Tigridia pavonia & cochineal
Alberto Castillo (Sat, 13 Aug 2005 11:09:14 PDT)

Dear all:
As we all know Spanish invaders were not notoriously dedicated to
the natural sciences. They were pretty satisfied with giving a name to so
many new animals of all kinds they found in America (of course all of these
animals were unknown to them). Thus, they called rheas ostriches, tinamous
partridges and besides many others, they named the powerful feline found
from Mexico to Argentina, "tiger", because it had a few features in common
with the tiger they knew or heard of. That was enough for them! Of course, a
tiger is striped, lives in Asia, etc., etc. The name jaguar is South
American and the aztecs and other Mexicans did not give that name to the
jaguar. It had little importance if the spots were stripes, rings or donuts,
to the Spanish it was a tiger and Tigridia the plant was.
As for cochinilla, it may with good probability refer to the fact
that scale insects are fat and plump, for cochinilla sounds more derived
from "piglet".
Cacomite sounds strange and "little Mexican" because it is a
Spanish form of the original cacmiTL. This really sounds nahuatl. Tigridia
pavonia was widely used as food roasted in the embers. It seems many
tigridioids are edible (as crocuses are) and Herbertia lahue is much
exploited in its native Chile for the same purpose and use and is becoming
very rare.
Best
Alberto

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