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Published on 02/20/03

Do you know how to pronounce 'liriope'?

By Mike Isbell
University of Georgia

OK, so how is it pronounced?

Everyone putting in the landscape plantings at the new middle school had seen it all their lives. But none of us knew for sure how to pronounce it.

We were talking about liriope, one of many plants used as ground covers.

Linda, Janie and I pronounced it LIR-e-OPE, LIR-uh-pee and sometimes lir-e-OPE-ee. It didn't make any difference to Rob and George how you pronounced it. But Jim and Jerry both pronounced it la-RYE-uh-pee.

"Jim is from Iowa," I jokingly reminded everyone. "So we shouldn't pay any attention to him."

The "L" word

We finally just agreed to refer to it as "the L word."

To save on the cost of the plants, Janie had dug several bucketfuls of the ground cover from her yard. We spaced it every 12 inches in the planting bed in front of the Chinese fringe tree, clethras, Japanese autumn ferns and Siberian irises.

"Where do you want these trees planted?" someone asked. And since it was toward the end of the day, the answer was, "Who cares? Just put 'em in the ground."

By the time we got around to planting the liriope, we were all dead tired, so joking about the correct way to pronounce something helped take our minds off our labor and our aching backs.

Now, if you don't like physical labor, don't volunteer to spend a beautiful Saturday installing a landscape at a school. But if you like volunteer work, spending a day with some wonderful people can be rewarding.

Spring fever creeping up

I realize it's not quite spring, but spring fever may be creeping up on you. If you have the urge to plant something and it happens to be shrubbery, some careful planning can save you a lot of work down the road.

How? Simple. Plant low-maintenance plants.

Plants come in all shapes and sizes, so select the plant that has the same shape as the space where you'll use it. Avoid using fast-growing shrubs -- they may get too big too quick and may look like a big, green, growing blob.

Know how far apart to plant the shrubs. They'll be much easier to maintain and won't look crowded when they get bigger.

Avoid tight angles in bed lines where it will be hard to mow the grass. And the less grass you have to mow (in my opinion) the better. Use ground covers -- yes, like liriope. Even if you can't pronounce it.

By the way, the accepted textbook pronunciation is la-RYE-uh-pee.

Mike Isbell is the Heard County extension coordinator with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Experts/Sources:
Mike Isbell
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