PLANT NAMES AND THEIR MEANINGS-III 



ROSCAEAE 

 By Willard N. CIvUTi;. 



That great group of plants known as the Rosaceae or 

 roseworts, has flowers of a pattern so typical that to mention 

 them as roselike is sufficient to distinguish them and yet it is 

 only in comparatively recent times that the word rose has 

 come to have its present significance. In earlier days a rose 

 might be any conspicuous flower. Botanical literature abounds 

 in instances of such use of the term. When it comes to scien- 

 tific names, however, rose, or rather the Latin Rosa derived 

 from the Greek Rhodos has a very definite meaning. Used to 

 designate the typical rose genus, it gives the name Rosaceae 

 to the family and through it to the order Rosales. It is likely 

 that the original rose was of some color between pink and red 

 as indicated by our words rosy and rose-colored. 



A number of common genera in the Rosaceae have been 

 named for early botanists. Thus VValdsteinia was named for 

 the Count of Waldstein, an Austrian botanist; Sibhaldia for 

 Dr. Robert Sibbald of Edinburgh, Kerria for William Kerr, 

 a collector in, but not of, China, Daliharda for Thomas Fran- 

 cois Dalibard, a French botanist, and Duchesnia for Antoine 

 Nicolas Duchesne, famed for his knowledge of strawberries 

 and only doubtfully honored by having named for him a genus 

 in which the fruits are insipid and showy rather than useful. 

 Gillcnia is said to have been named for one Gillen or Gillenius, 

 an obscure German, though Wood would derive the name 

 from the Greek yelaiv, meaning to laugh, on account of its 

 exhilirating properties. There seems to be a laugh concealed 



