Callistemon, Cassiopeia, casuarina

This blogpost serves as a mnemonic - as way to remember - because I've had a specific memory lapse several times over the past couple of years. More than once I haven't been able to remember "casuarina" - the Australian native tree with needle-like leaves that you often find growing next to rivers. I remember reading about casuarinas in a book about Sydney by author Peter Carey: he was driving from the airport to his destination and alongside the road the casuarinas were growing, and that served to impress upon him that he was home. Carey has lived a lot of his recent life in New York. There were casuarinas growing along the estuary in Maroochydore when I lived there not long ago.

Some years ago I started to forget the word and so had to look it up online several times. The same thing didn't happen however with "callistemon" (which is the other word for "bottlebrush" - pictured), a word I have faithfully managed to remember. I was once reminded of how to spell it properly by my former journalism teacher, Jenna Price, and the word has remained fast in my memory ever since.

The same goes for Cassiopeia (a constellation) that appears in chapter eleven of Jane Austen's 'Mansfield Park' in a scene where the young Fanny Price waxes lyrical about the natural world. It is a rare scene because for once Fanny lets herself go and talks for an extended period of time about something that is important to her; readers will remember that Fanny was the poor relation taken in by the wealthy Bertram family out of charity. But, then again, just now it was the word "constellation" that I had difficulty remembering, and had to look up. Mum and dad both had dementia, as did mum's brother and dad's sister. So maybe I'm next.