30 THE INDIANA WEED BOOK. 



NA'MES OF WEEDS. 



The first thing that a fanner or other person asks about any 

 weed which attracts his attention is, "What is its name?" or 

 "What kind of a weed is it?" In other words he wants some 

 handle to carry it with and if no one can give him one he makes it 

 for himself. Hence there are many common names for the same 

 weed, sometimes half a dozen or more in the same community. 

 This is unfortunate, for one of the most important things in the 

 warfare against weeds is to know a weed when it is seen and call 

 it by its true name, that is, the one by which it is most widely 

 known. In the list of 150 Indiana weeds each one has several of 

 these common names given after the scientific name, the one in 

 most general use being first mentioned. 



Each weed is known to botanists by one and the same scientific 

 name and it would be well for the farmer to learn these and then 

 there would be no mistake about the weed he has in mind, provided 

 he has it correctly identified. Each scientific name is made up of 

 two Latin words, the first one, always begun with a capital letter, 

 corresponding to the surname of a man and the second one, be- 

 ginning with a small letter, to his given name. Thus the scientific 

 name of the common yellow or curled dock is Rumex crispus L. in 

 which the second name, crispus, corresponds to the given name, as 

 "John" or " Charles," and the first, Rumex, to the sur- or family 

 name, as "Smith" or "Jones." The scientific name is therefore 

 of the same nature as that given a man but is in Latin and is writ- 

 ten backward, as Smith John. There may be any number of kinds 

 of Rumex or docks, but there can only be one of them named 

 crispus, just as in the same family we find but one John. The sur- 

 name of the man who first describes a plant or weed and gives it a 

 Latin name is always associated with it. Thus the L. after the 

 name Rumex crispus L. is the abbreviation for Linnaeus who was 

 the first botanist to give scientific names to plants and who gave 

 the Latin names to the most of our worst weeds. 



The first part of a scientific name, as Rumex, is called the gen- 

 eric name, a genus being a group of kinds or species of plants which 

 are alike in a number of characters. In this case it includes all 

 true docks. The second name, crispus, is the specific name and 

 always refers to the one kind of dock which, wherever it is found, 

 has certain characters distinguishing it from all other kinds of 

 Rumex. When one has learned to know well any one individual 

 plant of a certain weed he is therefore also acquainted with all 



