I do love how our calla lily clump comes up, each year, in April, despite fading away to alarming non-existence for a whole chunk of the year. And I always take a ritualistic photo. But today was the first time that I actually wondered - why calla lily? Linnaeus, of course, gave the genus its taxonomic name, following the lead of Pliny, who called it - yes! - "calla" in Latin. But there's more to it than that, although the OED stops at the Latin. Because apparently the Latin was derived from the Greek kallaia, which means - wait for it - "rooster's wattles."
The Gardeners' Monthly in August 1887 says it was also known as the "Ethiopian Lily" and - this is more familiar to me - the Easter Lily. I found some instructions in Ladies' Fancy Work for 1886 for making wax models of calla lilies. And a short-lived Southern Californian magazine, Land of Sunshine, waxed lyrical about them in 1894 - reports that acres of them are grown near Santa Barbara and - then south of LA - in Vernon (things have changed a lot round there), and also says that one can eat the bulbs - prepare them like a potato, and they taste just the same. I'm not going to try that - I value their annual reappearance too much ...
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