Dear Jane, We've done some favorite colored bulbs topic of the week this year and it has been interesting that some of the colors overlap. A couple of plants were selected by different people as representing different colors. This could be a perceptual thing or perhaps the same species does show variation in the color of the flowers. I still want to do purple and blue favorites (which I definitely thinK are different). There are some blue flowers and some flowers that photograph blue with a digital camera that are really purple. At least I don't think all those gorgeous blue Crocuses probably are purple. Correct me if I am wrong. I find it interesting that the purple flowers turn out blue since before digital so often blue flowers photographed pink. I find it really hard often to capture purple with our digital camera. Many of the Babiana pictures I took last year I never added to the wiki, because I couldn't capture the right color. Perhaps we could do a five favorite purple bulbs as a topic of the week and then in a couple weeks do blue and see what people come up with. Mary Sue At 09:26 AM 9/18/04 -0700, you wrote: >Many thanks to Jamie Vande for elucidating a section of German color >terminology: > >As to ROT, it is generic. In German, the colour descriptions are a bit >>different; ROSA is pale pink, PINK is deep pink (in the purple range). Many >>colours that are perceived as red are quite warm. I think that BLASSROT >>would be a warm, medium pink to most, while HELLROT would be like cadmium >>pale, in artists colours, sort of scarlet, like a Pelargonium. DUNKELROT >>would be like a very ripe tomato, while KIRSCHROT would be a deep, cold, >>crimson. > >This is the kind of information one never gets from classroom language >study or reading works on history and other non-artistic subjects. Color >terminology is such a complex subject across languages that it forms a >special area of study for linguists. For example, a wide set of languages >around the world don't distinguish 'blue' from 'green'. 'Red' is another >area where there is a good deal of complexity. Linguists have also studied >what kinds of distinctions different groups of people within a language >community make; for example, women tend to use more different color terms >than men do (though male horticulturists and artists would know more than >the average woman, of course). > >I wonder if a multilingual horticultural color term chart would be useful >to many people? I could probably design a questionnaire on which to base >one, but it would require a sample of a certain size (at least ten >respondents, I think) for each language. It would be interesting just to >see, within a language, what different people call the color of a certain >flower. The present discussion related to Worsleya offers an example: Is >it 'blue'? I think "blue" is used more loosely in English than the >equivalent color terms in some other European languages -- that is, it >seems to extend more into the purple range in English. Or is that just >horticultural wishful thinking? > >The existence of widely grown clones and species with little color >variation offers gardeners an opportunity to define what they call a color >from samples other than expensive color charts (which may not reproduce >well over the Internet). Thus, you could elicit your local color term for >'yellow' (the single quotes indicate a gloss, or meaning; double quotes >are a word-as-word) by referring to Sternbergia lutea. 'Yellow' is easy; >what flowers are 'purple', though? > >This subject is of great practical interest to me as an editor of >botanical and horticultural writing. I tend to cringe a little, for >instance, when an author describes a flower as "mauve," one of the most >ill-defined English color terms. > >Jane McGary >Northwestern Oregon, USA > > >_______________________________________________ >pbs mailing list >pbs@lists.ibiblio.org >http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php