Long, OT, Re: Abbreviation, Holly, Lily, Chocolate, Truffles

[Catlady]

No: HPFGUIDX 2579

IIRC is If I Recall (or Remember) Correctly, a vital abbreviation to
those of us who have widely forever and don't always remember in which
book we found a specific fact..

Some of these folklore books call holly 'male holly' and ivy 'female
holly' and one folklore 'expert' on the radio a few Xmases ago said that
the song, The Holly and the Ivy, started as a competitive song between
the boys singing why holly is the best and the girls singing why ivy is
the best, but only the holly verses were preserved since it was written
down by monks who were all male (I guess he means they had learned only
the boy verses back when they were children). The 'holly' after which
Hollywood is partially named is really toyon, a local plant.

The lily flower, being a symbol of purity,  is a symbol of the Virgin
Mary as virgin, while the rose is a symbol of her as mother. The lily
flower is also a symbol of Easter. In modern times, lilies have also
become a symbol of funerals. Am I the only weird person who ever thinks
of Potter's Field (traditional name of the municipal graveyard of
unclaimed bodies) in connection with the name Potter?

A little less than twenty years ago, it was all over the media that
chocolate contains an amphetamine-like chemical which is also found in
the brains of people in love. I've been trying all 'night' (a sleep
period from 4AM when I finished with the e-mail last night to 11AM when
I awoke) to remember the name of that chemical, and finally succeeded.
Phenylethylalanine. So I web-searched on it, and the very first hit was
a page on foods reputed to be
aphrodisiacs:http://www.dummies.com/tips/nutrition/sex.html

but that page says that oysters, mushrooms, and truffles originally got
that reputation from looking like female sex organs -- I have always
believed that those foodstuffs were supposed to resemble MALE sex organs
(e.g. oysters and 'prairie oysters'). I always BELIEVE that the word
'truffle' SHOULD be related to 'trove', because it is a treasured fungus
that must be *found*, but dictionaries always say it comes from a Latin
word for swelling, same root as 'tumescent': "Etymology: modification of
Middle French truffe, from Old Provenal trufa, from (assumed) Vulgar
Latin tufera; akin to Latin tuber swelling, truffle" (from
Merriam-Webster on-line, www.m-w.com/home.htm)

The truffle-hunter's trained pig or dog finds truffles by their smell,
which is supposed to co-incidentally contain some sex pheromones.
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