THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE PLANTS. 153 



CHAPTER XII. 



THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE PLANTS. 



Popular plant-names and their defects Advantage and meaning of scientific 

 names Explanation of terms " genus " and ' k species ' : Principal divisions 

 of the plant kingdom Rapid glance at the families and genera of New 

 Zealand flowering plants Ferns, mosses, fungi, and algae The slime fungi 

 partly animal, partly plant. 



POPULAR NAMES. 



CERTAIN New Zealand plants possess two kinds of names popular 

 and scientific. The former are either English or Maori. The English 

 names are for the most part those which have been given by the early 

 settlers, partly from some likeness, real or fancied, to the plants of their 

 native land, and partly from some peculiar characteristic of the species 

 in question. To this latter category belong such names as lacebark, 

 ribbonwood, spiderwood, milk-tree, pincushion-plant ; and to the 

 former, birch, ash, honeysuckle. Some names have been bestowed 

 for jocular reasons e.g., lawyer, wild-irishman, Spaniard, and nigger- 

 head. Finally, a few are the work of botanists who have sought, 

 vainly for the most part, to bring into use a nomenclature that should 

 have a more correct English equivalent for the scientific name e.g., 

 speedwell for Veronica, groundsel for Senecio, palm-lily instead of 

 cabbage-tree, beech instead of birch, &c. Some English names are 

 corruptions of Maori ones, as biddy-biddy for piripiri, cracker for 

 karaka, maple for mapou. This origin of names is quite an interesting- 

 study in recent word-making, and is well worth investigating. 



The Maoris, living as they did in constant touch with nature, 

 possessed much more knowledge of the vegetable products of New 

 Zealand than do most of their more enlightened, but in some respects 

 degenerate, white brethren. For all the more common trees and 

 shrubs the Maoris have names. But both Maori and English names 

 are used loosely, some being applied to more than one species, or having 

 a different signification in different districts. Akeake is applied to 

 Dodonea viscosa, Olearia Traversii and 0. avicenniaefolia ; koromiko 



