You might think, then, that it would be logical, if you value your status as a collector of rare plants more than the love of your cat, not to tell your cat you have one in your garden. 

However, I would advise against not telling your cat because it is a sure bet that your cat will sense the precise minute Rhododendron roxieanum var oreonastes crosses your lot line.  And anyway, you, having read this far, must be darn nearly desperate to let your cat experience one of those incontinent paroxysms.

If you know your Latin (I don’t, so I’m just waiting for someone to tell me this paragraph is all nonsense) you will quickly intuit that the name itself – oreonastes – gives away about this interesting reactionary feline phenomenon.  The roxieanum part of the moniker is something of a letdown because it’s one of these commemorative names, eternally memorializing a Mrs. Roxie Hanna of Tali-fu, China, who was a friend of the plant’s discoverer, or at least describer, George Forrest.  Too bad we don’t know more about Mrs. Roxie Hanna - perhaps - who knows – she may have had a weakness for aromatically induced paroxysms. 

It’s the oreonastes bit that is the mother lode.  The ‘oreo’ portion really means ‘mountain’ in Latin, but cats are not too well versed in dead languages and, get this, they recognize the modern meaning of ‘oreo’ ie., ‘cookie’! 

Ah ha!  So then we move on to the ‘nastes’ bit.  You may not believe this, but this is the exception that proves the rule; cats have almost instant recognition of what ‘nastes’ means in Latin.  They do not make the correspondence to the modern English meaning of ‘nastes’ ie., ‘unpleasant’, but go right to the Latin word ‘nasitortium’ which means ‘distortion of the nose’.  You look at your cat in its oreonastical paroxysm and you will see what ‘nasitortium’ means.  The Romans knew what it meant and so does you cat.  Nasturtiums evidently gave Romans nasal   paroxysms and that’s what they called them nasturtiums. 

At this point I’m sure you want to know how I came by all this dope on God’s ultimate gift to mousers.  Well, the first Rhododendron roxieanum var oreonastes I had I kept in a pot.  At that time, I did not know how addictive it was to cats, but anyway it must not have been cat-accessible.  Probably I kept it in the greenhouse, and it got to be about fourteen or fifteen inches tall and in age produced a flower bud.  I must say my mind ran to thinking about installing special security devices to protect from human predation but I was guilessly unaware that there were four – count them – “Tristan’, ‘Smudge’, ‘Timmy’ and ‘Kate’ – incipient paroxysmatic pussies right in my very own home. 

I wondered why all of those exquisite narrow, lanceolate, indumented botanical marvels of advanced photosynthetic evolution were lying around the base of the plant.  Then the flower bud disappeared and I had to look more closely. 

We all know what rododendron hairs are but the hairs I found were 2.1 to 4.6 cm. long, glandular, glabrous, white, sometimes black and white, orange flushed brown or black.  These weren’t rhododendron hairs.  They were cats’ hairs.

 

Pilchuck Pollinator