What's in a Prague street name

Every street in Prague, one by one.

Category: Flowers

  • Šípková was built in 1972. ‘Šípek’ is rose hip – also known as rose haw. It’s the fleshy ‘false fruit’ of wild roses. It forms in the spring or summer, after pollination has occurred, and then ripens through to the autumn. (‘False fruit’ apparently means that it’s a composite fruit, formed thanks to the involvement…

  • Na Podkovce was built in 1925. ‘Podkovka’ translates as ‘Hippocrepis’, which itself translates as ‘horseshoe’; it’s a genus of flowering plants, of which there are accepted to be 34 different species. And, because round here is round here, it was, once upon a time, the name of a local vineyard.

  • Originally published on Twitter on 25 July 2022. U Zásobní zahrady was built in 1947. A zásobní zahrada is a ‘supply garden’. The garden here provided flowers for Prague’s parks, and for specific events, from 1937 onwards. That’s a lot of flowers. It replaced a previous storage garden, also located in Žižkov, but at Rajská…