Iris kochii
- noun
- Specialized
:
Iris kochii
- Many horticulturists prize Iris kochii for its deep blue-purple flowers and compact growth.
Examples
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The Iris kochii blooms in early spring, adding vibrant color to the gardens of northern Italy.
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Botanists have noted that Iris kochii is similar to but smaller than the more common Iris germanica.
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The Iris kochii blooms beautifully in the spring.
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Have you ever seen an Iris kochii in a garden?
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Botanists have noted that Iris kochii is similar to but smaller than the more common Iris germanica.
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Many horticulturists prize Iris kochii for its deep blue-purple flowers and compact growth.
-
The Iris kochii blooms in early spring, adding vibrant color to the gardens of northern Italy.
How Blue
Surface Forms
Morphology
iris + kochii
The first element 'iris' clearly signals a flower species so a learner would recognize this as a kind of iris, but 'kochii' is a Latinized epithet (likely a genitive from a proper name) that carries no semantically transparent lexical meaning for a B1 learner. Botanical binomials are compositionally predictable at the level of 'type of X' but the specific epithet does not reveal properties like origin or size, making the overall phrase only partially predictable from its parts.
Etymology
Iris kochii probably comes from the usual way of naming plants: Iris is the flower group and kochii honours a person. One popular story says it was named for a botanist called 'Koch', so the name means 'Koch's iris' and tells us this particular iris species.
