Words from the Collegiate II

As I continue on the list of 20 words begun in the last essay, I realize how many of the words I explore are exemplars of plants or animals. Join me in discovering this world.

1. Let's begin with obelia. Rather than being some kind of plant (it sounds like it should be a plant, doesn't it?), it is an animal, from Phylum Cnidaria to be precise. The Cnidarians (Greek for "stinging nettle") are an approximately 10,000 species marine phylum in three Classes: Hydrozoa (the hydroids), Anthozoa (corals, anemones), and Scyphozoa (true jellyfish). An obelia is a hydrozoa, from the family Campanulariidae. Thus it is technically known, as the Century tells us, as a "genus of campanularian polyps." A polyp (word means "many-footed") is an animal with many foot-like processes. Biologists also use the word polyp to distinguish the adult stage in the obelian life; the earlier stage is called the medusan. I am sure, as I get to know more about Cnidaria, that this will all become clear. Here is a picture of an obelia. If you check out this Lander University page, you can learn the terminology of the obelia. No time, really, to pause here.

2. An odontoglossum has the words "tooth" and "tongue" in it, so this time we are ready to find an animal rather than a plant. But, in fact, it is a plant, a kind of orchid. These orchids (genus is Odontoglossum) originated in the high forests of Columbia, Venezuela and Ecuador. In those forests the temperature rarely dipped below 45 or rose above 75 degrees. The more closely these condition are duplicated, the better they flourish. We always learn new terms--I learned one when I read that Odontglossum seedlings are grown in a mixture of "one-half coir peat and one-half horticultural grade perlite." I hadn't seen the word "coir" previously, and I learned it was a Malay word meaning "the prepared fiber of the husk of the coconut, used for making ropes, cordage, matting, etc." Here is a page that tells you how to grow them, and here is a picture. I am sure our lives would be richer if we spent more time cultivating odontoglossums and studying obelias.

3. An ocicat is a breed of domestic cat develped by crossing Siamese, American shorthair, and Abysinnian cats. Indeed, the breed is so new that the OED doesn't even have the word. But the web page of the Cat Fancier's Association has a great picture and description of the cat. As the web page explains:

"In 1964 the original Ocicat was the unexpected result of an experimental breeding which attempted to produce an Aby-point Siamese. Virginia Daly, noted CFA breeder living in Michigan, knew the possibility of getting the sought after Aby-point and was willing to invest the time she knew it would take to breed the two generations that were necessary. But the ivory kitten with golden spots was a surprise! Mrs. Daly's daughter named the breed the Ocicat, because of its resemblance to the ocelot. Tonga, the first Ocicat, was neutered and sold as a pet. When the Detroit newspaper publicized the lovely spotted cat and when noted geneticist, Dr. Clyde Keeler, expressed his desire to see a domestic cat which would mimic some of the vanishing wild species, the breeding was repeated to produce more Ocicats. Other breeders followed Mrs. Daly's recipe to develop other Ocicat lines with a broad genetic base."

A darling little story, isn't it?

4. Equally as intriguing is this web story about America's best pies, among which is listed the olallieberry pie. The burden of the story is that America's great contribution to world history is not necessarily baseball or "democratic freedoms" (I added this one), but pies. "There isn't a state in the union that doesn't boast a signature pie..Pie transcends all lines of race, color and class." For example, KY boasts the (what else?) derby pie, TN the fried pie and MS the sweet potato pie. Blueberry pies in ME, maple cream pie in VT, and shoofly pie in PA are also familiar. In Oregon we boast of marionberries. But who had heard of the olallieberry pie, made from a berry that is a hybrid of a loganberry and youngberry? The word olallie is derived from the Lower Chinook word for camas patch. You are supposed to be able to buy it at a tavern in Pescadero, CA near Santa Cruz. I think I will put that one on my mental list.

5. Let's close this essay by brief reference to the ololiuqui, which is in the OED (olallieberry and ocicat are not), which is defined as a tropical American morning glory, family Convolvulaceae. Then, it is also a "psychoactive drug prepared from the seeds of this plant, used traditionally for ritual purposes by the Aztecs." Ah, now we are in the realm of hallucinogens, which I learned about in 1967 when I moved to CA and saw a lot of people who were wandering around saying "far out" all the time. This article describes the traditional hallucinogins of the old Indian cultures of Central America. The three discussed are peyotl (a cactus species); teonanacatl (certain foliate mushrooms) and ololiuqui, the seeds of bindweeds. It would be interesting to read the original accounts of some of Cortez's men who witnessed the natives using these drugs for medicinal and hallucinogenic purposes. Christian missionaries soon tried to stamp out the use of these, though with mixed success. The first written account of ololioqui was given by Francisco Hernandez, a Spanish physician who carried out extensive research between 1570 and 1575 for Philip II.

As I hope you see, every venture into a new word can lead us into interesting directions. After this essay I could either be eating olallieberry pie in Pescadero or smoking (is that what you do?) ololiuqui not too far away from that. Life's amazing diversity evokes my continual wonder.

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