A (long) while back I posted Heidi’s list of auto-corrected bird names. I thought it was pretty funny, partly because most bird names are not normal words. What’s a spell-checker supposed to do when confronted with names such as Willet, Phalarope, or Gallinule?

Being both a birder and a gardener, I began to wonder how Microsoft Word would treat some of the more unusual flower names. Typing a quick list was quite revealing! Then, as I went to retype everything in WordPress, I discovered that they don’t use the same dictionary. In a few instances, it had its own list of suggestions, making things even more interesting!

I ended up with the following list of “corrections.” In cases where Word and WordPress disagreed, the Word version is first. True, some are names only a gardener is likely to know (a few are the often-used genus, not the common name)—but that’s you, right?

Can you decipher these names and figure out which flowers I typed? Just to be nice, I added the photo at top as a hint. Answers are at the end, but no peeking until you’ve tried.

1. Pussyfoots
2. Vince
3. Static
4. Gem
5. Liars / Listeria
6. Scabies
7. Calibration
8. Lumbago
9. Euchre / Rancher
10. Phloem’s / Phlogiston
11. Stile
12. Brownian
13. Malthusian

Continue for answers…

1. Pussytoes
2. Vinca
3. Statice
4. Geum
5. Liatris (Gayfeather)
6. Scabiosa (Pincushion Flower)
7. Calibrachoa
8. Plumbago
9. Heuchera (Coral Bells)
10. Phlomis (Jerusalem Sage)
11. Astilbe
12. Browallia
13. Lisianthus