SOME CAUSES OF CONFUSION IN PLANT NAMES 



By Agnes Chase 



Assistant Systematic Agrostologist, Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. 

 Department of Agriculture 



To plant breeders, horticulturists, ecologists, and other botanists not 

 primarily systematists the changes made from time to time in the names 

 of familiar plants is a source of confusion and irritation. There is a 

 rather general impression in our day that want of uniformity in the 

 use of names or change of names is a recent affliction due to the per- 

 nicious activity of certain botanists interested in nomenclature. But a 

 comparison of contemporary botanical work of different countries any 

 time during the last century will show that nonconformity in the use 

 of names is no new thing. Successive editions of a standard work also 

 often show the unsettled state of nomenclature during the whole period 

 since the binomial system was accepted in 1753. And the old pre- 

 Linnaean phrase names were so uncertain in their application that the 

 confusion wrought by them was one of the main reasons for the ready 

 acceptance of the Linnsean binomials. But to show that there always 

 has been confusion as to the names of plants is not to argue that there 

 always must be such confusion. Paradoxical as it may sound, it is the 

 effort made during the last twenty years or so to bring about stability 

 and uniformity in the use of names that has caused such a bewildering 

 diversity. 



Mewing the development of the science of botany since 1753, we 

 find two principal causes for the confusion of names of which we are 

 the heirs. First is the difference between the early and the present-day 

 concept of a genus. The generic concept of the older botanists was an 

 ideal made up of certain specified characters. The generic concept of 

 botanists today is a group composed of related species. In the first 

 case the genus depended on the generic characters assigned to it. In 

 the second case the genus depends on its type species. In the first case 

 the genus was supposed to be known when described ; the characters 

 given as generic were assumed to be common to all the species. In the 

 second case inability to state with certainty which characters of a given 

 species or group of species are generic is admitted ; the genus is limited 

 to a definite type species and its related species, whatever their char- 



150 



