that the oft-repeated story that the "Oregon Myrtle" grows only 

 in Oregon and the Holy Land is untrue unless you assume that 

 the latter designation refers to California. Perhaps the extreme ex- 

 ample of multiple common names is the number of common 

 names applied to Douglas Fir {Pseudotsuga menziesii), which is 

 an exceptionally important timber tree in western North Ameri- 

 ca. At least 26 different common names are in use for this con- 

 iferous tree. One might expect such situations to exist for 

 economically useful, widespread, and conspicuous species, but 

 communication is not enhanced by having to remember 26 dif- 

 ferent names for one tree when it has a pair of names that are 

 unambiguous. 



Therefore, every plant has two names in the system that is 

 called binomial (two-name) nomenclature. A genus may include 

 as few as one species (as is the case of Umbellularia, which con- 

 sists of U. califomica only) or it may include several species 

 (as does Pinus - P. ponderosa, P. jeffreyi, P. contorta, P. radiata, 

 P. coulteri, etc.). The generic name is always capitalized and is 

 generally treated as a Greek or Latin noun, even though the word 

 may have originated from Japanese (Tsuga), Cherokee (Sequoia), 

 or other languages. Such a name has gender, that is, it is mas- 

 culine, feminine, or neuter. This is not particularly important to 

 remember for present purposes, except to say that the species 

 name of a plant must agree in gender with the genus. Species 

 names of plants generally are not capitaHzed. Among plants, 

 some species names, such as those derived from a person's 

 name (like douglasii, fremontii) may be capitalized, but this is 

 not necessary and perhaps for the sake of consistency, the best 

 thing is not to capitalize any specific name. 



Specific names are generally treated as Latin or Latinized 

 names; sometimes this leads to curious consequences as will be 

 seen below. Some examples of generic and specific names: 



