- "As long as you can find yourself, you'll never starve."
- —Mr. Everdeen joking with his daughter Katniss Everdeen about her namesake.[src]
Katniss is an aquatic plant that grows around District 12, particularly in the woods and by the lake. Katniss Everdeen was named after it.[1]
Description[]
- "Some people call them swamp potatoes, but I like katniss better. Has a nice ring to it."
- —Lucy Gray Baird to Coriolanus Snow[src]
The plant grows tall, with green leaves shaped like arrowheads and flowers with three white petals. It also has small, edible tubers.[1]
History[]
Clerk Carmine brought Lucy Gray Baird some katniss, but she examined it and deemed it to be too early in the season to eat it. She told Coriolanus Snow that in a few weeks, it would produce decent-sized potatoes, which could be roasted and eaten.[2] Two weeks later, she slipped away from Snow when the two were supposedly escaping together, claiming that she was going to go dig up some katniss, which would be ready by that time.[3]
Katniss Everdeen was named after this plant by her father.[1] When Katniss first began to hunt and gather in the woods with her father, they would go to the lake to shoot waterfowl and collect katniss roots. Katniss was one of the first foods she found while hunting.[4]
Katniss found this plant again while wading in a stream after her father died, and remembered her father saying to her, "As long as you can find yourself, you'll never starve." She picked this plant and fed her family off of it until she could find something better to sustain them.[1]
Etymology[]
The plant is known by many names, including sagittaria, arrowhead, duck potato, swamp potato, swan potato, tule potato, and wapato.
- "[Katniss Everdeen's] name came later, while I was researching survival training and specifically edible plants. In one of my books, I found the arrowhead plant, and the more I read about it, the more it seemed to reflect her. Its Latin name has the same roots as Sagittarius, the archer. The edible tuber roots she could gather, the arrowhead-shaped leaves were her defense, and the little white blossoms kept it in the tradition of flower names, like Rue and Primrose. I looked at the list of alternative names for it. Swamp Potato. Duck Potato. Katniss easily won the day."
- —Suzanne Collins on naming Katniss Everdeen.[[src]]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 The Hunger Games, Chapter 4
- ↑ The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Chapter 27
- ↑ The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Chapter 30
- ↑ Catching Fire, Chapter 3