plumeria

So somehow it turns out that, around the time I've collected enough animal names for a week's run, I've usually also have enough for a week of plants. So that's this week's theme, starting with:


plumeria (ploo-MIR-ee-uh) n., any of about a dozen species of plants (genus Plumeria) of the American tropics with fragrant, showy, funnel-shaped flowers of a wide range of colours from creamy to red, also called frangipani.


Dictionaries and botanical guides disagree as to whether plumeria and frangipani are synonyms, or the latter is a subset of the former. Both names are eponyms: the former from French botanist Charles Plumier (1646–1704), in honor of his work in the New World (including identifying and naming fuchsia), the latter from Muzio Frangipane, a 16th century Italian nobleman who invented a perfume whose scent closely resembles that of the flower.


Thanks, WikiMedia!

---L.