Hippeastrum and astronomy

Rick Buell via pbs pbs@mailman1.ibiblio.org
Sun, 14 May 2017 02:01:00 PDT
Hi Jane--as my knowledge of Spanish is nearly non-existent, I'll rush in here and give my amateur hypothesis: I wonder if the 'knight's star' mentioned may refer to the 'star' in the throat of the flower, and not to an astronomic body? A wild guess on my part, but the name could simply be a case of 'poetic license'? (A horse might admire the 'star', but being toxic, that is all....??)

-Rick Buell 
--------------------------------------------
On Sat, 5/13/17, Jane McGary <janemcgary@earthlink.net> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [pbs] Hippeastrum and astronomy
 To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@mailman1.ibiblio.org>
 Date: Saturday, May 13, 2017, 8:53 PM
 
 
 
 On 5/13/2017 2:07 PM, penstemon wrote:
 >
 > Isn’t hippeastrum
 “star of the horse”? But apparently not much to do 
 > with astronomy.
 > https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippeastrum/
 No, it's said to be from hippeus
 'horseman', not hippos 'horse'. On the 
 other hand, there is a word hippeios
 'pertaining to horses'. I still 
 want the name of that star -- or was William
 Herbert thinking of a 
 constellation? My
 author admits nobody knows what Herbert was thinking of.
 
 Jane
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