Calle de Anturio

Behind this name grows a plant from the humid forests of the Americas, from southern Mexico to northern Argentina: the anthurium, that lacquered-looking flower that seems hand-painted, with a red or white heart-shaped leaf and, at its centre, a yellow spike standing up like a tail. That is where its scientific name comes from. The Austrian botanist Heinrich Wilhelm Schott christened the genus Anthurium by joining two Greek words: anthos, flower, and oura, tail. Calle de Anturio is a short street in Bellas Vistas, barely fifty metres in the dense fabric of the old Tetuán de las Victorias. The anthurium shares its plaque with other streets in the neighbourhood named after flowers, a small botanical geography traced across the asphalt.