From names to wordsAnimals, plants & weather

dahlia

The Aztecs grew this flower long before Europeans saw it. When the Spanish botanist Cavanilles described it from Mexican seeds in 1791, he named it after the Swedish botanist Anders Dahl, a student of Linnaeus who had just died; the name came home to Swedish, went round Europe and Asia, and returned to Mexico, which made the dalia its national flower.

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1789Swedish

Hops are evenly spaced; labels show the year each form is first attested.