The abundant wisteria in the neighbourhood looks much better to the eye than to the camera. No matter.

I had hoped to be able to solve a mystery for this post; why do Italians call wisteria glicine? To me, the Greek root for glycine is associated with sweetness, although the plant that springs to mind is Glycine max, the not-noticeably sweet soybean. Wikipedia enlightened me. Linnaeus used it in 1737, in reference to the sweet, pear-shaped tubers of what he called Glycine apios. That turns out to be my old friend Apios americana, sometimes known as Indian Potato, which my other old friend Rhizowen wants us all to call Hopniss.

Good to know.

English speakers call the flower wisteria because Thomas Nuttall named it for the Philadelphia physician Caspar Wistar. And Wisteria was previously classified as Glycine.

Mind you, I’m no closer to knowing why Italians call wisteria glicine. Maybe they’re still using the old form; that would be understandable. It can’t be something as simple as the sweet smell, can it?

Everything that I wanted to come through the winter has, some of it in rare good form.

The bonsai wisteria, one of seven that I grew from seed I collected in 2007, is still bonsai and flowering for all it is worth. The flower colours and other aspects differ among the seven; I wonder whether I might accidentally have selected for a non-climbing wisteria. That would be cool.

The white iris, rescued last summer from under a tree down by the orto abusivo on the rough ground, opened today too. Very welcome, with a promise of more buds to come. It’s covered in aphids, which fortunately don’t render on the photograph, and of course I can’t find my soapy spray.

But the real beaut, the treasure I had dared not hope might survive, is the Chimonanthus. This is also from seed I collected, the only survivor from a few fruits worth snaffled from the gardens at the Villa Wolkonsky, residence of the British Ambassador to Rome. It was the silliest spindly twig last year, and I feared for its survival, but it seems to be doing just fine. This is another one I’ll just have to wait for, and hope that I’m around to enjoy those gorgeously spicy blossoms in the dead of winter. Just a couple can fill a room.

Looking forward to the rest of it, but not to the prospect of first selecting and then moving plants to a much smaller terrace in a month or so. We shall see.

View Bike ride 2012-03-18 in a larger map

Rome is not a cycle-friendly city. It could be, if the Romans could be persuaded to give up their beloved motor cars, of which, in 2008, there were 2.4 million to 2.5 million people. Not sure whether that is people people, or people old enough to drive. Either way, Rome has a higher car ownership per capita than any other European capital city. But I digress. As I must if I want to take a bike ride and blow out the cobwebs without risking life and limb. There are nice cycleways along the Tiber, north and south, very flat and pleasant, and a tad dull. The big park nearby is alright of a weekday morning, but at the weekend it is too full of people. So I just have to head out and hope for the best.

Last weekend I mostly went out in the direction of the neighbourhood where I used to live, in the hope that I wouldn’t get too lost. And it was a really nice ride, half urban, half rural, with some pipe-opening climbs and some swooping downhills. Coming home up the beastly Portuense was no joke, but unavoidable. And I quite like seeing the Corviale hulking up on the horizon as I peddle along the reserve below, flocks of sheep flowing biblically beneath the huge urban brute.

Today, though, strictly errands. I need to adapt the handlebars, which are a smidgen too low to be fully comfortable all the time. And other things.

That’s the title of an article on the New York Review of Books blog by Tim Parks.

My laconic friend Luigi’s answer was “No”. Parks comes to much the same conclusion, but in support he adds a great deal of insight and historical learning, which I am sure Luigi shares, internally.

I’ve yet to read a dull word by Tim Parks, and when he says that Italy is a country for initiates, I know exactly what he means. Good piece, overall, and I wonder what my Italian friends think of it.

But here’s something very strange. I was going to quote a line from the article, but when I went to copy it from the source article, it had changed. What’s there now, is:

“Every Italian,” Giacomo Leopardi dryly remarked in 1826 “is more or less equally honored and dishonored.”

In the version I downloaded yesterday, it is:

“No Italian,” Giacomo Leopardi drily remarked in 1826 “is ever universally revered or despised.”

What gives? No explanation at the page. Did Tim Parks the translator take issue with Tim Parks the writer? And who changed the popular “dryly” to the less-favoured “drily”? The public demands to know.

Best version of this trope I’ve ever seen. Good old John Downer, still producing amazing footage, even if some of the edits are just a bit too obvious for my taste. The entire series of Earthflight might be worth watching out for.