[piasa]

That's the problem with common names. They tend to vary from region to region, time period to time period and with every fad. They're very misleading. I've even heard people refer to 4 O'clocks as 'angel's trumpets.'

Instead of the problem getting resolved, nursuries and landscape designers compound the problem by giving their own cute names to plants to increase sales.

Journalists don't help, either.

And scientific names are changed on occasion as genetic research goes on, so even scientific names can get people confused if they are working out of old field guides. That can't be helped, but it's annoying once you've finally memorized the latin names for all your plants only to discover your info needs serious updating. (I still keep forgetting what they changed uniola latifolia to.)

Kids should stick with smoking Indian cigars and save their brains for calculus.

[bigfootbob]

"Kids should stick with smoking Indian cigars and save their brains for calculus."

And never grow up to be taxonomists!