Evelio, Thank you for your message. By the way, the El Alisal house and garden is a beautiful place-- well worth a visit, open to the public and visitors pay a small donation. It is in Highland Park off the Arroyo Seco freeway. The garden has many native California plants-- one of my interests. Thanks again, Thomas

Hi Thomas

Welcome to the forum

Thank you for posting your question in the thread title. Few new members do this.

Alisal is apparently a variant of aliso, and both mean alder tree. Some sources do give sycamore, but this is apparently incorrect (see the following site). This word is used for many place names in California because these trees are only indigenous to places with a steady supply of water, so their location was noted with interest by explorers.

[url=http://books.google.com/books'id=vnLUc6x2h3AC&pg=PA501&lpg=PA501&dq=alder+sycamore+alisal&source=web&ots=E-TLhmHKQ9&sig=YEYvQRVGCfFL9XPlYCeumdo1mbg&hl=en]http://books.google.com/books'id=vnLUc6x2h3AC&pg=PA501&lpg=PA501&dq=alder+sycamore+alisal&source=web&ots=E-TLhmHKQ9&sig=YEYvQRVGCfFL9XPlYCeumdo1mbg&hl=en[/url]

Hi James
The link you have given relates to fifty years of masonry in California. Might be Interesting, because I used to be a mason.

Slight correction: Alisal is more precisely a grove alder trees, while an aliso is a single tree. This construction is parallel to encinal/encino. I live in a city named Alameda, which is a grove of poplar trees, or alamos. Most Americans don't know that the famous site in Texas called The Alamo means The Poplar.

Hi James,
Many thanks for the weblink, and especially for further clarifying the different words for single trees and for groves. It's interesting that the Mason website mentions that even members of the Alisal Lodge made a similar mistake, saying the word meant sycamore rather than alder. (And in fact it means a grove of alders, plural-- good to know.) One of the docents at the El Alisal home and garden was asked what the name meant, and said the place was named after an old sycamore on the site. So this must be a fairly common confusion-- wonder how it got started? Are both alders and sycamores found near steady water in California? Maybe that was the source of confusion'

I wondered if the two trees were closely related, so I got out my tree identification guide and looked up Sycamore. The California sycamore is also listed as Western sycamore and ... aliso! The Arizona sycamore is listed as Arizona Planetree and ... alamo! Very confusing.

When I translate botanical materials (from Japanese), it is often extremely difficult to find the right names of plants. Most plants have two or more names in English, in addition to their Latin names, and some of the names seem to overlap. The photos of alders and sycamores in my tree guide show leaves that look nothing alike, so I don't know how the trees could be confused.

Sorry I couldn't give you something more definite, but the tourists will probably be happy with either translation!

Hi James, Confusing but fascinating. In English there are some plants with similar common names which look very distinct even to an untrained eye-- some of this variation in usage is plainly regional. Lots of the common plant names have real poetry, so we tend to hold on to those names-- even when the Latin names give us a great deal more botanical precision (and better guidance, even, if if we are considering what plant might do best in a garden.) You've been helpful.