I just made a salad for lunch that had a cornucopia. “Ooh! ‘Ow lovely!” you exclaim. I thought so too at first. Cornucopia conjures up autumn bounty.
The word makes me think of a table covered in baskets full of vegetables, bowls of late summer berries and fruits, and vases of showy fall blooms. Oxford Dictionaries define it thus: “A symbol of plenty consisting of a goat’s horn overflowing with flowers, fruit, and corn.”
Merriam-Webster goes Oxford one better, “a curved, hollow goat’s horn or similarly shaped receptacle (such as a horn-shaped basket) that is overflowing especially with fruit and vegetables (such as gourds, ears of corn, apples, and grapes) and that is used as a decorative motif emblematic of abundance — called also horn of plenty”. Vocabulary.com puts it in more simply. “A grocery store with a large selection of fruits and vegetables could be said to have a cornucopia of produce. A cornucopia is a lot of good stuff.”
A cornucopia salad must be tasty, right? Keep reading….
I often buy produce at a family store with greenhouses a few blocks away. She sells a large variety of lettuces and a sign claims they’re all ‘eigene ungespritzt’ or grown in-house, without using sprays or pesticides.
I know from experience her salad greens need washing, and when I got home I set the lettuce in a bowl of water to soak. A few minutes later I returned to the kitchen to drain the water. I discovered a cornucopia floating on top of the bowl.
Three drowning slugs.
The sight got me curious about slugs and their particular animal family. Were they on my list already? In the course of research I learned that in the Animal Kingdom, a cornucopia is the British term for a family of slugs or snails. [1] I also read that most fresh water slugs and snails are hermaphroditic. Further, “[s]ome species regularly self-fertilise. Uniparental reproduction may also occur by apomixis, an asexual process.” [2]
I’m just glad I’d already eaten….
I’ll skip a photograph this time. But I can assure you: the salad was delicious.
“Ooh! ‘Ow lovely!”
NOTES: © Jadi Campbell 2017. [1] In the US, it’s named a rout of slugs. [2] Apomixis is explained at Mating of gastropods.
Merriam-Webster.com, Oxford dictionaries.com, Vocabulary.com. More fun animal names from www.writers-free-reference.com, Mother Nature Network and www.reference.com.
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The café’s interior has exposed timber beams and archives date the building all the way back to 1566. I want to pinch myself when I am in both spots: I write here! How lucky can I get? Other days I’m more severe: If I can’t get inspired by views and surroundings like these, I’d better hand in my writer’s badge now.
