Wildflowers and Wild Flowers

I was driving down I-485 yesterday and saw a field of yellow flowers on my right. The cool thing was that they were truly wild flowers. You could tell they were just growing in the field that used to be there long before I-485 ever cut through their yard.

This reminded me of the highway signs that say, “NCDOT Wildflower Program.” These are always awesome displays of color that make North Carolina Interstate Highways look like a giant gum ball machine fell off a truck and into the field where the sign is.

Then I realized something. You cannot plant wild flowers. You can call them wildflowers and eliminate the space between the two words, but eliminating that space and calling it a program completely takes the true sense of “wild” out of the word. Dictionary.com says that a wildflower is “a plant that normally grows in fields, forests, etc., without deliberate cultivation.” By definition, something — or someone — that is wild cannot be the result of “deliberate cultivation.” 

It is interesting to me that the phrase “wild mustangs” never got the space removed to become “wildmustangs.” (Even as I typed that word just now, the computer’s dictionary tried to correct me.) We speak of a mustang that is no longer wild as “broken,” as in “That horse is broken.” That doesn’t mean the horse doesn’t work; it actually means quite the contrary. . . the horse is now ready for work. It means that the wild spirit has been “broken” out of it and the horse is ready to be ridden and ready to work.

So, I think I’m going to write a letter to the NCDOT and tell them that they should change the name and the signs to say, “NCDOT Broken Flower Program.” 

I’ll let y’all know how they respond.