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Püssirohu (Püssirohi)
Gunpowder, cordite. Lit. rifle weed / grass / medicine, ironically, since it was used as a medicine... After local powder store called Püssirohu ait (see Aida), demolished in 1917 and now paved over by the NE arc of the running-tracks in the Kalevi Stadium. This was not the only store, there seem to have been at least 2 more at suitable distances away from each other stretching for almost a kilometer due SW. Local lore has it that there also used to be stables for konka horses (see Hobujaama) at the Võistluse end of the street too, possible given the then green spaces nearby and the Tartu mnt section of the line ending some 50 m away near Gildi.
Liivaoja (Liivaoja)
Sandy brook. After the remnants (a small pond) of the stream from Ülemistejärve through Kadriorg.
Maarjaheina (Maarjahein)
Sweet vernal grass. Anthoxanthum spp.
Maarjamäe (Maarjamägi) 
Mary’s mount. And no jokes please. Name of summer estate once known as Strietberg or, more accurately, Streitberg (conflict hill) after, legend has it, a violent altercation between Blackheads (see Jüriöö and Marta) and Russians. Known also at one time as Suhkrumägi (sugar mountain, like a Pão de Açucar but without the tacky perroquet à claquettes atop?) after the sugar mill built by a certain Johan Gottlieb Clementz in 1811, whether as a result of Andreas Marggraf’s discovery of sugar crystals in beet in 1747, or the world’s first sugar-beet factory built at Cunern, Lower Silesia (aka Kunern, modern-day Konary, Wołów County, Poland) in 1801 or, most likely, the British blockade spurring Napoleon’s promotion of beet sugar in 1811, either way, the plant (factory, not root) failed after 26 years, was bought by one of the Christian Rotermanns (see Rotermanni) and converted to a starch and spirits factory, which burnt down in 1869. In 1873, Count Anatoli Orlov-Davidov (1837-1905), Equerry to the Tsar and great-grandson of Vladimir, youngest brother of Grigory Orlov of Orlov Diamond fame, bought the property and baptized it with its present name after his wife, Maria Yegorovna, daughter of one of the copious Count Tolstoys, and/or their daughter, also named Maria. Its Estonian name – Maarjamäe – came into usage in the 1930s (see Mäe).







