The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as English-speaking British-American colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from the Native American languages. Examples of such names are "opossum, raccoon, squash", "moose" (from Algonquian), "wigwam", and "moccasin". The languages of the other colonizing nations also added to the American vocabulary; for instance, "cookie", from Dutch; "kindergarten" from German, "levee" from French; and "rodeo" from Spanish. Landscape features are often loanwords from French or Spanish, and the word "", used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the maize plant, the most important crop in the U.S.