A lily tree by any other name

[muckefuck]

I was looking over monshu's shoulder as he scanned eBay for Japanese prints to bid on. He was considering one that depicted a magnolia in bloom. "Aren't those what you call 'tulip trees'?" he asked. I had to explain that, no, the only people I knew who called them that were southerners who reserved "magnolia" for evergreen magnolias; growing up where the only evergreen magnolias were in hothouses, we didn't make that discrimination. Besides, we would never have mistaken a tulip tree, which grows up straight and leafy and as tall as a tree out of Tolkien with the stunted spring shrubs with their purplish blooms.

I showed him the Wikipedia article for "tulip tree" and was astonished to find out that there's a species native to China; I'd always thought of them as a distinctly American tree like the cottonwood or the black walnut. Of course, I immediately wanted to know the Chinese name. A bit of sleuthing turned up 鵝掌楸 ézhǎngqiú or "goose foot catalpa".

This had us a little baffled. The alternative name, 馬褂木 mǎguàmù "magua tree" (a magua or "horse gown" being a kind of Qing Dynasty riding jacket) no less. Then I remembered the guide to native trees I'd bought in Beijing and looked up "Liriodendron" in the scientific name index. "Because the leaf resemble a goose's foot," it informed us, "and also the leaf of the catalpa tree, so it gets its name. Also called 'magua tree" because the outspread leaf resembles a magua." I leave you all to judge that for yourselves.

The Koreans call them 목백합 /mokpaykhap/ "tree lilies" or 백합나무 /paykhapnamu/ "lily trees", using the Sino-Korean and native Korean words for "tree", respectively, paired with the Sino-Korean for "lily". The Japanese, by contrast, go all native and call them yuri no ki, which has the same meaning. Of course, tulips are an even more recent introduction to Korea and Japan than they are to Europe, so the substitution is understandable--moreso when one considers it might even be a calque on the botanical name, Liriodendron.

Curiously, though, "lily" doesn't appear in the name of the surprise lilies, which--like so many of our loveliest flowers--are imports from East Asia. To the Japanese, they are 夏水仙 natsuzuisen or "summer narcissus". (The narcissus, in turn, is literally translated a "water immortal".) Even more curious is the Korean name 상사화 /sangsahwa/, 상사 (相思) being a term which Martin glosses as "mutal (reciprocal, reciprocated) love, pining for each other" and 화 (花) being Sino-Korean for "flower".

Comments

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

I learned something! I don't think I've ever seen a real tulip tree, or if I have I didn't recognize it. I always heard tulip tree used for those little flowering trees that people use in their landscaping.

[donncha22.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, we have just such an item, a Japanese block print of a Magnolia grandiflora blossom, framed on a wall in the house. Tom bought it (with my assent, since one of my jobs is keeping his shopping in check) about a decade ago from a bouquiniste along the Seine. Tom is a Mississippi boy, so he had to have the magnolia. And we do have a huge deciduous magnolia in the front courtyard. I call it a tulip tree, but it is not straight and tall. So, did Monshu get the magnolia?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I won't know until it comes in the mail!

[rootbeer1.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall from my Tennessee upbriging that the tulip tree was chosen as the state tree because it grew so straight and round that it was perfect for chopping down to make log cabins.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

That would surprise me, since the wood is as soft as pine. It's widely used for planking, but not so great for structural applications. On the other hand, it wouldn't take as much effort to chop down, so it might well have been the choice of lazier log cabin builders.

[pne.livejournal.com]

If 목백합 is /mokpaykhap/, then how would *목배캅 be written? Is this a case where Yale is ambiguous between /kh/ = k.h and /kh/ = k^h, or is ㅋ not written /kh/?

(IIRC, the pronunciation would be identical, so that might not matter... but then you still can't retrieve the original spelling.)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Strict Yale would have a period to mark to syllable boundary. But, as you say, the pronunciation is identical and if you need to retrieve the original spelling, well, it's right there already!

[pne.livejournal.com]

Ah, OK, that makes sense.

So, Yale uses a period in much the same way that Pinyin uses an optional(?) apostrophe to mark ambiguous syllable divisions.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, the tulip tree is also "tulip poplar". I was one of those Southerners calling that Northern deciduous magnolia a "tulip tree", because they look kinda similar. The real tulip tree has yellow flowers and grows much bigger, I think.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Way bigger! A hundred feet or more, though I don't think I've ever personally seen one more than about three or four stories tall.