the numbers, was something else

Jim McKenney jamesamckenney@verizon.net
Tue, 14 Oct 2014 16:47:27 PDT
Nathan, what in the world are you trying to prove? 

Haven't you overlooked that how the word "bloom" is used in plant science is not likely to be  a good measure of how the word is (and I would say properly may be) used in everyday speech? The PBS wiki is like nomenclature itself: it straddles the worlds of both science and art. To conform too rigidly to some minority group's (i.e. plant scientists') standards of meaning might be appropriate when addressing that group, but such usage is likely to cause confusion when addressed to persons outside that group (some of whom might be people who belong to other groups which define the words in question differently). 

No one discipline owns our language. If the majority of wiki users are gardeners and not plant scientists, then that's a good argument to give what you call "common' due consideration.  

When you wrote "Unless you write ads for Walmart, the trend does not look good for bloom as a description of flowers". I had to laugh. I'm more inclined to think that those  persons seen in Walmart arguing with a clerk because, having asked to see the flowers,  were directed to the whole wheat, bread, and pastry varieties might  have to ask again to see the BLOOMS. 

Jim McKenney
Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, USDA zone 7  



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