72 



SYSTEMATIC BOTANY 



primarily responsible for replacing this 

 system of a single name, followed by a 

 procession of qualifying adjectives to 

 describe and distinguish the plant, by 

 the binomial system. In this system the 

 original noun is still used, but the string 

 of adjectives is replaced by a single 

 word. While this word was often de- 

 scriptive of a plant, it was seldom defi- 

 nite, that is, it did not enable one to 

 distinguish the particular kind of a 

 plant. It was therefore a name rather 

 than a definition. 



To give an example of how this new 

 system saves words, all maples are 

 named Kcer. To describe the sugar 

 maple sufficiently, we would have to 

 say the maple which furnishes sugar 

 and has leaves smooth beneath. We 

 have taken eight words to describe this 

 common tree. Instead we say Acer 

 saccharum, and without description we 

 name it with a single word. 



This binomial system is still fol- 

 lowed, so that each kind of plant 

 known to science bears a name com- 

 posed of two words. For example, five 

 kinds of oaks found in the eastern 

 states, differing from each other in the 

 shape of their leaves or the character 

 of their acorns, bear the names Quercus 

 alba, Quercus palustris, Quercus mary- 

 landica, Quercus Michauxii, and Quer- 

 cus prinoides. They, like all other kinds 

 of oak, have Quercus as the first of the 

 two words. To this is added a second 

 word, and the whole may be translated 

 as white oak, swamp oak, oak of Mary- 

 land, Michaux's oak, and oak like the 

 chestnut-oak. Not one of these words 

 is definitive; not one gives such infor- 

 mation about the plant that a stranger 

 could pick out that oak from the others; 

 they are purely names. Yet they have 

 this advantage: all of them begin with 

 Quercus, and a foreign botanist reading 

 about American trees can at once form 

 some idea about these plants because 

 of his knowledge of the kinds of Quer- 

 cus in his own land. 



TTie first of the two terms compris- 

 ing a name is the generic name, the 

 second is the specific name; that is, the 

 first is the name of the genus (plural, 

 genera ) or general group to which the 

 plant belongs, as oaks in general, while 

 the second is the name of the species 

 or particular kind of oak. 



Generic names are always nouns, of 

 classical origin or constructed in clas- 

 sical form. Several sources of such 

 names may be recognized: 



1. Actual classical names, taken di- 

 rectly from the Latin or Greek lan- 

 guages, as Quercus, Rosa, Lilium, 

 Populus, and Betula. 



2. Commemorative names, coined in 

 memory of some person, usuallv one 

 who has been of service to botanical 

 science, as Linnaea (Linnaeus), 

 Torreya (Torrey), Bartonia (Bar- 

 ton), Magnolia (Magnol), and 

 Robinia (Robin). 



3. Descriptive names, coined from one 

 or more roots of classical origin and 

 referring to some feature of the 

 plant. Most of these are from the 

 Greek, as Polygonum, many joints; 

 Dryopteris, wood-fern; Ammophila, 

 sand-loving; Rhododendron, rose 

 tree. 



4. Aboriginal names of plants, pro- 

 vided with a classical ending, as 

 Catalpa, Sassafras, and Asimina. 



5. Fanciful or mythological names, as 

 Calypso, Arethusa, and Phoenix. 



Specific names are adjectives, or 

 nouns in the genitive case, or nouns in 

 apposition. 



1. Adjectival specific names must agree 

 in gender with the generic noun, as 

 Amaranthus hybridus, Rosa lucida, 

 and Acer rubrum. 



2. Nouns in the genitive are mostly in 

 commemoration of the discoverer or 



