Gleason 



The Reason Behind Scientific Names 



71 



have them generally accepted in a short 

 time, like carburetor, magneto, or ko- 

 dak, but you can not deliberately 

 change a language. The English are not 

 going to adopt a new word for s\ca- 

 more, just because the Bible uses it in a 

 different sense, and neither will the 

 Americans. "Through the sycamores 

 the candle lights are gleaming, on the 

 banks of the Wabash, far away," and 

 they will continue to gleam through 

 the sycamores for a century to come, 

 no matter what botanists or foresters 

 may say about it. 



Then the use of scientific names 

 tells one a good deal about the plant. 

 If you see or read about an ilex tree in 

 England, it may mean nothing to you. 

 But if someone uses the scientific name, 

 Quercus Ilex, you at once get a very 

 definite idea about the plant. You pic- 

 ture to yourself a large tree, slow in 

 growth, with hard \^•ood, bearing its 

 flowers in catkins, and producing acorns 

 for its fruit. Heretofore your idea of 

 Quercus has been derived from your 

 experience with the American oaks, 

 now you expand your concept to in- 

 clude this new kind, you store your 

 new knowledge away in a particular 

 corner of your brain with all your pre- 

 vious experience with oaks, and you are 

 a wiser man than you were before. 



All scientific names are built in the 

 same way. Thev invariably consist of 

 two terms and they are always Latin 

 in their form. The advantage of Latin 

 is that it is a dead language. No one 

 speaks it, and these Latin terms can 

 therefore be introduced into scientific 

 use just as we have introduced such 

 new words as magneto and kodak, with- 

 out interfering in any way with the 

 spoken language of any country. 



Individual plants are seldom of suf- 

 ficent importance to have a distinctive 

 name— with the exception of such 

 noted plants as the Washington Elm 

 or the Grizzly Giant. Names are given 

 instead to the various kinds of plants 



and designate all the individuals be- 

 longing to that kind. 



Common names, used in ordinary 

 speech of non-botanical persons, are 

 gi\en to many plants, such as wheat, 

 apple, rose, oak. These names vary 

 from one language to another, and in 

 the same country often from one re- 

 gion to another. Different names are 

 often used for the same kind of plant, 

 and similar names are often applied to 

 different kinds of plants. Common 

 names therefore lack precision and can 

 not be successfully used in science, 

 where precision is necessary. 



The reason we use Latin, instead of 

 Greek, or Sanskrit, or Hebrew, is a his- 

 torical one. Until about a century ago, 

 Latin was the written language used for 

 all branches of learning. Since the 

 plants described in the older books 

 were mostly European kinds, most of 

 them had a Latin name already, which 

 had been the common name used for 

 them by the Romans. The Romans, 

 however, generally did not distinguish 

 the kinds of plants very carefully or 

 very accurately. For example, there are 

 several kinds of oak in southern Eu- 

 rope, but the Romans had only three 

 names, Quercus, Robur, and Ilex. In 

 scientific writings, the name Quercus 

 was gradually adopted for all of them, 

 and a qualifying phrase was added to 

 this term to distinguish the various 

 kinds of oaks from each other. With 

 the spread of interest in plants into 

 other parts of the world, many kinds 

 of plants were discovered which had 

 no Latin names, and new names were 

 coined for them by the botanists. In 

 every case the noun, which is the actual 

 name, was a single word applied 

 equally to one or several kinds of 

 plants, provided these several kinds 

 were sufficiently alike. Thus all kinds 

 of pine had the name Pinus, and the 

 one kind of chestnut the name Cas- 

 tanea. 



The Swedish botanist Linnaeus was 



