CHAPTER XXV 
NOMENCLATURE 
ATTENTION has already been called to the classification 
of plants into genera and species and the grouping of the 
genera into larger divisions, the tribes and families. The 
method of applying names to these divisions will now be 
reviewed. The language of botanical nomenclature is 
Latin. If names or words are taken from other languages 
they are latinized. 
GENERIC NAMES 
271. A generic name is a noun (or rarely an adjective 
used as a noun) and is always written with an initial 
capital. The names may be original Latin names such as 
‘Festuca and Hordeum, or Greek, such as Briza and 
Bromus. Or they may be derived from Latin names, as 
Digitaria (from digitus, a finger), or compounds of Latin 
words as Trisetum (tri, three, seta, a bristle). More often 
the name is compounded from two Greek words, as 
Leptochloa (leptos, slender, chloa, grass) and Agropyron 
(agros, a field, puros, wheat). The generic name may be 
a latinized personal name, as Muhlenbergia (for Dr. 
Henry Muhlenberg, an American botanist, 1753-1815), 
and Deschampsia (for Loiseleur-Deslongchamps, a French 
botanist, 1774-1849). A few names have been taken from 
other languages than Latin or Greek without being latin- 
ized, as Sabal (a kind of palm). Such aboriginal names are 
known as barbarous names. Some of these have been 
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