Rosa rugosa.
Tulipa tardiva.
Gardeners, dust off your Botanical Latin. That’s how the conservative French President Nicolas Sarkozy wooed his left-leaning actor-singer-model wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy:
“When I met him, walking around the garden in the (presidential Elysee Palace), he keeps giving me all these flowers’ names,” she said. “He knows all the Latin names, all these details about tulips and roses.
“I said to myself: ‘My God, I must marry this man, he’s the president and he knows everything about flowers as well. This is incredible.’ ”
Prince Charles of England is also a passionate gardener. Perhaps he never hauled out the botanical Latin with Diana.
Did the Bruni-Sarkozys’ latest botanical discussion involve Amorphophallis konjac, the perennial voodoo lily? Carla is pregnant with her second child, the couple’s first.
Amorphophallis 'Konjac' at the Des Moines Botanical Center
