Many thanks to Jamie Vande for elucidating a section of German color terminology: >As to ROT, it is generic. In German, the colour descriptions are a bit >different; ROSA is pale pink, PINK is deep pink (in the purple range). Many >colours that are perceived as red are quite warm. I think that BLASSROT >would be a warm, medium pink to most, while HELLROT would be like cadmium >pale, in artists colours, sort of scarlet, like a Pelargonium. DUNKELROT >would be like a very ripe tomato, while KIRSCHROT would be a deep, cold, >crimson. This is the kind of information one never gets from classroom language study or reading works on history and other non-artistic subjects. Color terminology is such a complex subject across languages that it forms a special area of study for linguists. For example, a wide set of languages around the world don't distinguish 'blue' from 'green'. 'Red' is another area where there is a good deal of complexity. Linguists have also studied what kinds of distinctions different groups of people within a language community make; for example, women tend to use more different color terms than men do (though male horticulturists and artists would know more than the average woman, of course). I wonder if a multilingual horticultural color term chart would be useful to many people? I could probably design a questionnaire on which to base one, but it would require a sample of a certain size (at least ten respondents, I think) for each language. It would be interesting just to see, within a language, what different people call the color of a certain flower. The present discussion related to Worsleya offers an example: Is it 'blue'? I think "blue" is used more loosely in English than the equivalent color terms in some other European languages -- that is, it seems to extend more into the purple range in English. Or is that just horticultural wishful thinking? The existence of widely grown clones and species with little color variation offers gardeners an opportunity to define what they call a color from samples other than expensive color charts (which may not reproduce well over the Internet). Thus, you could elicit your local color term for 'yellow' (the single quotes indicate a gloss, or meaning; double quotes are a word-as-word) by referring to Sternbergia lutea. 'Yellow' is easy; what flowers are 'purple', though? This subject is of great practical interest to me as an editor of botanical and horticultural writing. I tend to cringe a little, for instance, when an author describes a flower as "mauve," one of the most ill-defined English color terms. Jane McGary Northwestern Oregon, USA