THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 7 



and has fruit that is attractive to the eye but is like ashes on 

 the tonjj^ue, one feels that the vernacular name should he 

 "hare-berry," but the word from which it is derived is the 

 Greek arktos, meaning bear, and that settles the matter. The 

 latter part of the name means a cluster c^f grapes. 



Vacciniiim, a txpical l)erry genus, containing both the blue- 

 berries and huckleberries i^ said by Gray to be of obscure de- 

 rivation and by Ikitton to mean blueberry, but other reports 

 ha\e it that it was originally Ikicciniiiiii iroui hacca, a berry, 

 and was made into the word we now use by the substitution 

 of a \' for the initial letter. Some authors derive the word 

 from 7'acciuiiis which means "pertaining to a cow" and in 

 corroboration of this theory point to the fact that some spe- 

 cies are called "cowberries." The cranberries, often consid- 

 ered species of Vacciiuiiin, are often placed in a genus of their 

 own known as Oxycoccimi. Since this word means literally 

 "sour berry" the name seems most appropriate. Anotlicr 

 plant with an acid name is Oxydcudron which nearly every- 

 body will translate as "sour tree." Its common name is 

 naturally "sour wood." Lciopliyllum is from the Greek and 

 means "smooth leaf." For this genus Britton uses the name 

 of Dcndriiiin which is simply "tree"though the plants are not 

 tree-like. 



It is possibly because so many other species of heath- 

 worts are evergreen that the w-ell-known wintergreen has no 

 suggestion of winter in its technical name. Instead it is called 

 Gaidthcria in commemoration of a certain French physician, 

 Hugues Gaultier of Quebec. Gayliissacia, the name of the 

 huckleberry genus, honors a famous French scientist, Gay- 

 Lussac, and the well known mountairi laurel is named Kalmia 

 for Peter Kalm, a Swedish botanist who traveled in Eastern 

 America in early times and published an account of his ad- 



