If you were to ask various representatives of flora and fauna how satisfied they are with their name – the answers to this survey would certainly be just as different as with people. After all, very few can choose for themselves what is in their passport. Animals and plants have to accept completely unchallenged what some botanist or biologist has come up with for them. Anyone who discovers the new species may give it a name. This can happen according to different criteria, such as habitat, appearance or special characteristics. It is questionable whether the rose plant called creeping goosefoot likes it. Perhaps the rabbit-sized pygmy antelope suffers from being called dik-diks, and the giggling Australian kingfisher may not like flying around as much as Laughing Hans.
With the Latin names that plants and animals usually have, some meanness is not so noticeable at first. Kigelia africana still sounds very smooth. But the German word Leberwurstbaum repels at least vegetarians and vegans. Solanum mammosum also goes by the name cow’s udder plant. Like the sausage tree, the plant owes its name to its appearance. While some fruits actually resemble sausages, with the others you might think someone painted a cow’s udder yellow and hung it upside down. Others also say nipple plants, which doesn’t make it any better either. Both fruits, i.e. those of the liver sausage tree and the cow’s udder plant, are not suitable for human consumption. Some are even poisonous, others are more for elephants.
Liver sausages don’t grow on trees in the district of Munich, but there are creatures with amazing names here too. The heathland association in the north of Munich regularly draws attention to these otherwise little-noticed creatures and names them “Heidling of the Month”. In June it was the perennial flax, in July the blue-winged grasshopper. And right now, the association based in Unterschleißheim recommends the Characeae, the stonewort algae. There’s nothing to laugh about. Just because you might associate chandeliers with morons doesn’t mean you should underestimate these aquatic creatures. They just look like submerged candlesticks with their transverse arms growing at regular intervals. But, writes the Heathland Association: “Their reproductive organs, which survive for decades in the sediment of once populated bodies of water, are particularly striking.” From because of chandeliers! Incidentally, the Characeae are colloquially called the Stinking Horsetail.