On the edge of a flowerbed in the University of Nebraska’s Yeutter Garden, a man in a chartreuse vest studies a map, flips through a three-ring binder containing photographs of plants, glances at the map again. Then he pulls from a rack what looks like a weirdly proportioned golf club or dental mirror. He drives the sharp end of the club into the ground on the outer edge of a clump of cranberry-pink blooms past their prime. When he steps back, I see that the plaque atop the stake bears names: “Heartleaf-Bergenia/Bergenia cordifolia.” I consider these words. Because the edges of the large, leathery leaves are rolled in, I can’t see if they’re heart-shaped. Bergenia. Probably the name of a botanist who studied this plant. Is that with a hard or soft g? If it’s the former, I’ll see reddish stems as assertively lifting the wilted blossoms above the leaves. But if it’s the latter, I’ll see the stems as gently supporting the blossoms. If I hadn’t known the name of this plant, I might have just glanced at the flowers and moved on, without noticing the leaves or stalks, without searching for the right name for the color of the petals, without considering the connections between the name and the named. (More …)
Lisa Knopp
Lisa Knopp is the author of six books of creative nonfiction. Her most recent, Bread: A Memoir of Hunger (University of Missouri Press, 2016), is about eating disorders and disordered eating among older women. Both Bread and What the River Carries: Encounters with the Mississippi, Missouri, and Platte (University of Missouri Press, 2012) won Nebraska Book Awards. Knopp’s essays have appeared in numerous literary journals including Georgia Review, Missouri Review, Michigan Review, Gettysburg Review, Crab Orchard Review, Connecticut Review, Iowa Review, Shenandoah, Creative Nonfiction, Prairie Schooner, and Seneca Review. Her current project is “Like Salt or Love: Essays on Leaving Home,” which will include “Name-staker.”