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Dear Dan: Well put. And remember, scientific names
can be fun. Take the Asian dayflower for example. The generic name is
Commelina. The flower has two prominent petals on top, much like the
ears of Mickey Mouse, and below almost hidden from view, is a tiny little white
petal. The genus refers to the three Commelin brothers, two being famous
botanists and the third a cardsharp and a wastrel. Best, Peter
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 8:18
AM
Subject: Re: [GWL] A Pet Peeve and Need
Identification Help
Hi Peter,
Who gets to name it first? If we look at the
sometimes weed, lambsquarters, we can imagine an ever so cute flock of sheep
cavorting about the meadow with their wee little tails flouncing. However, if
we look at the sometimes weed Chenopodium album, we can imagine an ever so
cute flock of geese, cavorting about a mill pond with their not so wee little
feet flouncing (?) under the water's surface.
In my day job as a wholesaler (This
writing-for-a-living gig isn't quite sufficient don't you know.), we make a
point to use a specific epithet on all our invoices and, especially, during
our conversations with whomever might be ordering plants from us. With a
customer base ranging from Canadian Hardiness Zones 2b to 7a, the simple
request for a flowering dogwood can be fraught with perils.
In my other day job as a retailer, where the
customer is in the nursery, we just go to the plant in questions and say, "Is
this it?" Do you have any idea how many plants are called "bluebells" by the
purchasing public?
(I just had Graham's e-mail come in referring to
bluebells. I wonder if this is the most mis-identified plant?)
When people tease me about "showing off" with
those big fancy names, I just tell them that I paid someone a whole lot of
money to teach them to me and I need to get full value.
So it goes, eh?
Dan
GWA
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 1:32
PM
Subject: Re: [GWL] A Pet Peeve and Need
Identification Help
Usually, it's research that leads to a name
change. Often the name in use, such as Oenothera missourensis, is
found to be preceded by another name, in this case macrocarpa. And
frankly, since the English misspelled the first species, I much prefer
the second, because it was an American who first named it. So the rule is
the first to name it gets the honor and often it takes a century to
sort it out. And it's often not bad, either: The first genus for the hosta
family was Funkia. Imagine the fix with the misspellings and poor
editing of today if that had not been replaced with Hosta. Best,
Peter
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 1:09
PM
Subject: Re: [GWL] A Pet Peeve and
Need Identification Help
My own personal quandry over scientific names is in
wondering why some are changed. Sometimes there are good reasons,
such as DNA testing or the like showing that a plant is more closely
related to another group of plants than the one it had been placed in.
In some cases, the change seems so arbitrary as to make no sense, or
at least is of such a small value that the confusion over the new name
offsets anything gained.
In my own interest,
grapes, I've seen two cases of renaming that illustrate this. One
was in moving the muscadine grapes into a new genus. That one made
sense as the species has a different number of chromosomes from all other
grapes. In another case, a species named after the discoverer was
given a "descriptive" name, from Vitis longii (Col. Long's grape) to V.
acerifolia (Maple leaf grape). The latter name doesn't fit all that
well and it discards the historical value of the previous name.
In the long run, as new people come along and
get used to the new names, it probably won't matter, but it now outdates
all previous books and articles and will cause confusion in anyone who
uses the older references.
Perhaps there is an
article in all this - giving the old and new names of plants and the story
behind the change.
-Lon Rombough
There are occasional articles in Natural History and
similar magazines and
journals by people like my late heroes Isaac
Asimov and Stephen Jay Gould that
try to explain that science is not
about certainty, but the search to
understand. Karl Linne saw
the need to organize the things he wanted to understand.
We
are beginning to reorganize some of his patterns, but it is still about
searching and testing. I had little exposure to different
cultures until 35 years
ago. I knew a little bit of scientific
Latin, but had zero awareness of how
many common names could be hung
over the same plant and nobody wants to change
their
practices.
_______________________________________________
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_______________________________________________
gardenwriters
mailing
list
gardenwriters@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/gardenwriters
GWL
has searchable archives
at:
http://www.hort.net/lists/gardenwriters
Send photos for GWL to
gwlphotos@hort.net to be posted
at:
http://www.hort.net/lists/gwlphotos
Post gardening questions/threads
to
"Organic-Gardening"
<organic-gardening@lists.ibiblio.org>
For GWL website and Wiki,
go to
http://www.ibiblio.org/gardenwriters
_______________________________________________
gardenwriters
mailing
list
gardenwriters@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/gardenwriters
GWL
has searchable archives
at:
http://www.hort.net/lists/gardenwriters
Send photos for GWL to
gwlphotos@hort.net to be posted
at:
http://www.hort.net/lists/gwlphotos
Post gardening questions/threads
to
"Organic-Gardening"
<organic-gardening@lists.ibiblio.org>
For GWL website and Wiki,
go to
http://www.ibiblio.org/gardenwriters
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