“Rewilding” Our Kids’ Imagination with Hound’s Tongue and Hairy Pigweed

It’s Andy here today. Ann is in OurLittleCorner trying (again) to get the world to come together.

I’ve long been fascinated with how the words we use influence what we see in the world around us. So I was intrigued when I came across a recent article posted by Kate Yoder on Grist.com entitled “The words we use to talk about nature are disappearing.” She cites research published in the international research journal Earth that found that between 1800 and 2019 the use of nature-related words declined by more than 60 percent, which according to the researchers represents an “alarming societal disconnect” from nature.

How these disappearing words affect children is of particular concern to Yoder, especially considering that today’s youth are the future stewards of our planet’s well being. As a case in point she refers to the 2007 edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary (widely used in the lower grades in the UK)  which removed dozens of entries related to the natural world, including “acorn,” “bluebell,” and “magpie,” to make room among its 10,000 entries for modern inventions such as “blog,”chatroom,” and “MP3 player.” The decision prompted a group of authors, led by Margaret Atwood, to get more than 200,000  people to sign a petition asking the dictionary to reinstate the nature words that had gone missing — evidently to no avail.

Even the American Montessori Society chimed in:
“As more and more species of plants and animals are on the verge of extinction, children should be encouraged to care for the earth and its natural inhabitants, first, by knowing their names.“

Concern about children loosing touch with nature is not new. A Cambridge-based study published in Science in 2002 examined the extent to which children knew the names of the earth’s” “natural inhabitants.” It turned out that the kids they tested were much better at identifying Pokémon species than organisms such as oak trees or badgers. The researchers concluded that although young children have a tremendous capacity for learning about creatures, “they appear to be more inspired by synthetic subjects than by living creatures.”
(As an aside, I was stunned to learn from Wikipedia that Pokémon has 1,025 fictional species of “collectible” creatures).

Jackie Morris, a British illustrator and author, decided to do something about this and wrote a children’s book which highlighted the nature words deleted from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Titled The Lost Words, it became a bestseller after its release in 2017. Morris claimed that “rewilding” children’s imagination was one way to address this disconnect from nature.

Building on Morris’s attempt to “rewild” children’s imagination by reclaiming “lost words” I am proposing that we “rewild” young imaginations using some of the existing common words for features of the natural world around us (and that were never in a junior dictionary). This idea came to me on a nature hike with some 5th-graders back when I was a docent at the Bouverie Preserve.

On this particular hike one of the young hikers wanted to know what the pretty blue flowers all around us were called. The common name is Blue Dicks, but I wanted to avoid a gigglefest amongst my hikers, so I opted to tell them “Wild Hyacinths” — an alternative and less common name. One of the boys glanced at my “cheat sheet” of wildflower photos and with a knowing grin piped up with, “I know why you didn’t use their real name.” Of course, then the others had to know their “real” name — and the gigglefest was on. It dawned on me that despite the giggles this little wildflower had captured the kids’ imagination. I’m pretty sure that for those fifth graders (who by now are probably in college) the Blue Dicks wildflower name is not a lost nature word.

With a little research I was able to find many other wildflowers with attention-grabbing “common” names which might contribute to “rewilding” the imagination of young minds. Here are some examples of thought-provoking names I am proposing:

• *Blue Dicks (Dichelostemma capitatum)
• *Fiddleneck (Amsinkia menziesii)
• *Froggy Toes (Adromischus cristatus)
• *Hound’s Tongue (Cynoglossum officinale)
• Hairy Pigweed (Portulaca pilosa)
• Turkey Tangle Frogfruit (Phyla nodiflora)
• Scrambled Eggs (Corydalis aurea)
• Witches Teeth – also called Harlequin Lotus (Hosackia gracilis), 
• Mulefat – also called Seepwillow or Water-Wally (Baccharis salicifolia) 
• Boob Cactus – also called Titty Cactus  (Myrtillocactus geometrizan) 
• Sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale)
  • *On the Bouverie cheat sheet.

I would love to have included “Hooker’s Lips,” aka “Girlfriend Kiss” or “Labios de Puta,” but unfortunately they’re only found in the Central and South American rain forests.

Although my “rewilding”list has focused on wildflowers, I envision creating lists of attention-grabbing names for other inhabitants of our natural world. As a teaser, imagine how connected youngsters would be to nature if they knew that at one time the common name for the Kestrel was “Windf*cker.” Stay tuned— but don’t hold your breath.