64 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



centur r, however, the best the scientist could do was to refer 

 to his plants by a long series of Latin terms. It was the great 

 Linnaeus, "the Father of Botany" who perfected the scheme of 

 giving to each plant a name of two words which corresponds 

 roughly to our christian and surnames. This scheme has been 

 universally adopted but it still affords opportunity for some 

 particularly astonishing combinations as in KraschenninikGzcia 

 Maximoimcsiana, the name of a small anemone of the Old 

 \\ orld. The obsurdities to which the system may run when 

 variations of the species engage the attention of the matter- 

 of-fact botanist is seen in such combinations as Primus Pseiido- 

 cerasiis Lindley, subspecies Jamaskura (Sieb. ) Alakino, vari- 

 ety glabra Makino. forma praecox Makino which is the full 

 title of one of the cherries so dear to the heart of the Japanese. 

 Happily such monstrosities are the exceptions which prove the 

 rule. They are the "horrible examples" of the science. Or- 

 dinarily the technical names of plants are not difficult. Xone 

 are harder than rhododendron, chrysanthemum, ranunculus 

 and similar names in daily use by the non-botantical. 



The question is often asked why plants need to be given 

 such outlandish names at all. To this it may be replied that 

 owing to the wide distribution of plants, the names cannot be 

 scetional or even national in character. We must have names 

 that any student, no matter what his situation, can use and 

 understand. It is probable that the use of Latin or Greek 

 for such names was not at first regarded as important. The 

 languages mentioned happened to be those in which most books 

 were written at the time the scientific naming of plants came 

 into fashion and it was natural that the names selected by 

 scholars should be from those languages. The selection, how- 

 ever, seems to have been most fortunate for the Latin is 

 now a "dead" language in which the meaning or form of words 



