278 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM, 
Generic names must have definite relations to plants, as well as 
specific names. Uniformity in the application of names is one of the 
prime essentials of stability, and the use of types is the only method 
thus far suggested for supplying this deficiency in our taxonomic 
laws. Nomenclatorial legislation that fails to consider types can 
have little hope of permanence. 
CONFUSION OF VERNACULAR NAMES. 
In some cases where the scientific names of tropical economic 
plants have fallen into confusion, resort can be had to the vernacular 
names, which often have very definite applications, but with the 
sapotes there is no hope in this quarter. The word “‘sapodilla” has 
only a limited use, even in the West Indies, and is scarcely known 
on the Continent. There it is the chicle tree that is usually called 
“‘sapote,” while the tree with larger fruits is distinguished as ‘‘sapote 
grande” or ‘‘mammee sapota.”’ But ‘‘mammee” is also the name of 
another tropical fruit belonging to a different family, though often 
confused with the sapotes. Thus there is special need of scientific 
names with definite applications. The only reason for adopting 
‘“‘sapote” as the English name of the larger fruit is that the name 
“‘sapodilla,” for the smaller fruit, has already found lodgment in our 
English dictionaries. 
In addition to serving as the common name for two important 
fruit trees, the word ‘‘sapote”’ is also used, with a qualifier, for many 
other fruits, some of them belonging to distinct families, just as we 
say ‘‘thorn apple,” ‘‘May apple,” ‘‘rose apple,” or ‘‘custard apple.” 
Sapote is supposed to have been derived from ‘‘tzapotl,” the Aztec 
generic name for all of the soft, sweet fruits. The Spanish name 
“‘sapote chico” is also thought to mean ‘‘sapote chicle,”’ or ‘‘sapote 
with the chicle gum,” instead of signifying ‘‘small sapote.”’ 
ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCES. 
In spite of bearing the same name, the “sapote grande” and the 
“sapote chico” are essentially different and would never be confused 
by natives or residents in the tropics who have first-hand familiarity 
with both trees. One of the most obvious differences is in the fruit 
itself, which in the sapodilla has a grayish or brownish, granular flesh 
like a pear, while in the sapote the fruit has a yellow flesh and a firmer 
and more uniform texture, not crisp like the flesh of an apple, but 
more like that of a cooked carrot or squash. The trees are strikingly 
different, the sapote with an open crown of large, lanceolate, coarsely- 
veined, deciduous leaves and the sapodilla with a dense covering of 
smooth, delicately-veined, laurel-like, evergreen foliage. The tri- 
angular-fusiform seeds of the sapote are very large and thick and have 
