Lasthenia

Ok, here's a really silly one, to while away the
catalogue-contemplating season, before gardening proper really gets
under way. Can anyone tell me why the Calif. daisy genus, Lasthenia,
is named after (as the
always-full-of-fascinating-if-useless-information seed-catalogue of
Chilterns, Bortree Stile, Ulverston, Cumbria, UK, tells me it is) a
girl who attended the philosopher Plato's lectures by dressing as a
man? Is this another of those weird taxonomists' jokes? Are Lasthenia
in some way botanical cross-dressers? 

And if there are innocents among us who think THIS sounds too weird to
be possible, even for taxonomists, look up sometime the reason why the
genus Scaevola is so called...


Tim Longville
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