Jim and Angelo, That just goes to show you how weak my Spanish a la Hoosier is. So it might be ungrammatical Italian. At 12:25 PM 1/23/2004 -0500, Jim McK wrote: >Well, Jim, maybe you've taught me something: I always thought the name >Stella de Oro was uncouth Italian! But I guess it could also be ungrammatical Spanish! At 06:28 PM 1/23/2004 +0100, Angelo wrote: >the writing ' Stella de Oro' is nor Spanish neither Italian. If it was >Italian it would be 'Stella d'Oro', while in Spanish would be 'Estrella de >Oro ' > >Well, you know now a new Italian word in addition to pizza and spaghetti !! Now I know a new word in Spanish too, "Estrella". It's amazing what all I learn in this forum. Why couldn't Walter just have given it a simple name, like "Goldiger Stern" or "Stern vom Gold"? Who can tell me what language might call it "Staila da Aur"? (It's not Portuguese.) Naming cultivars can be a very hairy business, it seems. Note that bad grammar and poor spelling are not counted off, nor corrected, in registration of cultivar names. Not only that, but adherence to the registration system is purely voluntary, so anyone is free to call Walter Jablonski's 'Stella de Oro' anything he or she wishes, even 'Stella d'Oro' which seems to be the most common form of the name used in the nursery and landscaping trade. In parts of the world where STELLA won't grow well, I believe they often instead grow something else, similar, like 'Happy Returns'. It is a little taller and a little lighter yellow than 'Stella De Oro', as I recall, but it also reblooms well. That is certainly true for the warmer parts of Florida, and probably in Southern California to some extent too. They are both yellow, and both depressingly common where they are used. It's just not a strip mall without some STELLA planted around it. I've sold a lot of 'Stella de Oro' over the years; thank you, Walter. Jim Shields in central Indiana (USA) where we speak Hoosier, sort of our own version of bad English ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd. P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA