that I didn't know its name. I started using iNaturalist and Merlin (the two *good* bird apps on my phone, which unfortunately don't get as much use as the Bad Bird App) last summer when I began photographing the birds at the feeders in the yard. As a child, I loved the Audubon Society field guides to every living thing under the North American sun, and in the pre-internet days I always wished I had room in my pocket to carry them all with me wherever I went.
There's something about these pandemic times that has made us all notice nature more. Where I live, in South Florida, there are strangler figs of all sizes (Ficus Aurea). I've found more than 100 in our neighborhood! Now we're waiting for the redstarts to show up. Maybe we missed them...
Glad to hear about the good news Amal.
Also happy to hear that the App lets you experience your world in a new way.
Well in a happy case of harmony, I was just over in Gailey’s Stone Soup Friday open thread and learned from someone’s post that there are two kinds of black-eyed Susan’s, one the flower that I’m familiar with and a completely different plant that’s a vine that I’d never heard of, and they shared the scientific name, thunbergia alata, which I think is just lovely
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunbergia_alata
I used a similar app to identify bishop's weed, which was absolutely covering a yard that I lived in. It felt good to know the plant that I walked on and by every day.
Eeeeeeee! Flowers! I've been stuck in my own yard too long (waiting on vax b4 trying parks again), so have been glomming on to everyone's nature walk pics. :)
On trees, if you haven't read Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees, it's really good - a scientist's spirituality in a sense, drawn from long observation and patience, voicing the forest for the trees.
On names... In the last 72 hours, I have found words that at least allude to, point the way, suggest... experiences of myself which are truly wordless, without boundaries with the world around me - except those necessary to communicate, to attempt contact that is as innate as what long familiarity may bring two people. That's rare in relationships; easier, for me, in the woods or by the sea; but had been almost impossible (in the last forty-odd years) to express prior to yesterday. Anyway; too much to write in a comment, other than this:
Ghosts are always unfinished.
"I have no words" is too true.
"Loss", "love", "joy", "grief", "sorrow", "surrender", "ecstasy", "terrible and terrific"... are but touchstones, signs of what hands and lips and tongues may know as memory floods us through slot and spoor, following...
Foamflower. In Southeast Alaska I did a lot of gathering, and learned the plants that way, and it was a very hands-on, what-does-this-do kind of knowing, which is. And most of the plants I learned from people who knew them already, but foamflower - a small and delicate variety, growing in ones and twos in shadowed margins - was both useless and a thing I had to pull out the book for.
Also, the time I found a promising-looking fungus and brought it home and looked it up and: destroying angel. DESTROYING ANGEL. In case there was any ambiguity about whether you should eat this one: the most extra name posterity could come up with.
Love this app! Thank you :) Now I'm going to be obsessively using it on hikes. (OK, I promise, I'll put it away and actually look at stuff with my own eyes, too!) I don't know if this counts, but I recently learned the group names for weasels (I like "boogle" or "confusion"!) (I was reading Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami and they make an appearance there.) Alas, I haven't seen any weasels in Brooklyn (yet). So this was a rather intellectual exercise. (Meanwhile, a quarrel of sparrows are arguing [ha!] a radiance of cardinals just outside my window as I write this!)
New Zealand Aotearoa has incredible bio diversity, especially where birds are concerned. Learning to recognize and name several of the unique bird species native to those islands helped me feel closer to my adopted home. Now back in Canada, my interest in being able to recognize Canadian birds and trees is renewed. There is a certain birdcall I recognize from my childhood in Newfoundland that I also hear in Ontario...and I have yet to learn what bird makes that sound.
Naming has a magic. I've done a lot of naming projects, troupes and shows, always felt the weight of responsibility knowing that the words will either draw people to it or create a wall. There's a visceral satisfaction to saying a name and feel it snuggle into its object, shimmering and calling to people. Equally when a name doesn't fit, it clogs up the mouth and brain. I am pleased with naming my circus projects - Vaudeville, JAMP, Full Cirqle, Propped Up, Albanauts, Cabaret of Elsewhere. Each one is a place where fun is grown.
What a wonderful post, and sorry to be commenting so late! I have many times felt the joy of learning names in my relationships. Many of those have happened through writing, so seeing the names on a page has given them extra power -- and extra care to be preserved.
I was just wishing for an app like this yesterday! I was caught by a blooming tree on the walk to my car and felt sad that I didn't know its name. I started using iNaturalist and Merlin (the two *good* bird apps on my phone, which unfortunately don't get as much use as the Bad Bird App) last summer when I began photographing the birds at the feeders in the yard. As a child, I loved the Audubon Society field guides to every living thing under the North American sun, and in the pre-internet days I always wished I had room in my pocket to carry them all with me wherever I went.
My husband always whips out iNaturalist, so now I notice hazel nuts, we've eaten red currents, and I point out a growing mushroom. So beautiful.