Re: Buddleia or Buddleja

Richard Dufresne wrote:

> As far as I can tell, both forms of spelling of buddle(i,j)a are OK.
> Neither choice is clearer in meaning or less awkward than the other.  I
> can't infer that the rules indicate a clear choice.
> 
I thought it would be interesting to check some local (NZ) gardening
books and found one (the least technically-oriented one) gave just  "i",
two very recent ones (one was Botanica) gave "j" and one much older
manual gave "i" with the "j" spelling as synonym.

It seems rather as if the "j" is winning at least in NZ, but of course
all the less botanically-oriented people I know favor the "i" because it
chimes with their idea of "normal" spelling.

Possibly the purists will finally lose out against the rising tide of
popular usage. And does it in fact matter a damn as long as we all  can
still tell exactly what plant we are talking about???

I think we need to be much more concerned at  the loose use of _common_
names, which do indeed sometimes cause a great deal of confusion.

Moira
-- 
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ, "two and a bit" islands surrounded 
by water in all directions - 5000 miles to Chile to the east,
Australia 1500 miles NW, South Africa 6000 miles to the west.
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