>>http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/05/21/congressional-speech/
>>
>>Congress now speaks at almost a full grade level lower than it did
>>just seven years ago, with the most conservative members of Congress
>>speaking on average at the lowest grade level, according to a new
>>Sunlight Foundation analysis of the Congressional Record using Capitol
>>Words. [WS]
>
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>
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>This is pretty funny (ha ha). Here is a link to the top 100 SAT words:
>
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/eduadv/kaplan/kart_ug_sat100.html
>
>Members of Congress use fewer than a dozen of these.
>
>Consider that Orwell spent most of his time writing in extremely plain
>language. Meanwhile Melville had a stunning vocabulary. Do you know what a
>japonica is? I am still unclear about the word, as in covered in
>japonicas. It could be painted ceramic decorated in green and red or light
>purple flower designs on a white ground.
it's a flower that, these days, is called camellia, but also called quince. In this area, heavy Navy, lots of places are called Camellia something or other, probably because they imported the flower when they were stationed in Asian countries and/or their Asian wives cultivated them in their new country. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camellia>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camellia
They start flowering in March around here and make everyone sick with hayfever. yay.
Maybe it's just common to call them Camellia now, instead of Japonica, which may be why you've never heard the word, Japonica? According to wiki, Japonica is a general word used to refer to anything related to Japan.