“Deb : What’s a liger?

Napoleon: It’s pretty much my favorite animal. It’s like a lion and a tiger mixed... bred for its skills in magic.”

— Napoleon Dynamite

*A sassy leather portanteau in “alligator” finish, from an 1883 dry-goods catalogue.*

A portmanteau is a large trunk or suitcase, typically made of stiff leather and opening into two equal parts. Using the word in the right company, at a book club in Marseille, for example, would exude a sense of cultivated sophistication. Using it in the wrong company, such as anywhere else, would cast you off as either a blowhard or a bluestocking snot. But portmanteau has a second meaning; one that lives in a more intriguing and less pretentious space. It refers to a word which blends the sounds and combines the meanings of two other words. Smog, for instance, is a portmanteau, derived from smoke and fog. Some blended words are practical, such as bit ( from binary and unit), and others droll, such as adorkable and disgrossting. Some are so common it’s easy to forget that they’re combined at all, like motel, brunch, or maybe even ginormous. A few seem like portmanteaus, but aren’t: starfish is a compound word, not a lexical blend. A blended form would be stish or starsh, which would certainly be more fun to say. Lewis Carol famously crafted his own portmanteaus in Jabberwocky: chortle (presumedly from chuckle and snort) and slithy (from lithe and slimy), among many others.

Notably amusing, however, are those that come about from the melding of not only two words but of two species that have physically portmanteau’d into being. Beefalo and Yakalo are indeed real things, crossed between two genus of the family Bovidae. Mix two members of the Panthera genus and you get a Liger, or Tigon depending on who was the mom. The further you ascend taxonomic ranks, the less likely a viable hybrid will occur. A blend between two Species is likely to work, but of different Classes has never occurred in the wild. At the time of this writing, the most distant hybridization that has manifest (somewhat) naturally is between two disparate Families. In 2019 Hungarian scientists accidentally crossed the American paddlefish (family Polyodontidae) and Russian sturgeon (family Acipenseridae) to create the world’s first sturddlefish. In the lab, we can (somewhat regrettably) push the boundaries a bit further. Interordinal hybrids (between different Orders) are exceedingly infrequent, but have been engineered, such as between the sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) and the sand dollar (Dendraster excentricus).

sturddlefish — *A plasticized Sturddlefish.*

taxonomic breakdown — *Taxonomic mnemonic: Little Dumb Kids Playing Catch On Freeways Get Squashed*

Hybridizing plants is nothing new. Many gardeners seek fresh hybrids each spring, when new colors, patterns, growth characteristics, etc of their favorite annuals and perennials land on shelves. The outsized majority of these are between members of the same species, denoted by an x after the name followed by its specific epithet (such as Rosa odorata x ‘Gold of Ophir’.) The foamy bell, however, is special. Known in Linnaean circles as the portmanteau ‘Heucherella’, it is a cross between two plants, Heuchera (coral bell) and Tiarella (foam flower), that reside in different genera of the same family. Intergeneric hybrids, while fairly common amongst orchids and members of the African violet tribe, are relatively rare in the plant kingdom as a whole. Heucherellas combine the physical traits of the two parents, retaining a stoloniferous habit (horizontal, above-ground, creeping stems) of the foam flower but with the attractive foliage of the coral bell. The flowers have the abundance of the Tiarella but the size, color and shape found on Heuchera.

The three plants are members of the Saxifragaceae family, which contains other ornamentals such as Astilbe, Bergenia, and Rodgersia. The name Saxifragaceae comes from the Latin words "saxum" (rock) and "frangere" (break), a reference to the many genera of this group found growing in cracks and crevices.

Tiarella is a delightfully fluffy shade lover native to the US and Canada. It is one of my favorites. Its botanical name means little crown, a reference to the shape of its seeds, while its common name comes from the airy, foamy-looking stalks of tiny whitish pink flowers.

Like the Tiarella, Heuchera also prefer dappled shade and are native to North America. Known most commonly as Coral Bells, they are sometimes called Alumroot for the obvious reason that some species harbor the mineral alum underground. As a result, the plant was periodically used to tame wounds, gastrointestinal ailments, and the occasional nose bleed before better solutions came along. They can tolerate the noxious black walnut and a high tannin content makes them bitter and unappetizing to deer. As a note of trivia, plants with darker foliage can generally withstand more sunlight. All three genera are sturdy and resilient and offer a generous way to brighten up otherwise shadowy corners.