Story Hour
Paulie the Passionate Purple Plant
from the Pampas of Peru
Written by Gene B. Williams
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Let me tell you a bit about Paulie.
Paulie came about in an interesting way. Last October my friend Jimbo brought Mom a fall bouquet of flowers, then gave her a pumpkin. That started Nicker’s Flower of the Month Club, so Mom got 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 bunches of flowers every month. In January, I stumbled on a place called easytogrowbulbs.com and got to know Kathleen McCarthy. I wanted something different, and something simple. Kathleen suggested something called oxalis triangularis.
Don’t let the fancy technical name give you trouble.
Oxalis is a whole bunch of plants of different kinds, just like there are many kinds of pine trees. Quite often, the fancy names for things are Latin. To keep it simple, oxalis means that Paulie is a shamrock. That’s because they make a thing called oxalic acid. You don’t need to know what that is, except you probably wouldn’t like it. Just notice that two words are similar.
Triangularis is easier. You know what I triangle is. So does Paulie. His leaves are triangles.
Oxalis triangularis. It sure does sound fancy and smart!
Many of the words you already know are actually Latin, or someone’s idea of Latin. When you say grace at the table before dinner, you are giving thanks. Grace. In Spanish, to say “thank you,” you say “gracias.” If you are in Italy, you would say, “graci.” (What a minute! Isn’t *Gracie* the name of that sweet little dog in England and friend of Nicker?)
It can be fun to play with languages.
For our story, Paulie is purple. (Oxalis triangularis means “purple shamrock.”) Most shamrocks are green, but Paulie is purple.
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Paulie the Passionate Purple Plant
from the Pampas of Peru
Paulie was a purple plant who thought he lived in part of the Pampas of Peru. Well, actually he didn’t.
That the Pampas aren’t in Peru doesn’t matter to the story. Paulie tends to get confused sometimes and forgets where he is. Plants do that, as you might know. What really matters is that Paulie the Purple Plant had an adventure. That’s very unusual for a plant. They have a hard time even walking, let alone going out on an adventure.
Are you ready for a big word? TWO big words.
Oxalis triangularis.
Say that six times fast, then get a drink of water. You’ll need it. Oxalis is what he is. He isn’t an ox. In fact he wasn’t very big at all.
Triangularis gets attached to the oxalis because his leaves were shaped like triangles.
What it really means is “false shamrock,” partly because he isn’t green. He may not be a shamrock at all, although some say that he is – especially Paulie.
See? Learning Latin (that’s what his name is in Latin – oxalis triangularis) isn’t so hard. You just have to remember that it has nothing to do with an ox, and that the Latin language just loves to put an –is to just about anything to sound important.
Airplanis flyis in the airis.
That’s how you might get from New Yorkis to Los Angelis.
Get it?
Let’s just call him Paulie and leave it at that.
Paulie looked a little like a purple windmill. Each morning as the sun came up, he spread his three big purple leaves to catch the sun. During the day, he twisted his body (for him it’s more correctly called a stem) to keep getting the sun. When the sun went away, so did Paulie. He tucked his leaves in like a purple umbrella and went to sleep.
The next day he did the same thing, and the day after, and the day after and the day afterandthedayafter.
It was an exciting life.
Paulie the Purple Plant who pretended to be a shamrock was very happy. He was even more happy when he got a new neighbor. She had a dark green stem and the loveliest yellow petals he had ever seen. After a month or so (plants don’t hurry at very many things) she shyly introduced herself as Daisy Dandelion.
Paulie agreed. She wasn’t really a daisy, but she sure WAS a dandy lion (although he wasn’t completely sure just what a lion was – there aren’t many lions in Peru, which doesn’t matter because Paulie wasn’t in Peru anyway – remember?).
As summer passed, something strange happened.
Daisy (who wasn’t really a daisy) showed Paulie the Purple shamrock (who wasn’t really a shamrock) something he’d never seen before, not in all his born months.
She grew a beard.
At least that’s what Paulie would have thought it was … if he knew what a beard was, which he didn’t. Her beautiful yellow petals turned white and fluffy.
Then one afternoon, a breeze came. Daisy’s “whiskers” took to the wind. They blew away. Daisy lost her whiskers to the wind, and Paulie could do nothing but watch. Each whisker had a seed and could become a new Daisy. As he watched her whiskers in the wind, Paulie couldn’t help but think that there could be hundreds of new Daisies, who weren’t daisies but were dandelions, who weren’t lions but sure would be dandy.
See?
Paulie strained and he grew a little bulb that pretended to be a flower. It was what Paulie could do to be a seed. It was a seed that wasn’t a seed that was a seed.
See?
He grew three little leaves beneath it. Somehow, even though Paulie had never gone to school, he knew about parachutes. So … he grew a parachute. Daisy knew how to do this, and don’t ask me how she knew
because she hadn’t been to school, either. Now Paulie knew, too. He didn’t grow a beard, though. He wanted his to look a little like a flower growing. He wanted three little leaves, shaped like tiny green butterflies.
And so, the wind came again. The seed that wasn’t a seed broke off the stem and sailed into the wind on a parachute that wasn’t a parachute, maybe more like a hang glider, in search of Daisy who wasn’t a daisy.
And there in a field somewhere, I don’t know where … Daisy’s seed sprouted and became another not-a-daisy. And right next to her a bulb that was a seed that wasn’t a seed that was a seed sprouted. And he became purple, and she grew a yellow mane and then what happened next was ……
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