"I used to be Snow White, but I drifted." Mae West
Not unlike Mae West, we are drifting from the Latin for white (alba) to the Latin for red. Always dramatic and compelling, red is many splendored throughout the natural world.
Red encompasses many shades, from ruby red to scarlet to red-orange to rust. In the Roman Empire, these shades varied significantly, depending on the dye stuff from which they were made. Words to describe colors in the Roman world were limited by the palettes of the available dyes. Therefore, Latin has few words for blue and green, because these colors were hard for the Romans to produce. The names for the color red, however, seem endless: rubellus, rubens, ruber, rubescens, rubiginosus, rubrus, rubric, rufus, russus, rutilans, and numerous variants thereof, such as erubescens; cardinalis, carminatus, carmineus, cinnabarinus, coccineus, et cetera--you get my point.
Rubrica is Latin for red earth, and refers to any work in the early laws, manuscripts, or prints that is colored or highlighted in red. A common style was to use a large, highly decorated, rubricated single letter to introduce a page or paragraph. But please do not visit the Getty if you have rubella, i.e., German measles, named for the red eruptions of the skin.
Ruber is the most general word for pure red, and rubrum is probably the most easily recognized latinized version: red oak (Quercus rubra), red maple (Acer rubrum), red alder (Alnus rubra). Cryptocarya rubra, an evergreen tree at MEMBG that is a native laurel of Chile, is distinguished from its relatives by its coppery red new foliage, which later turns green. Rubia tinctoria, madder, was an important red root dye of ancient Europe, and is the type plant for one of our largest plant families, Rubiaceae.
Cochineal is the traditional red dye of pre-Hispanic Mexico, obtained not from a plant but from a female scale insect that spends its life sucking on a cactus plant. The word cochineal is derived from the Latin coccineus, meaning scarlet. For plants, coccineus as a scientific name almost always refers to scarlet flowers. At MEMBG we are growing the scarlet-flowered Iochroma coccinea, Ruellia coccinea,/EM>, Combretum coccineum, and Hedychium coccineum.
Every plant with red in its name has a story to tell. Anigozanthos rufus, red kangaroo paw from Australia, has deep red woolly petals. Ficus rubiginosus has leaves that are dark green above, rust-colored and woolly beneath. Pomegranate is Punica granatum; the genus refers to the Latin puniceus, for the reddish-purple fruit. Delphinium cardinale is a native delphinium of Southern California's Santa Monica Mountains; its crimson-colored flowers are pollinated by hummingbirds.
Botanists call some plants blood red, using the Latin word sanguineus. The most widely known usage is for the herbal medicine bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis, a member of the poppy family from eastern North America that gets it common name from the orange-red sap that seeps from the plant when it is cut. Holmskioldia sanguinea, growing outside UCLA's Botany Building, has blood red floral bracts. Another reference to blood is haematiticus, from the Greek, which is used, for example, to describe the red flowers of our powder puff, Calliandra hematocephalus.
Some other important reds are Greek to us as well. The city tree of Los Angeles is the coral tree, Erythrina, derived from the Greek erythro, a word element meaning red and alluding to the various shades of brilliant red blossoms. The name of the cocaine genus Erythroxylum means having red wood and erythrocarpus means red-fruited.
Caveat (Latin for beware)! Radish, which is red, actually gets its name from the Latin radix, i.e., root.
Are you ruddy (red, M.E.) for the next column?
JULIE RASKOFF, MEMBG Docent