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  So, most varieties of English have around 40 distinctive sounds (phonemes). That is substantially more than the number of letters we typically use. So, new poll: if you were to design a spelling reform, how would you deal with that difference? #EnglishSpellingReform

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  @roots@stefanbohacek.online Common names: alpine bearberry, mountain bearberry, black berberry. Related to heather. Found in circumpolar regions including Russia, Scotland, Greenland, Northern Canada, and Alaska. I can't say if I've encountered it personally, but I have certainly seen scrub plants that (to my untrained eye) look similar to the images on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctous_alpina).

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  @roots Common names: yellow oatgrass, golden oat grass GBIF entry with names in several other European languages: https://www.gbif.org/species/2704389

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  @roots Common names: root parsley A subspecies of common parsley. That varietal name, "radicosum", had me thinking "radish", and overall it looks a bit like a parsnip, but those are both different things.

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  @roots Common names: Canada bluegrass, flattened meadow-grass, (compressed) wiregrass, flat-stemmed bluegrass. Despite that first common name, it is native to Europe. That's colonialism for you. I certainly know a whole swathe of white folks here in Alberta who would like to claim more rights as Canadians than indigenous people. (Also, that genus name, Poa, is the Greek word for fodder, which we've encountered on other samples recently.) GBIF: https://www.gbif.org/species/2704265

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  @roots Common names: dyer's greenweed, dyer's broom, dyer's whin, waxen woad, waxen wood Used in yellow dye, and for green when combined with woad - which I learn is still cultivated as a blue dye for (among other things) printer ink! Woad link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isatis_tinctoria You have to check out the GBIF link - this dyer's greenweed has SO MANY names in Welsh! (https://www.gbif.org/species/5347612) I count about 9, *plus* several apparently minor variants!

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  @roots Common names: common mouse-ear chickweed, big chickweed German: Gewöhnliches Hornkraut (I'm hoping that's the same species in GBIF as in Wikipedia!) Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerastium_holosteoides, https://www.gbif.org/species/6364031

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  @roots Common names: Scotch laburnum, Scottish laburnum, alpine laburnum It has a kind of classy ring to it: "laburnum". Like some French-descended British noble? Also, I'm gonna include the Welsh name from GBIF, because I can: Tresi Aur Alpaidd https://www.gbif.org/species/5356343

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  @roots Common names: reed canary grass, gardener's-garters, ribbon grass Unusually, the Wikipedia article also gives common names in several other languages. The GBIF gives a pile of variants and alternatives in French, plus some others. Between them, there are way more than I can fit in this post so I'll just link them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalaris_arundinacea, https://www.gbif.org/species/5289756 Apparently, there is disagreement on whether it's native to both North...

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  @roots Common names: giant sequoia, giant redwood, Sierra redwood, Wellingtonia. But my personal favorite (from GBIF) is: bigtree Yes! I have no personal experience with this tree, but by all accounts, this is the species that deserves that name. Bigtree. Absolutely. 💯

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  @roots@stefanbohacek.online I love the top-down view as a complement to the cross-sectional view!

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  @roots@stefanbohacek.online So Dad has made walking sticks, little fold-out table things, and other stuff. And he always calls it "diamond salix", because of course that sounds cooler than simply "diamond willow". Anyway, that's why I will always connect the "Salix" genus name to willows.

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  I’ve been loving the images from @roots@stefanbohacek.online. Some of the plants there have even inspired me to interact a little. One thing that I thought I’d like to see is the common names of the plants depicted, alongside their Latin binomials. As a linguist, I’m fascinated by the way we use different names for the same thing, and how we decide when to use each name. I’m also intrigued by the feeling many have that the more formal, inaccessible name is often considered more “real”. (5/8)