> people in my hiking group ..... do not >want to learn the botanical names at all. It seems like a lost cause. Mary Sue, I think perhaps just giving the name of the genus would be less overwhelming to a casual questioner, yet accurate enough to begin with. Often, that will suffice because there may be no other representative of the genus in the region. Here, the big red-barked evergreen trees are called "arbutus" as their common name. No one needs to know that they are really Arbutus menziesii. We have a couple of species of Camassia, but they are both called "camas" as they look the same except under close scrutiny. I was puzzled to find them labelled in a local public garden with a so-called "common name" that is never used here. A garden volunteer had used a name found in a book. Now I can't remember what the silly name was - Indian lily? Indian something, anyway. Of course, it won't take long for your casual inquirers in California to find there are a lot of very dissimilar plants called "calochortus" so they will soon need to discover that two words are needed for the names. -- Diane Whitehead Victoria, British Columbia, Canada maritime zone 8 cool mediterranean climate (dry summer, rainy winter - 68 cm annually) sandy soil