Of The Naming (And Pronouncing) Of Plants There Is No End

And then (this could go on for ever) there's PEN-stemon or
Pen-STE-mon. (And, anyway, please can we have our 't' back? Which used
to be in and which made the word make sense. I suppose we've lost it
'cos some sleepy or semi-literate first-user left it out?) 

And Call-I-stemon or calli-STE-mon. 

'And so on ad infinitum...'

There seem to be several accentuation problems operating at the same
time in most of these cases, don't there? 

That is, do we pronounce botanical names as Latin-cum-Greek and, if
so, which Latin-cum-Greek pronunciation system do we use? 

Or do we pronounce them as English, and, if so, which ENGLISH
pronunciation system do we use (English or American: and don't tell me
about the possible others: it's bad enough as it is). 

I seem to remember dear old Prof Stearn's notion is that we should
pronounce as English - but even that doesn't solve all the problems,
since English and American users of 'the language'(s) accentuate in
quite different ways. When I was a boy, we (the Brits) had a
heavyweight champion named Don Cockell, who went to the USA to get
battered by Rocky Marciano. Cuddly rolypoly Don COCK-le, as he was in
English English, sounded (though didn't, sadly, perform) much tougher
when American announcers ringingly announced his arrival as Don
Cock-(h)ELL!

I suspect most gardeners are in my own position with the pronunciation
of botanical names: we open our mouths and wait to see what comes out.



Tim Longville
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