THE VULGAR OR ENGLISH NAMES OF PLANTS. 

 By Valery Havard, M. D., Surgeon U. S. Army. 



[concluded.] 



AFTER these general remarks, let tis now consider what should 

 be. the proper construction of English names. Our first en- 

 deavor must be to avoid all superfluities, to make our designa- 

 tions as short and concise as consistent with clearness, avoid- 

 ing, so far as possible, the use of compounded words and hyphens; it is 

 the surest way to render those names intelligible, acceptable and useful ; 

 thus, such appellatives as Thread-leaved Sundew, Alternate-leaved Cor- 

 nel,' Rough -fruited Cinquefoil, Triple-awned Grass, are too involved to 

 effect a lodgment in the popular mind. The h^^phen must disappear 

 and the compound be reduced by elimination or a new combination. 



As before stated, the genus name should be rendered by one word 

 whenever practicable; for instance, we need not have Plane-tree, 

 Orange-tree, Silverbell-tree, in which tree is so obviously unnecessary; 

 nor Panic-grass, Millet-grass, Fescue -grass, Brome-grass, in which 

 grass can be dispensed with. In the case of fruit trees, there is the 

 possibility of confounding the plant with the fruit, but this is easily 

 avoided by capitalizing the name of the plant; we may perhaps ex- 

 press a regret at having no other acceptable way to make the distinc- 

 tion, neither the different endings of the Latin and Spanish (Malus 

 and Malum, Manzano and Manzana), npr the suffix of the French 

 (Pomme and Pommier). Upon the whole, however, we find our lan- 

 guage a sufficiently efficient instrument for our purpose, thanks to its 

 flexibility and a certain power of agglutinative combination ; it ena- 

 bles us to make many of the improvements we may deem desirable 

 and which I shall now proceed to formulate. 



I St. In case of all English binomials (or appellatives practically 

 equivalent to binomials) clearly applying to well-known individual 

 species and no others, as for instance in monotypic genera, the sub- 

 stantives should be capitalized and no hyphen used; thus, Skunk 

 Cabbage, Witch Hazel, May Apple, Dutchman's Pipe, Poison Ivy, 

 Oyster Plant, Cucumber Root, Cardinal Flower, Lily of the Valley, 

 Balm of Gilead. This is what the eye and sense of fitness seem to 

 require in this large class of names; since no qualifying specific ad- 

 jective is ever used, no confusion need be expected. A justifiable 

 exception, however, may be inade in the few cases of short monosyl- 

 labic words like Blood Root and Sour Wood, which are often written 

 Bloodroot and Sourwood. 



