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POLITICALLY CORRECT


Boy, what a firestorm Bob Beer stirred up!
I read a discussion in the 1980s or early 1990s in
Veld and Flora, which is the journal of the South 
African Botanical Society, or maybe in South African
Panorama, a general interest magazine.
Someone had written in protesting the use of the specific
epithet kaffir in plants.
They patiently explained that kaffir, caffir, caffre, caffrorum (sp?), etc
as used in botanical names simply means South African or 
from South Africa and also explained the great problem
in changing any "valid" botanical name through the International 
Organization which controls such things.
Supposedly "kaffir" comes from the Arabic meaning "infidel".  Besides 
kaffir lily, there are kaffir bread, kaffir cat, kaffir orange, kaffir 
corn, kaffir beer, and on and on.
I think that Bob's guest was too forward to write on Bob's plant label
and could have expressed his displeasure in a polite way. I gowith the
idea of simply labelling to plant as Clivia miniata or Clive's lily, but 
that does not clear up the kaffir everything else.
Maybe it is a "cop out", but why don't we let the South Africans work all 
that out?

Clark Weston
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