Tuesday, April 20, 2010

salmonberry

I can understand
salmonberry, but "dogwood"?
spring faunaflora

. . . . . . . .

So, I looked it up and it seems that dogwood was originally dagwood, from the use of its slender stems of very hard wood for making 'dags' (i.e., daggers). Very surprised to read that the first styles of tennis racquets were made out thin strips of its bark. I'd love to see Federer hit topspin with one of those.

Wikipedia adds that it's also possible that the common name of dogwood may have come because dogs were washed with a brew of its bark.

That concludes our walk on the wild side of etymology for today.

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