Sunday, January 30, 2022

frailejón: frailejón (mountain sunflower?!)

I have always before seen frailejón just imported into the English - so it stood out to me that this article in CNN did so but then followed it with the description "mountain sunflowers 6 feet tall that capture water vapor from clouds and release it to the ground creating water springs." I've never thought of them as sunflowers, but now I see it. You could also of course use the latin name, espeletia. But mountain sunflower isn't bad. Relevant for social justice because these grow in the fragile páramo in Colombia which is at serious risk from both the climate catastrophe and extractivism.