Local Plants for Local People

[steepholm]

Sometimes I'm glad to be as ignorant of plants and their history as I generally am. I'm thrown out of historical dramas all too easily by linguistic anachronisms, so imagine if I regularly had to contend with botanical ones!

I had a taster of this watching Emma on Netflix with my daughter a couple of days ago. Suddenly I sat up straight, exclaiming, "But that's a well-established wisteria! And Emma was published in 1815!"



As you will know, wisteria was not introduced to Britain until the following year, and took several years to flower. (I would not know this but that wisteria is a flower that I've taken a particular interest in, because Japan.)

"You're just like X!" she said, naming her boyfriend. "When we watched North and South he couldn't get beyond the naturalised sycamores."

Now I wonder whether the country is full of frustrated horticulturalists who daren't watch anything set before 1860, for fear of spotting an exotic.

Comments

[sovay]

As you will know, wisteria was not introduced to Britain until the following year, and took several years to flower. (I would not know this but that wisteria is a flower that I've taken a particular interest in, because Japan.)

I did not know that! Thank you for telling me.

[redbird]

I gather that birders who can identify birds by their calls (which I usually can't) have that reaction to a lot of movies and television, though more often for geography than time period.

[steepholm]

Oh yes, I can imagine!

[poliphilo]

It can be tough watching historical dramas when you've an expertise in anything historic. My expertise is churchyards- and I can spot an anachronistic headstone at a hundred yards.

"Hang on, those characters shouldn't be walking past those stones, they should be lying under them!"

[steepholm]

I feel your wince.

[landingtree]

Makes me think of The Dead Lands, set in pre-Pakeha New Zealand, which has to avoid all Pakeha-introduced grass. Not easy to do!

[steepholm]

I can imagine!