Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Among Tuesday’s crowd of events (it’s now Friday, and life has been stressful and unpleasant, but I’m trying to produce at least one pleasant thing): a visit to Palo Alto’s Gamble Garden, taken there by Sharon Gray of Bay Area Geriatric Care Managers. Too much in bloom or getting ready to bloom (or harvest, in the case of food plants) for me to post on more than a little bit. I’ve picked out two plants I admired but didn’t know. One is still a mystery (there was a label, but it clearly applied to a plant that had already bloomed and gone dormant, not to this ornamental grass with pretty bell-shaped purple-blue flowers), but the other had a label that applied to it (and not to some other plant in its neighborhood), so I can tell you that it’s an especially vigorous Sisyrinchium striatum — the creamy-white blue-eyed grass of my title.

There will be photos, including one of me sitting in the garden; this one will require a fashion digression, on the tank top I’m wearing in the photo, a recent acquisition for summer wear.

The fashion digression. But with plants, lots of plants. The photo shows me sitting in my Rollator walker in front of a small vine-crowned gazebo in the garden:

(#1) On the right in the photo, some ornamental grasses, and spent blossoms of a gorgeous daylily; on the left, a stand of black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) (photo by Sharon Gray)

I’m wearing a blue tank top that says FAGGOT (in modest san serif letters). I recently acquired three of these garments (in heather grey, red, and blue) — designed and sold by SquidgyInk in Wiltshire UK, ordered through Redbubble. Here’s the ad image for the tank tops, using a model who’s way cuter than I am (or, in fact, ever was):

(#2) Standing out tastefully in heather grey; today I happen to be wearing an in-your-face t-shirt with FAGGOT in great big rainbow letters — suitable messaging for all occasions

Blue-eyed grasses. What we saw in Gamble Garden:

(#3) Sisyrinchium striatum (photo by Sharon Gray); from Wikipedia:

Sisyrinchium striatum, common names pale yellow-eyed-grass or satin flower, is an evergreen perennial plant in the family Iridaceae.

Sisyrinchium striatum can reach a height of 70–90 centimetres (28–35 in). It has an erect stem with a clump of grey-green sword-shaped alternate leaves and several clusters of cup-shaped creamy white flowers with six tepals and golden centers. They bloom from May to June in the northern hemisphere.

Earlier postings on Sisyrinchium, blue-eyed grasses. On this blog, on 4/15/14 about “Blue-eyed grass” in Texas. Then, in my 6/14/17 posting “Three garden ornamentals and three trees”, about the third garden ornamental —

Blue-eyed grass. A 4/15/14 posting looks at blue-eyed grasses (genus Sisyrinchium), which aren’t grasses at all, but very small plants in the iris family. What we saw at Gamble Garden was a dark-blue species, much like this (from Wikipedia):

(#3)

And then there’s my 5/24/16 posting “Three natives” at Gamble Garden, the first of which is, from Wikipedia:

(#4) Sisyrinchium californicum, golden blue-eyed grass

Sisyrinchium californicum is a species of flowering plant in the iris family known by the common names: golden blue-eyed grass, yellow-eyed-grass, and golden-eyed-grass. It is native to the west coast of North America from British Columbia to central California, where it grows in moist habitat, often in coastal areas.

The head noun grass is in all of these common names because the narrow strap-like iris leaves look like blades of grass. [AZ: blue-eyed grass is then a resembloid composite, like resembloid (rather than subsective) compounds] Then there’s the name golden blue-eyed grass, which looks oxymoronic, but is less so when you realize that blue-eyed grass has simply become a conventionalized name for Sisyrinchium; compare plastic glasses.

And recall the mantra Labels Are Not Definitions. They’re just names.

Now we have come all the way round to Sisyrinchium striatum, the creamy-white blue-eyed grass in my title. Not a grass, just resembling grass. With flowers that aren’t blue, but creamy white.

This entry was posted on June 13, 2025 at 9:04 am and is filed under Clothing, Labels Are Not Definitions, Language and plants, My life, Names, Semantics of compounds, Taboo language and slurs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.