Camp • The Herbarium in Scientific Research 



73 



some person directly concerned with 

 the plant, as Ouercus Michauxii and 

 Amaranthus Palmeri. Commemora- 

 tive names may also be constructed 

 as adjectives, in which case they fol- 

 low the gender of the generic name, 

 as Spartina Michauxiana. 



3. Nouns in apposition are of various 

 origins, but frequently represent old 

 names for the plant, or for similar 

 plants, as Verbascum Thapsus and 

 Quercus Phellos. Sometimes aborig- 

 inal names are used as specific 

 names of this class. 



QUESTIONS 



1. Mention five commonly used plant 

 names which, though Latin, are known 

 to almost everyone. 



2. List three good reasons for using scien- 

 tific names. 



3. What botanist is given credit for popu- 

 larizing the binomial system of nomen- 

 clature and of what country was he a 

 native? 



4. Of what two parts is a binomial com- 

 posed? 



W. H. Camp 



The Herbarium in Scientific Research 



Reprinted with the permission of the publisher 

 from Journal of the New York Botanical 

 Garden 42:101-102, 1941. 



Emerging from a primitive condi- 

 tion and constantly becoming more 

 aware of his environment, man early 

 acquired the habit of classification— 

 the separation of all objects which en- 

 tered his consciousness into three main 

 categories: the useful, the harmful, and 

 those which were neither useful nor 

 harmful. As man's consciousness en- 

 larged with the passing of the millennia 



these rude classifications were broken 

 into more discrete units until, out of 

 this cerebral activity— and prompted 

 both by his curiosity and his needs- 

 there came that body of organized 

 knowledge called Science. Science, 

 therefore, can be no static thing, but 

 must expand in direct proportion as 

 man becomes increasingly aware of his 

 environment through the medium of 



