Callaloo

"Immortal amarant, a flower which once
In paradise, fast by the tree of life,
Began to bloom; but soon for man's offence
To heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows,
And flowers aloft, shading the fount of life,
And where the river of bliss through midst of heaven
Rolls o'er elysian flowers her amber stream:
With these that never fade the spirits elect
Bind their resplendent locks."- John Milton, Paradise Lost

"Don't you have any West Indian people living near you?" she asked, when I looked blank at the word callaloo.
"Yes," I replied, a little confused. She's Jamaican and lives a hundred yards away. I'd gone round to give her a tomato plant and she'd invited me to dig up a few pumpkin seedlings in a corner of her garden. Something unfamiliar caught my eye and the answer to my enquiry was callaloo, which I'd thought was the name of a recipe, not a plant. Indeed, it turns out that the plant is amaranth, of which there are about sixty different species, used culinarily for centuries and scribbled about by Milton and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, amongst others.

I had even less luck when I asked her the name of a red, ball-like flower, which I recognise from my youth and is usually crawling with ants: "It's a plant," she said.