flower capital -- a lesson in english biology

walking through the color sea of spring flowers i was reminded: my commandment of the english language is limited.

beyond tulip, oak, and carnation (thanks to the american pie song) my knowledge of even simple english biological terms is annoyingly absent. names for trees, shrubs, bushes, and flowers that i easily know in german have to be painstakingly relearned here.

here's a sample phone conversations with j. to describe dc in the spring:

me: i am walking along the street and there's is this yellow flower with sort of a crown in the middle and other yellow leaves around, and it is more of a pale yellow. i can't think of the name in english. in german we call them, when you translate it in to english, easter bell.

j: mmh, i see, i might need to see a picture.

me: and there are these bright blue-purplish flowers with many little balls on top, we call them hee-ya-zeen-ta.

j: you mean, hyacinth?

me: could be, sounds kind of what i mean. they are very blue. and, you know, in march in germany we have what would translate into march cups [Märzenbecher]. they are small like snow bells but have tiny bright green dots around the white blossom that hangs down.

j: yeah, i can't think of a flower like that right away. maybe we can leonize it? [meaning to look it up in our favorite online german-english dictionary called ww.leo.org hosted by the technical university of munich/München].

me: okay, i'll look it up later. also we usually have a flower called key flower that i don't see around here. it is yellow on top and, i guess, looks like the shape of an old-fashioned key. can you think of a flower like that here? why is it not blossoming now/

j: i wonder if they grow here.

me: well, the weather is somewhat similiar. but there are other flowers i haven't seen. in may we have what we call in german may bells. they are poisonous and have littler white bell-like blossoms hanging on a stem.

j: are you talking about a may apple?

me: no, there are not apples attached to this.

jn: well, they are no real apples, much smaller.

me: they don't have any apples whatsoever. they are just little flowers growing in the forest often.

j: yeah, i don't know.

me: i don't know how else to explain. i need to look it up. anyway, it is very pretty here, very colorful. i really need to learn the proper words for all these flowers.

j: i think latin words would help. then we know we are talking about the same thing.

me: i think i'll be busy just learning the english vocabulary first.