Have you met Phil A. Dendrom?

[muckefuck]

So maybe I go on too much about bad spelling, but sometimes I find it simply baffling. I mean, I understand that anyone can have a bad day (like rollick with her recent Brauhaus post) and that it's difficult to look up a word if you've never seen it written, only heard it, or to remember the spelling of a word in a language you don't speak. However, how do you explain this sign on a plant in the staff lounge:

VARIEGATED PHILADENDROM
(Philodendron scandens)

Now, setting aside for a moment the fact that the plant is decidedly not a member of the Philodendron genus (as we learned from last year's plant quiz, it's actually an Epipremnum aureum, also known as a "pothos"), how does it escape the person typing up the card that there might be a connexion of some sort between the scientific name and the popular? And how did they find (and correctly spell) the former when they so badly munged the latter?

Comments

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

No, but you'd think that whoever gave enough of a rat's ass to make the little signs at all would've had more invested in them than that.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

See, that's what really baffles me. I mean, a spelling mistake in your blog or in an e-mail--whatever. Everyone understands that's prose that you toss off without much thought. But this was a whole Thingey for the Green Committee--they put up little signs saying Can you name this plant? a week beforehand to draw attention and so on.

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

O...h. I thought it was somebody's labor of love, you see. But now that I know it was a committee, that explains everything.