Thursday 2 May 2013

grafted on

At the gas station near my house they've grafted pink cherry blossom branches onto white cherry trees and vice-versa*. It's so pretty! Although I do find it weird to cut an arm off of something and magically have it grow on something else. Imagine if you could do that with animals or people.





*I also just realized that vice versa might actually be pronounced like "veeechay versa" ... it comes from Latin, right? We're not talking about vices like drugs and whores, right? It means "opposite". Hm. Let me look that up.

Update: I looked it up and according to the online etymology dictionary I'm wrong, it comes from vicis which is Latin, but not pronounced like I thought.  

"From Latin ablative absolute vice versa (the position having been reversed), from feminine third declension noun vicis (arrangement, order, position, etc.) + feminine ablative singular of perfect passive participle versus, from verto (I turn, I reverse)."